Intersections of society, existence, and human life are all around us calling for attention to fair treatment purporting to the inequity of spaces, livelihoods, communities, and opportunities.
These intersections are the various layers many conveniently chalk up to ‘complications’ in the neat system of banal requirements. However, these layers are undeniable and everpresent life forces of the world. Due consideration needs to be extended to people from all walks of life; be it differences in race, ethnicity, position on the social strata, sexuality, and other factors that coincide with gender politics.
“The extent to which violations of women’s personal space via touch, words, or other infringements are tolerated and even encouraged in the city is a good measure as any for me of how far away we are from the social – and feminist city – of spontaneous encounters,” says Leslie Kern in Feminist City (Kern,2019). This treatise is integral in understanding the importance of addressing communities’ diverse needs and perspectives in the decision-making process.
Leslie Kern’s Feminist City
Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World is a beacon illuminating the complex play of gender, power, and its effect on urban landscapes. Her exposition on female interaction with man-made cities is compelling, offering a deconstruction of patriarchal undertones of urban design; and advocating for inclusive, feminist approaches toward city planning. This story-telling of hers challenges conventional wisdom on how cities are ideated, experienced, and designed, thus inviting readers to imagine urban spaces through a new lens.
Her discourse intends to debunk the myth of neutral cities, exposing the biases and privileges a city affords its ben since it is shaped by men, using her own experiences in cities of the USA and UK alike. She contends that the conventional planning paradigms have neglected the needs of communities of women, non-binary individuals, and so many more groups, resulting in adverse exclusion and a city ridden with inequality. Read ahead to indulge in an analysis of her treatise on this book, exploring her assertions on the gendered dynamics that alienated other Mothers and Women like her, or even more thrown out of the spectrum of consideration.
City Of Men
Kern begins her story with the revelation of the universal treatment she receives compared to her brother’s. The comparison with her kin and understanding how it’s her gender that holds her apart in the world is evident through her words, “I doubt Josh ever had to walk home with his keys sticking out from his fists or been shoved for taking up too much space with a baby stroller…”. (Kern,2020) This sets the tone for her argument over the imbalance of city and street design that adheres to Cis-white-heteronormative standards alienating every other group of people onto the sidelines, while the men parade for their causes. The introductory comment on the effect of gender in the biases it extends into the relationship between individual and space paves the way for her debate on the flaneur, public transit, and the invisible nature of Motherhood on the streets.
The Flaneuse
“As a woman a complete sense of anonymity or invisibility in the city had never fully existed for me”, says Leslie Kern. The concept of merging with the population to dwell as a familiar as opposed to being required to swim against the tide to preserve one’s right to easy movement and sense of belonging. She speaks of blending seamlessly into an urban crowd where one could freely traverse the streets and engage in detached spectatorship. An act of watching that has appreciated over time since the inception of Industrial cities. The urban fabric conspires inconspicuously toward allowing liberties for society’s considered sector of people- even when it comes to appreciating its beauty. The intersectional communities are ignored or snubbed – even more so when they happen to be women of color or with disabilities, diverse or unorthodox backgrounds -by male standards. They are compelled to frequent the city like soldiers on a mission, armed with reason and necessity.
In forthcoming passages, Leslie poses the question of whether a Flaneur can be a woman. This question has already been answered by various Female Urbanists, authors, and philosophers. But the question becomes rhetoric, because, of course, they can be female. This question almost takes an ironic tone as she delves into the definition of a flaneur by authors like Virginia Wolf, geographers like Sally Munt, etc.
The actual debate on this topic of people watching becoming a luxury of being in comfort in a crowd is mainly opposed by the actions of men. Leslie asserts that those who reject the idea of casual spectatorship of women are only urged to do so due to the objectification of the male gaze in the streets. Be it in construction sites of the Western cities or near ‘Paan’ shops of Indian gullies, the issue of being discomfited into submission to the male gaze- prohibiting one from experiencing any level of wonder for a city is Universal.
The permission to be invisible in a city, explore its haunts, sidle alongside a curb and stand under a cafe awning taking in the views inside, wander, people-watch, read a book, or listen to a local busker are not provided by society and are considered to be luxuries that many do not have the right to.
Women are often subjected to polarising viewpoints on the subject, asked to be more forgiving of the city or become more rebellious of its limitations. But the question is not about a female’s patience toward the rigid, impervious layout, design, and form. The question begs understanding on why cities housing people of diverse backgrounds, cultures, sexualities, genders, and ethnicities are not similarly layered and accommodating of their demographics, rather written out of accounts of the urban life.
A Woman’s Place
Suburban developments are often taken for granted as they seem to have developed organically as a consequence of development and the industrial revolution. However, Leslie Kern argues that they fulfilled very specific social and economic agendas.
Kern recalls the words of Dolores Hayden a feminist architect who said, “Single-family suburban homes have become inseparable from the American dream…their presence pervades every aspect of the economic, social and political life. The quintessential Suburban homes and lifestyle come packaged with deep-rooted separatist and racial allusions. This is supported by the accounts of reasoning Leslie Kern provides in Feminist City: Post WW2 suburban boom coincides with the period where millions of African Americans migrated into the center of Industrial cities seeking better opportunities. The rapid accretion of the Balck population tested the tolerance of the “progressive North”. The irony of the self-induced proclamation of progress must be noted, as this movement led to the ‘white flight’. Mass-produced suburbs like Levittown became ‘white only’ communities. Combatting racism and racial propaganda facilitators becomes difficult when the very morphology of the city and the urban patterns perpetuate it.
Within the realm of Cis-white privilege lies gender disparity. The suburban household is designed considering a rigid model of breadwinner and homemaker tropes. One goes to work while the other stays home in this heterosexual nuclear family.
Leslie Kern listed the targeted demography for policymakers and city planners when designing the suburban developments. The gendered division of labor is the core idea that is embraced in this phenomenon, while the subsequent layers added to it constitute xenophobia, racial segregation, and gender disparity amongst many other urban issues submerged in neglect and ignorance.
However, the statistics of the population don’t add up to the sector of this demography of users portrayed as the model for the suburban development, when the predominant number attributes to Black working women and Black households that do not conform to this lifestyle. Dolores Hayden contends Kern says, “…only a small fraction of households includes the sole male breadwinner/unemployed housewife and minor children.”
There is incremental harm caused by these hostile planning techniques and development strategies that stratified over time, thus prohibiting change and reinforcing outdated ideas in the everpresent turbulent social climate of the 21st century.
The City Fix
The notion of Western societies is not that different from other countries that are also flagbearers of pseudo-feminist ideals. The idea of a male heading the family with women in a nuclear household is prevalent in even the planning of transit systems in the city. The issue of public transit is that it’s designed to facilitate the easy navigation of a man in society. “Most urban public transportation systems are designed to accommodate the typical rush hour commute of a nine-to-five office worker.”
The planning of public transportation assumes a linear strip with no allocation for detours or multiple stops. “…women’s commutes are often more complex, reflecting the layered and sometimes conflicting duties of paid and unpaid work.”
The experiences she speaks of highlight the difficulties of being an active mother and, moving around the city, going places with the clear intention, hurried pace, and fervor as that of a man heading to work- yet the design of transportation and transit hubs do not facilitate this. Curved staircases, random steps, steep escalators, and sharp turns are some of the antagonists in this story of her memories, illuminating the struggles of something so normalized- a routine hindered by the city.
Gentrifying Motherhood
Gentrification of neighborhoods allows some privileges to seep into the urban fabric that offers comfort to the middle-class population. Cafes, parks, and bookstores enrich the neighborhood and allow respite to its rigid tenets. However feminist geographer Winifred Curran argues that these comforts are lost considering they don’t disrupt the gendered division of labor or the urban infrastructure that only accommodates the working patterns of men. Even the gentrification that leads to brand new boxes of condominiums does not afford the luxury of play spaces and parks near these buildings, suggesting that even the affluent are refused the right to family care in urban design.
The other wrongs of the tenements of urban design are its nature to prohibit community-based living where family units work together for a stable lifestyle. Hostile city design prohibits the growth of symbiotic lifestyles, isolating people from connecting with secondary and tertiary caregivers for families that need it. It pushes out single-parent households, low-income groups, and affordable services, scattering kith and kin across the city.
Non-sexist City
“Gender mainstreaming” or “gender-based designing” is an approach prevalent in so many other urban rejuvenation projects across the world. This is one attempt at a non-sexist city. Leslie Kern spoke of Prabha Khosla who identified “gender-based slub upgrading” to be a viable approach that would include women in the decision-making process, thus creating ownership over the design of their spaces; and ensuring access to affordable land and proximity to amenities and services.
There are also inequitable solutions ideated by policy-makers, namely in Seoul, South Korea, where they considered the female population’s comfort superficially in terms of high-heel-friendly pavements and pink parking spots, that still do not address domestic and childcare labor. Gender mainstreaming could also be limiting argues Kern, as it addresses women with white-collar or pink-collar jobs who are able-bodied as the primary beneficiary- which suggests that several other intersectional groups fall through the cracks.
There is a severe lack of consideration of a large group of women by policymakers for women-centered planning like women of color, middle-aged and older women, women with disabilities, and varying racial profiles that are still discomfiting for many, etc. Women who choose motherhood and those who don’t, women who are religious, spiritual, agnostic; women who are transgender-women, women who are judged by their attire, ethnicity, mother-tongue, economic and social status who are not given the privilege of cis-white male existence are neglected in this process.
To conclude
The reality of passing legislation toward urban interventions is that they are not pluralistic in their intentions.
The freedom of choice to experience the city the way you want to the agency of experiencing a space is lost considering there are limits. “The limits on the kinds of urban subjectivities I could inhabit were crystal clear. The boundaries of anonymity, invisibility, and belonging were stark,” says Leslie Kern, lamenting the present scenario of urban design strategies that ostracise women in their homes.
Finally, to conclude this chapter Leslie Kern addresses the most important note for urban designers and policy-makers from stakeholders like her: cities need to be one where barriers are dismantled and all are welcome and accommodated. Cities need to be ‘care’ centered and a feminist city needs to incorporate the creative tools that women employ to support each other to reinforce that support into the fabric of the urban world.
References:
- Kern, L (2020) Feminist City: Claiming space in a Man-Made world. New York City: Verso Books
- Cetin, R A. (2020) Book Review: Feminist City: Claiming Space in the Man-Made World by Leslie Kern. [online]. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2020/07/14/book-review-feminist-city-claiming-space-in-the-man-made-world-by-leslie-kern/ [Accessed date: 12/03/2024].
- Trumm D (2021) Leslie Kern’s ‘Feminist City’ Offers Critical Corrective to Patriarchal City-Making. [online]. Available at: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/04/23/feminist-city/ [Accessed date: 12/03/2024].
