International Women's Day and urban planning

Tuesday March 8th is International Women's Day and this year's theme is a pledge for gender parity.

Women as planners and architects. From the standpoint of labor within the urban planning profession, I have noticed on the land use side increasingly women make up a larger and larger proportion of the planning workforce, although directorships tend to be dominated by men.  Although maybe the DC area is an exception given that plenty of articles opine about the need for more women in the profession ("Urban Planning Needs More Women," Rooflines).

There are major exceptions, for example Jennifer Keesmaat is the planning director for the City of Toronto, Ellen McCarthy and Harriet Tregoning were directors of planning in DC, and Amanda Burden was the Planning Commissioner for the City of New York ("Social Planner," New York Magazine) while Janette Sadik-Khan was the Transportation Commissioner.  Sadik-Khan was succeeded by Polly Trachtenberg.

Today is the publishing date for Janette Sadik-Khan's new book on placemaking and transportation, Streetfight ("How One NYC Traffic Commissioner Cut Through Bureaucracy," Wall Street Journal and the anti-JSK pro-car position from the New York Post, "Former Transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan ruined our streets").

The transportation profession tends to be dominated by men still, as it is heavily engineering based, but that is changing too.  The architecture profession is dominated by men according

Planning history and women.  One of the strands from which the planning profession in the US was birthed was out of women-initiated "good government" and "good places" issues in a time when women still didn't have the right to vote.

One of the special interest sections of the American Planning Association is Planning and Women and the Women's Transportation Seminar is a professional development organization for women working in the transportation field.

Land use planning and architecture.  Some argue that the principles of land use planning are designed to favor men ("If women built cities, what would our urban landscape look like," Guardian).  From the article:

In a classic 1980 essay called What Would a Non-sexist City Be Like?, the American urbanist Dolores Hayden called for centres that would “transcend traditional definitions of home, neighbourhood, city and workplace”. Since then, others have taken up the argument that a woman-friendly city would be more porous, the divisions between home and work less rigid, so that domestic work is acknowledged as a productive activity, and carers (of children, disabled relatives and older people) are less excluded from economic life. In any case, such divisions are often artificial, with women in developing-world cities undertaking economic activity that has too often been ignored.

The presence of women as an indicator of safety in the public space.  For years I have been strongly influenced by points made in writings about safety in public spaces and how the number of women out and about can be seen as an indicator of success or failure.  John King, urban design writer for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about this ("Great architecture, clean streets, culture -- it must be Minneapolis") in discussing Minneapolis as an example of his ten principles about how to make cities great:

Women know best. The first night in Minneapolis, I dined at Cafe Brenda on walleye and wild rice, which, with blueberry muffins, constitute the trifecta of local cuisine. A stroll past sleepy blocks of warehouses evolving from red-light district to residential neighborhood led me to the banks of the Mississippi. Walking along grassy parkland toward the Falls of St. Anthony, I had the place to myself -- except for one woman jogging casually past me toward the horizon.

When a city feels safe enough that a woman jogs along, alone, at dusk ... somebody is doing something right."

The presence of women as an indicator of what works and what doesn't in managing public spaces ha been discussed over the years in various writings on New York City's Bryant Park.

Keith Bedford for The New York Times. A man and a woman: Minding the gender gap in Bryant Park.

From the 2005 New York Times article "Splendor in the Grass":

It was lunchtime at Bryant Park, and thousands of office workers were gathered beneath the emerald veil of trees. Ever since the park was renovated 13 years ago, it has been a remarkable space, and one of its most remarkable aspects is that the number of men and women is about equal, a balance that is carefully monitored as a barometer of the park's health. In 1980, when the space was rife with drug dealers and other scurrilous sorts, the ratio of men to women was about 9 to 1, said Dan Biederman, president of the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation.

But when the park reopened in 1992, the comfort level of women was seen as key to its resurgence, which is why the park's designers paid special attention to accouterments that appeal to women, like bathrooms with full-length mirrors, kiosk food and flowerbeds.

These days, the male-to-female ratio is just about even. And with this balance comes the possibility of triangulation, which Mr. Biederman defines with scientific precision as the tendency of an external stimulus to prompt strangers to interact. "If there's enough triangulation from things in the park," he said, "then people who don't know each other will break down and talk to each other."

To facilitate this mingling, Mr. Biederman and his staff made sure that the park was home to a variety of triangulation objects and events, among them wireless Internet access, chess boards, the carousel, summer movies and an ice skating rink set to open this month.

They must be doing something right. In 2002, the park played host to a party for couples who had met or were engaged or married there; 117 couples celebrated over oysters and crudités.

Transit, women and safety.  Around the world women are harassed, even killed, in transit, India being particularly notorious.  In a number of places, women-only taxi services have been created to provide safe transit.

She Taxis, a women-focused taxi service in Greater New York City, modeled after the service in Mexico City ("Mexico launches fleet of pink cabs - driven by women, for women," New York Daily News) which was launched in 2009, launched in 2014 ("New Service Offers Taxis Exclusively for Women," New York Times).

Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris of UCLA has authored a number of papers on bus stop safety.  Many transit agencies have introduced anti-harassment programs.

-- Hollaback! is an organization that addresses street harassment issues
-- Hot Spots of Bus Stop Crime, Prof. Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, UCLA
-- Geography of Transit Crime, Loukaitou-Sideris et al., UCLA
-- Transit Security: A Description of Problems and Countermeasures, FTA

Women and political power. While there is no doubt that men are a majority of the holders of elected office at all levels across the United States ("Why Does the US Still Have So Few Women in Office?," The Nation), increasingly, women are winning elections for mayor in cities around the country.  DC's Muriel Bowser is one such example, but there are many others, including Houston and Salt Lake City.  More and more women are being elected to City Councils, etc.