How cities are changing to be safer for women

Source: bbc.com

Author: Almudena de Cabo

What woman has not felt fear walking home at night through a poorly lit street or avoided passing through an empty park? Developing safe cities is gaining more and more weight after decades of cities being designed by and for men.

Cities were built with men in mind due to the sociosexual division of labor, assigning productive tasks to men and reproductive tasks to women.

In response to this practice, feminist urbanism emerged, which seeks to include women and protect them in their daily lives.

But it goes beyond avoiding poor lighting, increasing surveillance or improving maintenance: it seeks to invest in urban structures that are inclusive in order to create spaces in which people spend time, thus generating passive security. The more people in a place, the safer it becomes.

Urbanism with a gender perspective

The issue is that everyone should feel comfortable in urban space, anywhere and at any time. This aspiration is what sociologists call the "democratization of urban space".

Austria's capital, Vienna, has been applying it for decades, but more and more cities are joining the movement.

"Feminist urbanism seeks to achieve effective equality between men and women. It is about reducing any discrimination that still exists in practice," Spanish architect Alexandra Delgado of AD Urban Architecture explains to BBC Mundo.

"A feminist urbanism is basically an urbanism that benefits us all, because it gives us a better public space, more equal opportunities, better access to facilities, better public transport... it is an urbanism of opportunity," she adds.

The beginnings date back to the 1960s, when feminists in the fields of architecture, urban planning and geography began to demonstrate that urban planning is not neutral and that it is necessary to include women in it.

This perspective brings a broad view of people by arguing that women and men live and experience space in different ways. This vision has gained strength due to the increase in the population of cities.

Today, just over half of the world's population lives in cities, according to UN data. Moreover, by 2050, that number is expected to increase to 68%. Meanwhile, by 2030, the world is expected to have 43 megacities of more than 10 million people, most of them in the southern hemisphere.

UN "Safe Cities"

"When women and girls cannot walk peacefully through city streets, sell and shop in markets, travel on public transport or simply use community toilets, it has a tremendous impact on their lives. Both the threat and experience of violence affect their access to social activities, education, employment and leadership opportunities," explains UN Women as part of the international Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces Initiative.

Since 2011, this global Initiative has provided support to governments, women's rights organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector and other partners with the goal of creating safe public spaces with and for women and girls in urban, rural and other settings.

"It's about having public space that is illuminated, cared for, with green areas, with facilities. These are the things that provide daily security," Delgado explains about the UN program that promotes, among other things, investment in the safety of public spaces.

Designing with women in mind in Spain

In Spain, the law for the effective equality of men and women includes a specific point on urban planning.

In practice, this means that any project presented in the field of urban development must include a mandatory gender impact report in which pedestrian safety and the safety of daytime and nighttime spaces are always explained. This translates into increased street lighting, absence of dark areas or parks without vegetation that can act as a barrier such as a large number of leafy trees.

"This is so important that there have been urban plans that have been annulled for not having it," explains the Spanish architect. "If you don't include, for example, good lighting, the projects don't pass the gender impact memory evaluations."

"It usually translates into an improvement of the public space, its lighting, access to transportation.... There are some issues, above all, in public space, in which the plan presented must say why it does not cause inequality in women, by design," she points out. "It is an urban planning that does not harm anyone, but benefits us all," says Delgado.

In the opinion of the Spanish architect, although it has not been applied for long enough to say that it has improved women's safety in cities, "it has at least made visible some problems that you didn't even think about before".

"Just the fact of putting on the table and questioning: are you thinking about safety in public space? Are you thinking about safety at night? That's a positive thing. In this sense, it's going in the right direction," he adds.

Vienna: a city for women

In the early 1990s Vienna developed what is the largest housing project in Europe to date built by and for women.

"The facilitation of household and family tasks, the promotion of neighborliness and a living environment in which residents can also walk safely were the central objectives of the Frauen-Werk-Stadt I model project," the Vienna City Planning Office tells BBC World.

The 357-home project led by architect Franziska Ullmann also aimed to promote the participation of professional women in urban development and especially in the design of urban expansion.

Completed in 1997, this design became a reference for architectural firms around the world.

"It's very interesting as a reference because of practical issues like, for example, how there are indoor-outdoor visual links, between the apartment, the stairwell, the courtyard, the garden, the squares, the streets. At the end of the day, this is passive surveillance," says Delgado.

This women's city also has an open first floor and the garages have an open structure with natural lighting, underneath the apartments, with direct access from the stairs to improve security.

"Mexico's "Safe Paths

In Latin America, violence against women and girls marks the daily life of many cities. According to UN data, in Mexico 7 out of 10 women faced some type of violence in 2020.

According to the 2017 Mexico Valley Metropolitan Area Household Origin Destination Survey (EOD-HOGARES), 61.4 % of journeys made walking in Mexico City are carried out by women to perform care activities, mainly.

However, in 2018, the National Survey of Victimization and Perception on Public Safety (ENVIPE) released that only 14.3% of women over 18 reported feeling safe in the street, while 17,799 women per 100,000 inhabitants had been victims of robbery or assault in the street or on public transport.

Among the measures implemented to combat this in places like Mexico City, the program "Senderos Seguros: Camina libre, camina segura" (Safe Paths: Walk free, walk safely), created in 2019 to improve areas with the highest incidence of crime against women, promote the enjoyment of public space and prevent the incidence of crime, stands out.

This action involves an increase in public lighting with LED technology, cleaning and rehabilitation of green areas, installation of totems with video surveillance cameras and emergency buttons connected to the authorities.

"The program proposes universal design with a feminist perspective to create safe routes using violence buffering elements and integrated into an urban image that increases the perception of safety," they explain to BBC Mundo from the Secretariat of Works and Services of Mexico City, responsible for the program.

From 2019 to date, 510 kilometers of safe paths have been intervened and by the end of 2022 it is planned to reach 710 kilometers. Likewise, there are currently more than 65,000 video surveillance cameras and 11,000 emergency buttons.

According to data from Mexican authorities, crimes against women in public spaces have decreased by 28.8% in places that have been intervened as Safe Paths since 2019.

"Thinking about women when designing cities is something that helps. That is one of the reasons why the safe paths were launched, so that those areas where women could not transit or felt danger were rehabilitated so that women could pass through," they explain, for their part, from the Secretariat of Women of Mexico City.

"These are superficial measures."

However, while experts point out that it is on the right track, there is still much to be done in the fight against violence against women in cities.

"The concept of gender architecture in Mexico and all related concepts are superficial, they are makeup. No doubt they are useful, make-up is always useful, but it only covers holes, it does not fix the problem," Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao told BBC Mundo.

"These measures are superficial for many reasons. The first is because there really is no policy to defend women's rights in depth. What is not protected in Mexico is women's lives. Many women are killed in Mexico," she criticizes.

"That is why no matter how much thought has been given to street lighting, open spaces and other measures, it is not enough. Women are killed in the street in broad daylight. That's why I think the actions that are being taken are superficial," she adds.

Nevertheless, Bilbao recognizes that everything helps. In her opinion there are urban planning strategies that work better, such as creating spaces where care work is socialized.

"Alleys exist, but if you start from scratch you have to think about how to make spaces that socially can be much safer, because they have people, because they are open... than putting light in a dark alley. But well, if there are dark alleys you have to do something against them, no doubt. I think everything goes in parallel.