How does 2023 compare to Dolores Hayden’s 40-year-old concept of the ‘non-sexist’ city?

To celebrate this year’s #InternationalWomensDay and its theme of #EmbraceEquity, we’re putting the contemporary city to the test to see how it compares to Dolores Hayden’s concept of the ‘non-sexist’ city from over 40 years ago.

Dolores Hayden, an American professor emerita of architecture, urbanism, and American studies at Yale University, originally coined the concept of a ‘non-sexist’ city in an essay titled “What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like?”. In 1980, Dolores argued that the built environment helped shape ideas of how a “normal family” should use space, based on the woman’s role as a consumer. The effect of such traditional zoning, built into architectural design, capitalism and urban planning over centuries, had essentially isolated women physically, socially and economically, argued Dolores.[1] Alternatively, she advocated communal living, higher densities and cities with a mix of workplaces, residences and infrastructure. Now, whilst Dolores’ critique was focused primarily on suburbs in the United States, the analysis rung true in much of the United Kingdom as well.

How does 2023 compare?

Since 1980, some considerable works and policies have been put into place to build more equitable built environments and public spaces. Gender mainstreaming was established as a strategy in international gender equality policy, at the 1995 fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, and further adopted as a public policy requirement by EU member states in 1997.[2] In 2003, RTPI published a Gender Mainstreaming Toolkit and the set up and success of female-focused built environment organisations, such as, Women in Planning and Make Space for Girls, continue to advocate for equity across the built environment.

And yet, despite all these efforts to build “non-sexist cities”, gender has still not been mainstreamed in planning practice and is distinctly absent in the UK’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

What’s next and how does engagement help?

Today, the principle of applying a ‘user-centred’ approach, that takes the 12 protected characteristics into account when designing and planning, is becoming increasingly common on large-scale developments.  In addition to this, Dolores Hayden’s vision of creating higher density neighbourhoods with a mix of workplaces, residents and infrastructure is being realised in a new wave of advocacy for the ’15-minute city’, whereby most daily necessities and services are accessible within 15-minute walk or bike ride.

At ECF, we are working with a number of public and private sector organisations to bring a gender-centred and intersectional approach to design, placemaking and planning processes. In late 2022, ECF, as part of a wider project to deliver a Design Festival in North-East Cambridge, partnered with Make Space for Girls to deliver a workshop to co-design safe places for teenage girls. The workshop was made up entirely of girls under the age of 16, as they explored ways in which the public realm can be designed for them. Ideas from the workshop included building a more colourful and engaging public realm, with specific social places and diverse sports facilities that went further than football pitches.

ECF will continue to advocate and facilitate for more conversations to be had between the built environment sectors and communities to better understand the needs of women when planning our towns and cities. We believe that only by directly addressing the issue of our gendered landscape can we begin to make ‘non-sexist’ cities.

If you would like to hear about how ECF can help your organisation better understand the needs of the communities you are working in, get in touch with the team at info@engagecf.co.uk.

[1] Zoning, in planning terms, refers to the regulation of the built environment by dividing land into sections to permit particular land uses on specific sites to shape the layout of towns and cities.

[2] 1997 agreed conclusions of ECOSOC defined gender mainstreaming as “The process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.”