How feminist urban design is shaping a fairer Glasgow
What happens when cities are built for some but not all?
Summary
During pandemic lockdowns, Glasgow councillor Holly Bruce discovered feminist urbanism’s potential to reshape cities built for men. Championing a feminist town-planning policy, Bruce has helped Glasgow become the UK’s first feminist city, embedding gender equality into urban design and policy. With a focus on inclusivity, safety and intersectionality, the initiative challenges patriarchal planning, creating spaces where everyone can thrive. Glasgow’s work is part of a growing movement that redefines the future of city living.
Covid-19 lockdown. I’d exhausted my efforts baking rowies (Scottish delicacy, look them up) and couldn’t bear to do another Zoom quiz, so I turned to reading.
A book club subscription introduced me to Leslie Kern’s Feminist City – cue lightbulb moment. I was beginning to understand that cities weren’t ever built with me in mind – they were built by men, for men – and the additional hoops that women and non-binary people had to jump through were simply not there for everyone. I realised I had to do something.
Not a walk in the park
Starting in 2021, I worked with the Young Women’s Movement (which promotes young women and girls’ leadership and rights) on a feminist town-planning research project, building a campaign that explored the interactions between young women and non-binary people from Glasgow, and their public transport system and local green spaces. The feedback received was abundantly clear – the city was not working for us.
Fast forward to 2022, when I advocated for a feminist town-planning policy to be included in the Scottish Green Party manifesto and won election to Glasgow City Council. The policy was passed a few months later, catapulting me into the world of town planning, one that I’ve embraced ever since. What we ultimately created was a radical policy that embedded a feminist approach into Glasgow’s new City Development Plan – the main policy document that the council uses to assess all planning applications. And just like that, Glasgow became known as the UK’s first feminist city.
“Feminist town-planning is rooted in the idea that women, and those of marginalised genders, have a fundamental right to the city”
A place for all of us
Feminist town-planning is rooted in the idea that women, and those of marginalised genders, have a fundamental right to the city. Whether walking or biking, using public transport, accessing basic health or public services, it’s become apparent, through a growing body of research and lived experience, that women can’t afford these spaces, can’t access them, do not feel safe in them, or that they are simply not fit for purpose.
Gender-budgeting, gender-mainstreaming, and gender pay gaps are the subjects of familiar policy discussions, but little has been said about gendered geography. Although these conversations overlap, our gendered relationship with the built environment has only recently been given the spotlight.
In Feminist City, Kern writes, “A geographical perspective on gender offers a way of understanding how sexism functions on the ground. Male power and privilege are upheld by keeping women’s movement limited and access to spaces constrained.” This demonstrates why feminist urbanism is crucial and why we need to apply a gendered lens to all aspects of planning, public realm design, policy development and budgets. It’s everyone’s job to challenge patriarchal strategies and to embed systems-change thinking into their organisations so that we can start to imagine our cities as places where women can thrive. And that is what this policy aims to do.
A commitment to equality
Political spaces have long been overwhelmingly occupied by cisgender white men – in politics, planning, architecture and construction – and this is precisely why the new policy is so important. It makes gender equality non-negotiable. Embedding gendered lens thinking into a city development plan instils it into a legal framework. It ensures that decision makers, regardless of gender, must consciously analyse each application to determine whether it will enhance or undermine gender equality, pushing the city to consider whether decisions will support or hinder women’s mobility.
The policy intention is now being adopted more widely. Edinburgh City Council has committed to it, and the Chief Planner for the Scottish Government wants to see the policy being rolled out nationally (with a local lens applied). Town planning and architecture firms are reviewing practices, holding training sessions and discussing this concept more widely within their sectors.
But the reception hasn’t always been positive. Elected members, academics and architects have rolled their eyes or made remarks about ‘woke’ policies. But being feminist isn’t about taking rights away from one gender and giving them to another. It’s a commitment to equality, and an ethos that anyone, of any gender, can practise. We know and have seen from the wealth of research that gendered lens thinking benefits absolutely everyone. Women’s mobility is good for our communities, our economies and the health of our planet.
Choice of words
The use of the word feminism within the policy was intentional, crucial in fact. It’s an emotive and empowering term that gets people talking. Would this policy have captured the hearts and minds of so many industries, or people, if I’d used a word such as inclusive or equal? I don’t think so. This is the word that had to be used, but what the policy is doing is far greater; it fights for a fairer, more equitable existence for everyone. Not just women. Intersectionality must be at the heart of this approach, and it will always be inclusive of trans and non-binary folks.
Paving the way
There isn’t one blueprint of what a feminist community should look like; each has unique populations and circumstances and should be treated accordingly. For example, learnings can be taken, but not transplanted wholesale, from Vienna and Barcelona, Europe’s leading feminist planning cities. Consultation is hugely important. We want to see change on the ground, but it’s also important to understand that feminist town planning is a process, not an end result.
In Glasgow, to steer the mammoth amount of work to be done, we created a Feminist Urbanism Political Oversight Group, consisting of councillors and council officers. It spans many departments – parks, planning, transport, Violence Against Women and Girls services – in a bid to mainstream gendered lens thinking. Alongside the new City Development plan, the Group will be commissioning a gender strategy and will support the preparation of a toolkit for officers and design guides for developers to ensure a consistent approach across the city. During budget negotiations, I was also able to secure capital – £1m over two years – to fund projects on the ground.
Tangible outcomes
People often want to hear about specific projects to help understand the concept of feminist town-planning practically. Playparks built for girls, pedestrianisation, better lighting – these are examples that pique interest, and nothing captures people’s attention more than the topic of public toilets! Access to toilets is about social inclusion, but I’ve seen within my council how this issue is often trivialised, undervalued and overlooked, even though public toilets are truly the missing link to healthier, more equitable cities. In 2023, I put forward a policy on toilets which saw record engagement, and I’m pleased to say that Glasgow has now produced its first ever public toilet strategy.
Separately, trials of lighting in parks have been commissioned in Glasgow, one in Queen’s Park – in my own community. I’ve been part of discussions to ensure that lighting works for both people and nature. It’s important we get that balance right, and care has been taken to include solar lighting as well as specific travel routes through the park. I also must mention the harrowing history associated with Queen’s Park, specifically, as local woman Moira Jones was brutally murdered there. Her story puts this into sharp focus, as it shows the terrifying unintended impact of what dark, no-go zones in cities can mean.
Women’s safety should never be presented solely as an issue of further protection by the police, nor should women feel shame or guilt for walking through a park at night. This is a tried and tired way of thinking. Reactivating spaces and having ‘eyes on the street’ has been shown as the best form of surveillance.
We are a movement
We are now seeing a movement of feminist thinking within urban planning in the UK. We know that more inclusive infrastructure alone will not solve issues around women’s mobility and violence against women and girls. But what it does do is create opportunity and choice. It gives autonomy. Repairing places enables social change, the social change of opportunity. And that really is the lifeblood of a feminist city.
Knowledge grows when shared.
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Holly Bruce is a Scottish Green Councillor, Vice-Chair of the Environment and Liveable Neighbourhoods Committee and Chair of the Glasgow Violence Against Women and Girls partnership.
Sam Pierpoint is a paper artist who specialises in creating handcrafted paper sculptures from sustainable materials, with a passion for projects that link with nature and wellbeing.
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