Feminist City

Claiming Space in a Man-made World

Leslie Kern

Feminist City is an ongoing experiment in living differently, living better, and living more justly in an urban world.

We live in the city of men. Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies. There is little consideration for women as mothers, workers or carers. The urban streets often are a place of threats rather than community. Gentrification has made the everyday lives of women even more difficult. What would a metropolis for working women look like? A city of friendships beyond Sex and the City. A transit system that accommodates mothers with strollers on the school run. A public space with enough toilets. A place where women can walk without harassment.

In Feminist City, through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities built into our cities, homes, and neighborhoods. Kern offers an alternative vision of the feminist city. Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out an intersectional feminist approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future. It is time to dismantle what we take for granted about cities and to ask how we can build more just, sustainable, and women-friendly cities together.

Resources

Video

TEDx Talks: The Feminist City | Dr. Ellie Cosgrave (17 min.)

UrbanNous: Gender Equal Cities: Exploring a feminist critique of planning (11 min.)

TEDx Talks: Gender equality requires gender-based design | Robyn Clay-Williams (14 min.)

LSE: Are girls being designed out of public spaces? (13 min.)

TEDx Talks: The tyranny of gender and the importance of inclusive safe spaces in cties | Petra Doan (21 min.)

Shifter: Cities are failing women on bikes, but we can fix it | Tom Babin (15 min.)

BBC News: How to Build a City for Women (23 min.)

TEDx Talks: How to design workplaces & cities for women | Virginia Santy (14 min.)