Engendering Cities: Designing Sustainable Urban Spaces for All

Engendering Cities examines the contemporary research, policy, and practice of designing for gender in urban spaces. Gender matters in city design, yet despite legislative mandates across the globe to provide equal access to services for men and women alike, these issues are still often overlooked or inadequately addressed. This book looks at critical aspects of contemporary cities regarding gender, including topics such as transport, housing, public health, education, caring, infrastructure, as well as issues which are rarely addressed in planning, design, and policy, such as the importance of toilets for education and clothes washers for freeing-up time. In the first section, a number of chapters in the book assess past, current, and projected conditions in cities vis-à-vis gender issues and needs. In the second section, the book assesses existing policy, planning, and design efforts to improve women’s and men’s concerns in urban living. Finally, the book proposes changes to existing policies and practices in urban planning and design, including its thinking (theory) and norms (ethics).

The book applies the current scholarship on theory and practice related to gender in a planning context, elaborating on some critical community-focused reflections on gender and design. It will be key reading for scholars and students of planning, architecture, design, gender studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, and political science. It will also be of interest to practitioners and policy makers, providing discussion of emerging topics in the field.

Inés Sánchez de Madariaga is UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality Policies in Science, Technology and Innovation and Professor of Urban Planning at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. She is a leading international expert on gender in city planning, architecture and STEM with extensive experience in both public policy and research. She is member of the Leadership Advisory Council of the Spanish UN-Sustainable Solutions Development Network and an Advisor to the Executive Director of UN-Habitat.

Michael Neuman is Professor of Sustainable Urbanism at the University of Westminster. He is the author of numerous articles, reports, and plans translated into ten languages. His research and practice span urbanism, planning, design, engineering, sustainability, infrastructure and governance. He has advised the mayors of Barcelona, San Francisco, Oakland, and Wroclaw; the Regional Plan Association of New York; the Barcelona Metropolitan Plan; and governments and private clients around the world.