In Glasgow, Edinburgh and South Lanarkshire, local councillors from different parties have been successfully promoting the case that town planning and the development and management of our urban spaces needs to take proper account of women’s views, interests and needs.
Last October, Glasgow was described in the press as ‘the UK's first feminist city’ when councillors passed a motion proposed by Scottish Green Party councillor Holly Bruce. She argued that women should be ‘central to all aspects of planning, public realm design, policy development and budgets’.
Edinburgh followed suit in May 2023, with councillor Kayleigh O’Neill moving the relevant motion, and in August 2023 South Lanarkshire SNP councillor Mary Donnelly successfully argued that her council should ‘take account of gender equality in planning decisions’ and seek ‘to create public spaces that are safe and inclusive for women and are accessible to all members of the community’, recognising that ‘that the key to healthy towns and villages is to incorporate gender-equal facilities’.
The agenda is partly driven by safety considerations. Donnelly was clear that ‘more needs to be done to protect women and girls and those of other minority groups who face problems in our society’. She referenced a 2021 report from Young Women Lead, a group established by YWCA Scotland to increase younger female political participation. Young Women Lead found that the majority of women and non-binary people felt unsafe or uncomfortable on buses and at bus stops, while less than two-and-a-half per cent of their survey respondents said they felt safe in public parks.
Donnelly asked ‘how do we address these issues? There are a number of things we should be looking at. We need to see lighting as a priority in our parks as well as CCTV at strategic locations not covered yet’. She stated that such initiatives, as part of a broader inclusive approach to town planning, ‘will benefit all who use our towns and villages, with a specific emphasis on the safety of women and girls’.
It should be noted that the emphasis on safety is only part of the agenda: most applications of feminist principles to urban design are not about measures to address risks and increase security. If it is the case that, today, such things as signs at park entrances acknowledging the possibility of dangers, particularly in the evenings, are an unfortunately appropriate and necessary part of improvement programmes, we must do much more to tackle misogyny and end violence against women so that the public realm may not, in future, need to include publicity confirming the restrictions and threats that women currently face.
In media interviews, Bruce explained that the positive new direction in urban planning is ‘also about accessibility to public spaces and public services and affordability … Walking from A to B can be a bit of a nightmare for a lot of women, for example, disabled women, those who have children ... for too long, our streets, parks and buildings have been designed by men. The apparently 'gender-neutral' approach that we’ve used for centuries has meant that the male perspective has become the default’.
What positive steps might result from these initiatives in the short term? Toilets and baby changing rooms in convenient and appropriate locations in parks and shopping centres, and wider pavements that are suitable for people with prams, wheelchair users and mobility scooters are just some of the improvements that residents can look forward to in the relatively near future.
The agenda is much broader and ambitious than that, however, as shown in the European good practice which Scotland is now drawing on. A Guardian article on initiatives in Vienna quoted Sabina Riss, of the city’s University of Technology’s Department of Housing, explaining how male-dominated thinking was evident in most large European cities after the second world war: ‘They designed cities like there would be no other people than men going to work in the morning and coming back in the evening – everything else in between, they kind of had no idea’.
A survey carried out by the women’s organisation of Vienna’s Social Democratic party led to a ‘breakthrough revelation’ which shifted policy in the Austrian capital: roughly two-thirds of car journeys were made by men, while two-thirds of those on foot were by women. This evidenced the extent to which men and women’s experiences of city living were different – and how women’s were being overlooked entirely.
All the Scottish councillors who have promoted these policy developments know that the success of future initiatives in our towns, cities and villages to take due account of women’s’ needs and perspectives – to the benefit of all – will depend on much more than motions being passed in town halls and city chambers. Without a broader culture change – and, crucially, the protection and increase of the budgets which councils need to deliver their services and carry out improvements to urban areas – the impact of the positive steps taken so far will be limited.
Some basis for optimism is to be found in the fact that there was significant cross-party support for the motions. Though Conservatives in South Lanarkshire spoke against Donnelly’s motion, on the grounds that it was superfluous to existing guidance and legislation, members of all other political parties spoke up and voted in favour of the proposal from the SNP member – and the Scottish Green Party councillors in Glasgow and Edinburgh also saw their proposals backed across party lines. Such alliances around progressive steps forward will help build the basis for securing the practical commitment and funding that will be needed in future.
Published 16 October 2023.