Yes, Cities Can Be Sexist. Here’s How to Fix Them.
The idea that urban design can be discriminatory has become more established in recent years. Some city planners are making changes accordingly.
It wasn’t until she became pregnant and gave birth to her daughter that Leslie Kern realized cities hadn’t been designed with women in mind.
Growing up, Kern’s experiences as a teenager and young woman in Toronto certainly weren’t free of threat—the need to look after herself by taking certain routes or avoiding particular areas was ever-present. “But at the time, I was thinking about dangerous people, not the city as a whole,” she says.
It was only in 1999 in London, when Kern was trying to navigate the city with a baby and a pram, that the problems became evident. “Every time I tried to get on public transportation it was a huge struggle. And even though there were spots on the bus for mothers or disabled people or older people, day-to-day commuters would look at me like an alien, especially if I had the audacity to get on the bus at rush hour!” There were other issues too. “Finding a place to nurse and change a baby was suddenly very important in my life; and this was very, very difficult.”
“I suddenly realized, oh, the city is really trying to tell me, 'You’re a new mom with a baby; you should be at home.’”
'You’re a new mom with a baby; you should be at home.’
The idea that a cityscape can be sexist can be difficult to get one’s head around. How can a paving stone be a misogynist? It’s difficult to understand unless you experience it yourself. But in the last few decades, the idea that urban design can be discriminatory has become more established. Vienna and Barcelona are pioneers of gender-sensitive urban design and now, the French city of Nantes has pledged to become the country’s first “non-sexist” city by 2030.
Nantes’ latest budget has just been unveiled, with a focus on making public spaces safer and more inclusive. Indeed, since 2023, the council has been experimenting with “gender-sensitive budgets,” looking at how public spending, whether for urban design or cultural programming, affects men and women differently.
Marjorie Graffion, who works for the City of Nantes, says, “We dare to question all the practices that condition the existence of sexism in our city, in order to ultimately change them.”
So are cities really sexist? What does a city designed for women look like? And how can we get there?
