Fearless Girl, NYC, photo by Estelle Grech
How to design better public spaces with women and girls: an Interview with Estelle Grech
Estelle Grech is an urban planner who is passionate about social equity. Estelle is Policy Manager at the Committee for Sydney. In 2023 Estelle completed a Peter Mitchell Churchill Fellowship to explore ‘How to design better cities for women and girls, through urban planning and design'. This fellowship took her to 14 cities across Europe, the United States and UK to speak to 40 experts from a variety of disciplines. Recently Miriam caught up with Estelle to talk about her recently released research report.
Can you tell us about the recent research report you published out of your Peter Mitchell Churchill Fellowship?
My topic was to research how to design better cities for women and girls. As part of the fellowship, I looked at cities through six different themes. The first of these is gender mainstreaming. That's thinking about the governance of cities through a gender lens. Cities that are leading in this space include Vienna (Austria), Barcelona (Spain) and Umeå in Sweden.
Second, I looked at community engagement and how you engage with women and girls through the design of different components of cities. The third theme was mobility and transport asking how we can design transport infrastructure for walking and cycling through to larger infrastructure projects with women and girls in mind.
The fourth theme was representation which grew out of meeting with a group called Monumental Women who are looking at the gender gap in public monuments in public spaces. Through this I paid attention to areas like public art, street names, place names and how women are represented in the publics of cities more broadly.
The fifth theme was housing and in this example I learnt about how different projects in Vienna have been built for women, by women. The last area was public spaces, which is obviously really important because that's where everything gets stitched together.
Why did public spaces become a theme of your research fellowship?
When I told people about my topic a lot of people jumped straight to the question of safety and women's safety. I feel a lot of women have built in fear around public spaces and after dark and that sense of security and safety. When you look at the stats, I think 8 in 10 Australian women have been sexually harassed in a public space. I saw some research from the UK that said only 3% of women aged between 18 and 24 haven't been sexually harassed in a public space.
When I was in Barcelona, I started to change my rhetoric on the topic of safety. I noticed they weren't talking about it in the same way and were instead talking about autonomy and freedom of movement. The question became how can we design for women's autonomy in public spaces? I like to share that whenever I can so that we can start collectively talking about it a little bit differently and ask how we can design public spaces for everyone to enjoy.
Is there a particular public space that stood out to you as effectively incorporating gender-inclusive design practices?
Two come to mind. The first is Reumannplatz in Vienna which I have wanted to visit for a while. I visited a couple of times during the day and also in the evening. At around 10pm I saw a bunch of teenage girls just socialising at a table together. It wasn't only them out, there were heaps of families out and different people making use of the different types of social seating that they've got. All sides of the plaza are well activated. It has an entrance to a metro portal in the middle of it, gentle lighting, lots of gym equipment, accessible paths, different types of seating and different play opportunities for different ages. Importantly, it was redesigned with local girls. And if you look at one of the photos, there is also a sign that plays with the name of the Plaza. Reumannplatz is the name and Mann in German means man. But you can see from the name below it has been renamed as ReuMädchenplatz referring to young women in the name of the Plaza. When the council were designing the park, rather than expecting people to come to them with their ideas, they went to the Plaza with coffee and cake and got community input.
The second park was Konditaget Luders in Copenhagen, Denmark, which is a playground on top of a car park in Copenhagen built in a new part of the city. One of the experts that I met with from Bark Consulting, spoke about research that they were doing with teenage girls in Copenhagen. And one of the things that they noted the girls were looking for was the city as a visual background in the age of Instagram and social media. So they were interested in going to a place with their friends to have fun that also looks really good when you take photos.
So it is a super fun and playful park where women of all ages are enjoying different things. Whether it's an older woman on a swing or a woman in their 20s playing and a child using the same space. There is also a gym area and a running track and different types of seating. Being on top of the car park there are stairs to get up there. They've made it playful so you can hit a timer to see how long it takes you to get up to the park which is gamifying the experience. The red is also really visually striking.
They’re probably my two favourite public spaces that stood out.
Why is it so important to include women and girls in the design of public spaces?
There are two answers to this question. First, we should be talking to the whole community about how we design public spaces and women and girls make up 50% of the population. Historically women and girls haven’t been involved in the design and planning of public spaces so there is a gap there. Second, from my research I realised that women often carry out more unpaid care work and have experiences in caring for different people with different ages and abilities who use public space. If you are designing public space with women and girls it’s probably going to be a lot more inclusive because of things like thinking about accessibility for prams or wheelchairs, thinking about safety considerations, or thinking about people with different needs.
What role can policies, strategies or guides play in assisting us design public spaces well?
They can play a huge role because they can help people consider design aspects that are common sense but may not have previously been thought of. I particularly like the guide from London called Safety in Public Space: Women, Girls and Gender Diverse People. It’s not a checklist of things but a series of questions that you should be asking yourself throughout different phases of the project process. It is more discursive and conversational than a checklist as it provokes thought about discussions that will get you to the answers you need. This guide is important in that it can increase empathy and understanding of diversity throughout the project life cycle.
Can you give an example of a city leading the way in terms of gender-inclusive public space design and management?
Barcelona is leading the way through their approach to gender mainstreaming which they have considered since around 2016. Their approach is intersectional and they are starting to require things like gender impact assessments for projects. When they're doing procurement for public spaces, teams need to show how they're addressing gender equity and they are building this into different areas of planning and developing a lot of resources and support to help people navigate how to do this.
What innovative approaches or emerging trends do you foresee in the next decade that will further enhance the inclusivity and accessibility of public spaces for women and girls?
The work that Fiona Morrison led on Everyone Can Play is world-leading in terms of considering the needs and role of carers in public spaces. My eyes are just opening to it. Maybe the trend is that it will move 'post-gender' in a way and just focus on function and considering questions like "Can I get there? Can I play?" in a really holistic way. It’s recognising who is taking people to play spaces and, at times, the low paid and unpaid labour that gets people to public spaces. It also recognises that public spaces help people care for themselves through exercise, or just being in nature, and thinking about how public spaces can be designed in ways that help people care for themselves, support carers, and care for the spaces as well. I think that is a really interesting area to explore more and hopefully there's more work that spins off from that work over the next decade.
All images supplied by Estelle Grech
