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If Africa’s cities were designed by women they would offer wider pavements and safer spaces.
If women were doing the city planning...
Our urban areas are not female friendly. Here four African women dream of the cities they would like to see their daughters grow up in, focusing on safety, transport and accessibility BONNY FOURIE bronwyn.fourie@inl.co.za
S Bonny Fourie bronwyn.fourie@inl.co.za Gugu Sithole-Ngobese, founding chairperson of Women in Planning SA (WiPSA). The city I see my daughter living in is one where she has as many opportunities to be as successful as her brother – where her gender does not limit her, and she feels safe and supported by her neighbours and community. She should not have to think about the ways in which she is limited by the way her city is designed. She should see herself in her local policy makers, and she should know that they are making decisions on her behalf and in her best interests. South Africa’s cities have not been built to suit the needs of women. And one of the key areas in which planning and urban design has failed, particularly in this country, is in the area of gender mainstreaming which is the practice of ensuring that all genders, particularly women, are accounted for equally in policy, legislation and resource allocation in all areas and at all levels. In spatial planning – both urban and rural, it is about considering how different gender groups use public spaces. City planning needs to consider who is using
OUTH AFRICA’S cities were not designed with women in mind. From insufficient pavements and safe walking spaces to scarce public toilets and family facilities, the country’s cities do not factor in the needs of the women and children who use them. So, how would our cities differ if they were designed by women? We asked four professionals with strong influence in built urban environments what their city design would entail. These are their plans:
the space, the number of people, how they use it, why they use it, and where most uses take place. With more than half of the population of South Africa being female, our country’s cities need to be planned with women in mind. Women are the primary caregivers of our society, and studies have shown that by designing cities with women in mind, the entire city benefits. So, following the frameworks provided by cities such as Trappes in France, Turku in Finland, and most notably Vienna in Austria, South Africa could benefit from the following improvements: •Providing public transport outside peak hours as women use public transport more often and make more trips on foot when compared to men. We also have more varied transport routes as we go between doctor’s appointments, fetch children from school, and go grocery shopping, while men are more likely to leave for work in the morning and return home in the evening without making additional trips during the day. •Developing wider pavements and staircases with ramps to allow for prams and wheelchairs. •Providing additional
Bonny Fourie bronwyn.fourie@inl. co.za
street lighting to make it safer for women to walk at night. •Increasing the number of public toilets, especially for women. By increasing the number of public restrooms, sexual assault could be reduced by 30%. •There are babychanging facilities in malls, shopping centres and restaurants, but we need more of these elsewhere. In places like taxi ranks, parents need to be able to change their children in safe and clean environments. •Increase the number of affordable and accessible childcare centres throughout cities so that all parents – from domestic workers to businesspeople – have access. These should provide safe, qualified child minders to parents who are unable to watch
Women have always been central to urban life, and in African cities particularly, roles they play have roots in colonial times when men were able to find work in the mining and construction sectors and women were excluded from these jobs. Therefore to earn their livelihoods and support their families, they started commercialising their domestic skills. Today, much of this split in type of work remains: the limited number of formal sector jobs in African cities is usually undertaken by men while there is a predominance of women in the informal services sector. In my city, Kampala in Uganda, an estimated 70% of single-person businesses in the informal sector are run by women. In addition, women bear most of the burden of the family domestic work, including childcare. Yet, in many African cities, this difference in role is not taken into account in their designs. For example, movement to and from a wage job may require an average of two trips a day but moving between an informal job – such as in a market place, child care (if it exists), and home can require many smaller trips. Furthermore, research has shown that not only is the highest modal share
of trips in African cities undertaken by foot, most of those who are walking are women. Yet many cities simply lack sufficient pavements – which means pedestrians are competing with motorised transport for their space on the road. In terms of design features, pavements are critical to improving walkability, good for everyone but especially for women. I would also conjecture that African cities designed by women would make larger provision for quality public spaces that encourage community use, ownership and ultimately citizens’ own investments in the city. This is not only an important feature for children but also for enabling interaction and innovation to take place, which is one of the powers of cities. I would ensure that there are more benches around
cities to allow women carrying goods to and from the market, women carrying children, or even children walking to be able to sit and take breaks. This is also important for those who are still breastfeeding, for example. Street-lighting is a further design feature critical to everyone but especially women: work does not finish when the sun goes down, but security and safety often does. Finally, an important but often overlooked design feature that I would advocate for are street names, monuments and other public edifices honouring, enshrining and celebrating female heroism and ingenuity. These are largely missing in cities across the world today but would inspire my daughter and other little girls for generations to come.
