Transcription 

*Transcipt was generated automatically, its accuracy may vary.

0:12

Welcome to the Feminist Park podcast.

I'm Kwame.

And I'm Leilani.

It's great to be kicking off this journey with you all today.

Yeah.

We're diving into work that's really closely tied to the vision behind the Feminist Park project, which was founded by Hussain Stuck.

That project's goal is pretty ambitious, isn't it?

0:28

Imagining these truly equitable public spaces, starting with the idea for an intersectional feminist park right here in Berlin.

Exactly.

And this podcast, well, it's kind of an extension of that.

We're going to be digging into the academic research that, you know, supports and informs that kind of vision.

0:46

We'll be taking these dense, sometimes quite academic papers and really pulling out the core and insights.

And looking at them through specific lenses.

Things like environmental justice, intersectionality, anti colonial thought, queer theory.

All the stuff that helps us think critically about space.

1:03

We're actually starting with some background research that Hussein came across early on, and it highlighted something, well, frankly quite jarring that the benefits we think we all get from urban green spaces, you know, parks and squares and thing like physical and mental well-being, they're often deeply gendered.

1:19

Meaning women and also gender diverse people.

They just don't get the same access or experience those benefits in the same way men do.

Right.

Less equitable access, fewer benefits.

It seems almost counter intuitive, doesn't it?

A park is just a park open to everyone.

1:35

Have you ever like, really stopped to think about how you move through your city each day?

You know, walking down the street, catching a bus, hopping on the tube, we sort of assume it's the same for everyone.

Yeah, it feels universal, doesn't it?

Right.

We just think everyone has the same experience, sees the same things, faces the same hurdles.

1:55

But that's often not the case at all, is it?

Not even close.

For so many people, their experience of just getting around is, well, profoundly different.

It's shaped by these forces, these histories that are often invisible.

Forces that have literally built the world around us.

2:11

Exactly.

And today, on The Deep Dive, we're pulling back the curtain on those unseen forces.

That was fascinating.

We're going on this journey to uncover the hidden history of how our cities are transport the very way they're designed, how it's all been deeply gendered.

2:27

And often not in a good way for women in other marginalized groups, I imagine.

Precisely.

Often to their significant detriment.

It's really an exploration into how our physical surroundings aren't neutral.

They actively shape who we are, what we can do, our ability to even participate in society.

2:43

It goes deep.

It really does, and our guide for this deep dive is this fantastic academic article by Barbara Schmucky from 2012.

Oh yes, I know the one.

It's called If I walked on my own at night, I stuck to well lit areas, gendered spaces and urban transport in 20th century Britain.

3:00

Very telling title.

Isn't it?

And Schmucky uses this amazing mix of historical photos, reports, deep archival work.

It really paints a picture of what it felt like to move through British cities over the last century.

You really get a sense of the time, the place.

You do.

3:16

You can almost feel the cobblestones or the crush on an old tram.

So our mission today is clear.

We want to unpack how getting around the city urban mobility has been fundamentally different for women and men in 20th century Britain.

We'll look at the subtle ways, and sometimes they're really not so subtle ways, that transport systems and city planning have either helped or maybe more often actually hindered women's movement, their identity.

3:40

Because spaces aren't neutral.

They're designed and that design reflects and, yeah, often reinforces the power dynamics of the time.

It's a deep dive into the very architecture of inequality.

Really.

Wow.

OK.

So to really get us started, where does Schmucky begin?

3:58

What's the core problem she saw that kind of kicked off this whole line of research?

One of the first things she points out, and it's it's really striking, is this huge gap in how we've historically understood cities, a gap, he says.

Look, women have always been visibly there in cities, right?

4:14

Riding buses, walking down streets, You see the middle photos.

But historical research has just largely overlooked their specific experiences of moving through those cities.

So present but invisible to historians.

Kind of, yeah.

I think their journeys didn't count in the same way.

And her main argument is that these experiences of urban mobility were, and honestly still are, fundamentally different for women and men.

4:37

And not just about convenience.

No, absolutely not.

These differences profoundly shaped their social lives, their economic opportunities, their identities.

I mean, think about it.

How you get around dictates, where you can work, who you meet, what you can access.

It's fundamental.

4:53

That leads into this historiographical gap.

You mentioned this blind spot in the history book.

Exactly.

She calls it a crucial historiographical gap.

So before her work, research on how cities were gendered often looked at static places like workplaces or housing, or maybe welfare policy.

5:09

OK, fixed locations.

Right.

But it rarely dug into how women actually move through the city.

You know the daily reality of getting from A to B, negotiating those spaces.

The journey itself.

Precisely, and adding to that problem, most of the academic stuff that does talk about transport and gender is pretty recent, mostly from the early 1980s onwards.

5:28

So a whole chunk of history missing.

A big chunk.

There's this lack of historical depth, like a missing century, in understanding how these dynamics played out over time.

It's like looking at puzzle pieces scattered on a table without seeing the connections the pathways between them.

5:44

Right.

So how does Schmucky structure her research to fill that gap?

Well, she tackles it really systematically.

Her article looks closely at three main areas to give a really comprehensive picture.

OK, what are they?

First, she dives into the actual experience of women on public transport.

6:02

What it was like day-to-day, who was using it, how society saw them using it.

Right, the buses and trams.

Then, second, she broadens out to look at something as seemingly simple as walking around the city.

But she reveals how even that basic act was shaped by gender.

6:17

Just walking down the street.

Interesting.

Yeah, and 3rd she zooms out even further to look at the big picture, the influence of traffic planning on the very structure of cities and how that planning was often, well, male dominated.

So individual experience, the act of walking and then the overarching city design.

6:34

Exactly.

By looking at those 3 interconnected things, public transport, walking and planning, she uncovers these deep layers of gendered experience baked into how we move around cities.

It connects the personal journey to the grand plans.

6:49

OK, so the very fabric of our cities.

Let's start with public transport.

Then, you know, you hop on a bus, a train.

It feels like a pretty level playing field, right?

A neutral space for anyone.

That's the common assumption, isn't?

It, yeah, but Schmucky's research really questions that hard.

What did she find about this supposed neutrality?

7:07

She absolutely dismantles it.

One of the 1st and honestly quite shocking things she found was this deep gender blindness in the historical sources before about the early 1980s.

Gender blindness meaning.

Meaning when you look at old statistics, newspaper reports, even the technical engineering documents about transport back then, they almost never mentioned gender.

7:28

They talked about passengers or traffic or services, just generically.

As if men and women experienced it identically.

Precisely, and this lack of acknowledgement, whether it was deliberate or just unconscious bias, it ironically helps explain why UK urban transport policy was so gender biased for so long.

7:46

Because if you don't see the difference, you.

Certainly don't design for it.

It creates this kind of cycle where the specific needs or experiences of women just remain invisible in the planning process.

And that had real world consequences, obviously.

Oh.

Huge consequences, especially for women's social mobility.

8:02

Being able to move freely isn't just nice to have, it's absolutely critical for accessing education, jobs, social life, everything.

It's fundamental.

Totally Schmucky actually sites some more recent Canadian studies to illustrate this point.

For immigrant women arriving in Montreal in the 1990s, learning how to use public transport effectively was considered the second most important thing for their integration.

8:26

Second only to what?

Second only to learning French.

Wow, that's incredible.

More important than finding housing or work initially.

Apparently so, in terms of overall integration and long term success.

It wasn't just about knowing the roots, it was about confidence, navigating a new system, a new city.

8:41

It just underlines how vital mobility is for participating fully in society.

OK, so the official records were blind, but women were using public transport from early on, right?

Absolutely.

Despite the official invisibility, Schmucky digs up really compelling evidence showing women were a major presence right from the start.

9:01

Like what kind of evidence?

Well, for instance, she mentions an 1875 cartoon from a magazine called Funny Folks.

It shows a horse drawn tram car with an equal number of men and women inside.

So visual proof from way back then.

Exactly.

And it wasn't just the odd one or two.

9:17

Early on, it was often upper middle class women using trams and buses for things like shopping trips or leisure activities.

And by the early 20th century, London Underground's own figures confirmed lots of women were riding the tube.

Even their advertising campaigns, like 1 from 1911 called The Way For All, prominently featured a woman.

9:35

Implying it was for everyone equally.

That was the promise, Yeah.

On the surface, it looked quite egalitarian.

But there's a bet coming, I feel.

There definitely is, because while it looked open, the way women's use was discussed and managed often subtly reinforced stereotypes.

9:51

How so?

Well, transport companies trying to manage crowds would appeal specifically to shoppers or people taking school children roles typically assigned to women, encouraging them to travel outside of rush hours.

This happened in Manchester in 1917, London in 1920.

10:08

So steering them into certain time slots based on assumed roles.

Exactly, and the London Underground even had posters specifically targeting women for things like the summer sales in 1926.

It wasn't just about easing congestion, it kind of pigeonholed women into lives of leisure or domestic duties.

10:24

And ignored other realities.

Completely.

It ignored, for example, the needs of working class women who often needed transport after 7:00 AM, precisely when the cheap early morning tickets expired.

The Manchester Women's Trade and Labor Council pointed this out way back in 19 O 8.

10:40

So these seemingly practical policies actually created real barriers.

Definitely, they reinforce gender roles and made life harder for women who didn't fit the stereotype.

What about the physical experience?

Was getting on and off the crowding different for women?

Oh.

Absolutely Schmucky highlights some really vivid accounts.

10:57

There was a complaint in the Manchester Guardian in 1924 describing women as being too timid or fearful to push on to crowded trams.

They basically had less chance of getting on than men during busy times.

Just physically harder to fight the crush.

It seems so.

And this wasn't just grumbling, it led to actual experiments.

11:15

Manchester briefly tried running women only tram cars in 1926.

Wow, really?

Yeah, it was an explicit recognition that women were a huge part of the rush hour crowd but were genuinely struggling to board.

Did it last?

Doesn't sound like it was widespread or long lasting, but it shows the problem was acknowledged later in the late 1930s.

11:33

Part of the argument for switching from trams to buses was actually gendered Well.

People like Mr. Stewart Pilcher in Manchester argued in 1937 that buses were easier and safer for women to get on and off compared to trams.

Interesting.

So infrastructure decisions were being justified based on perceptions of women's capabilities or needs.

11:52

Exactly.

It shows how deeply these gendered ideas were embedded, even in engineering and operational choices.

And then things shifted again after World War 2.

Big time post war as car ownership started rising, especially among men, public transport increasingly became seen as well the main way women traveled.

12:12

So the demographics changed.

Significantly, and that shift had major implications for how public transport was funded, planned and perceived.

Then you get into the late 1960s, and there's this fascinating moment Schmucky describes as a sex war in London.

12:28

A sex war over what?

Over women becoming bus drivers when they started introducing buses operated by just one person, the driver getting rid of conductors.

Right, the conductor jobs disappeared.

Exactly.

Many of those conductors were women and they fought really hard to retrain his drivers but faced huge resistance from the male dominated unions.

12:48

They didn't want women driving buses.

It seems not.

The bus driver's cab was seen as this male bastion, Schmucky notes.

It wasn't really until 1973 in London that women successfully stormed that bastion.

So a fight for jobs, but also a fight for space and status within the system itself.

13:07

Absolutely.

It was a very direct challenge to traditional gender roles in the workplace and in public view.

What about the actual experience during the ride?

Did men and women use that time differently?

Apparently so.

Schmucky references research like work by Pooley and others that looked at activities during commutes.

13:26

Women were often observed reading, knitting or just chatting with each other.

Socializing, maybe?

Yeah, potentially.

Men on the other hand, were more likely to be seen doing work related things.

And even more interestingly, research using mind maps from the 50s and 60s by Karen Mills found that women often reported this real sense of community spirit on the buses back then.

13:45

Community spirit like they knew each other.

Maybe not always knew each other personally, but there was a sense of shared experience, camaraderie.

It suggests the bus wasn't just a way to get somewhere for women, it was also an important social space.

A space for connection.

Potentially, yes, a space that might have offered something different from their other daily environments.

14:04

But that potentially positive space faced challenges later on.

You mentioned deregulation.

Yes, the deregulation of the British bus industry in 1986 had a massive and largely negative impact, especially on certain groups.

How did that play out?

14:20

Well, as predicted by commentators like David Quornby back in 1984 OR operators focused on the most profitable routes, cutting less popular ones, leading to a fragmented network.

They also tended to use older, cheaper buses with high floors.

Which are harder to board?

Exactly.

14:36

Schmucky points out that the people who suffered most were elderly people with disabilities and especially women with pushchairs, small children and shopping bags.

Groups already facing mobility challenges.

Precisely.

And because the public option became less reliable and less accessible, many of these people, if they could, were pushed towards using private cars, not necessarily out of choice, but out of necessity.

14:59

Another example of broad policy having very specific gendered and ableist impacts.

The Stark example, yeah, it fundamentally reshaped access for many.

And what about safety?

How did fears around public transport change over the century?

That's another really crucial layer.

15:16

In the early 20th century, the main fears seem to be about the technology itself.

You know, breakdowns, accidents.

And interestingly, some sources suggested women feared public transport more than men even then.

Fear of the machines.

Perhaps, or maybe the lack of control.

But then from the late 1970s onwards, there was this really dramatic shift to what the focus shifted overwhelmingly to social dangers, muggings, harassment, sexual assault, rape.

15:41

Fear of other people, not the vehicle.

Exactly.

Newspaper reporting started reflecting this too, focusing more on theft and social incidents, often targeting women.

And it makes you rethink that.

Community Spirit reported earlier and the role of conductors.

In the 50s and 60s, women often mentioned feeling reassured by the conductor's presence.

16:00

Like having a guardian figure on board.

Potentially, yes, their removal might have increased feelings of vulnerability.

And this rising fear of social danger, Schmucky argues, directly contributed to the car becoming perceived as the ultimate safe space, the mode to escape from danger.

16:16

Driving women away from public options again.

Exactly.

It created another powerful push towards private vehicle dependency, especially for those who felt most vulnerable.

That's incredibly illuminating.

So yeah, definitely not a neutral space.

It's shaped by policy, by perception, by safety fears.

16:33

What about just walking, then?

That romantic idea of the street as this open democratic space, does the Schmucky support that?

Not really, no.

She tackles that idyllic image head on.

Well, first she challenges the common historical narrative often drawn from literature.

You know, the idea that public space was basically male territory and women belonged in the private domestic sphere.

16:53

The idea of the male flanner, the guy just strolling around observing.

Exactly that figure.

In those traditional accounts, women on the street are often portrayed almost as exceptions or stereotypes.

You know, the shopper, maybe the prostitute or just somehow disturbing if they were there for other reasons.

17:10

Minimizing their presence or purpose.

Right.

It distorts the reality of women's actual engagement with public life.

So how does Schmucky counter that narrative?

She uses evidence, particularly photographic evidence.

She points to photos from the period showing plenty of women on city streets, walking alone, walking in groups.

17:29

They were there.

Just living their lives publicly, yes.

Though interestingly, she does note they were rarely seen on bicycles in these photos, which maybe says something about access to that particular form of independent mobility.

But the key point is the visual record helps correct that skewed literary history.

17:47

Women were active participants in the streetscape, even if the dominant stories ignored them.

OK, so they were there, but was it easy for them?

Were their rights as pedestrians respected?

That's where it gets complicated.

Their rights were severely threatened almost immediately with the rise of the car starting in the 1910s.

18:05

How so?

Schmucky gives this absolutely amazing, almost unbelievable example from Manchester in 1913.

Two women were actually taken to court.

For what?

For causing an obstruction by pushing 2 prams.

You know, baby carriages side by side on the pavement.

18:22

You're kidding.

Pushing prams was an obstruction.

Apparently, yes.

It's a really powerful early sign of how the car and the need for its unimpeded flow immediately started restricting and even penalizing older ways of using the street, especially ways associated with women and childcare.

18:38

The pavement was becoming contested ground.

Wow, And did this reflect broader biases?

Oh absolutely.

There was a clear class and gender bias right from the start.

Yeah, motorists back then were mostly worthy, influential men.

Right cars were expensive.

Exactly.

And they quite openly looked down on pedestrians, calling them foolish persons.

18:55

Schmucky quotes descriptions from the 1930s dismissing old ladies who blunder out or infants who dive gaily into the road.

Blaming the victim, essentially.

Pretty much.

And the authorities, the government, the police tended to side with the motorists, reflecting those power structures.

19:12

The interests of the car owning mostly male elite were prioritized over pedestrians, who were disproportionately women, children, the elderly, the less wealthy.

The street became a battleground.

And pedestrians were definitely losing.

How did the big post war changes in cities affect this?

19:30

The new roads?

The housing estates.

That post war transformation, again largely designed around the car, hit women particularly hard.

Planners, mostly men, who drove, built these high capacity roads connecting new suburbs to city centers.

Speed was the goal.

19:46

Making crossing harder and more dangerous.

Exactly.

An organization called the Pedestrians Association pointed this out back in 1952.

The increased danger for women carrying heavy shopping bags or for kids walking to school.

And most women weren't driving then.

Not at all.

Remember those 1976 stats?

20:03

Only 29% of women had a driving license, compared to 73% of men.

So Ziggies were being redesigned for cars, while the majority of women were still relying on walking or public transport.

They were fundamentally disadvantaged by this planning focus.

So what did planners do about pedestrians?

20:20

Just ignore them.

Not ignore exactly, but control them, discipline them.

This is when you see the proliferation of designated crossing points, pedestrian subways, footbridges, guardrails along pavements.

Things to keep people in their place off the road.

Essentially, yes, often framed as safety measures, but they frequently made walking much more inconvenient, forcing long detours.

20:42

And here's the irony, Schmucky points out The data showed women were actually better at following the rules.

A 1949 study found 80% of women used official crossings, compared to only 64% of men.

So the more rule abiding group was often more inconvenienced by the roles designed to control pedestrian movement.

20:59

Precisely.

It's another example of how seemingly neutral safety measures could create new barriers, particularly impacting those already relying on walking.

Did people just accept this or was it resistance?

There were moments of resistance, though Schmucky notes they seem relatively rare in the historical record.

21:18

She highlights one powerful example from Beckenham and Kent in 1951.

What happened there?

Women actually formed a human chain, a barrier to protest the removal of pedestrian crossings near school.

Wow, direct action.

Yeah, Schmucky calls it a rare source for women trying to claim space very actively.

21:37

It shows people, women in this case, consciously fighting back against designs that prioritize traffic over their safety and freedom of movement.

But overall, the trend was negative for pedestrians.

Definitely, by the 1970s, walking in many urban areas was seen as unpleasant, inconvenient and downright dangerous.

21:54

You mentioned a handbook earlier.

Yes, a pedestrian survival handbook from 1975.

It talks about pedestrians being forced to scuttle under dark subways.

It paints a really grim picture.

Doesn't sound very appealing.

Not at all.

And even more damning, a journal called Walk stated in 1981 that by that point, walking had become the mode of transport for the powerless.

22:14

The powerless?

Who did they mean?

They specifically mentioned women and children, the lower paid and a few desk bound city workers.

It shows how walking had been demoted from a universal activity to something associated with disadvantage.

A sign you didn't have other options.

22:32

Pretty much.

Which brings us back to safety again.

Right, the personal safety aspect.

Shmookie includes that really poignant quote from an interview in 2007, the woman saying she always stuck to well lit areas and never took shortcuts when walking alone at night.

A calculation women still make constantly.

22:48

Exactly.

That pervasive sense of vulnerability fundamentally shapes mobility choices, especially after dark.

It reinforces the feeling that many urban spaces just aren't designed with women's safety as a priority.

It's this constant low level stress.

So the conclusion about walking is.

23:05

Schmookie's conclusion is pretty stark.

The urban Rd., The street was never truly in women's control, and this lack of control over their own movement, their own safety in public space, profoundly shaped their identities, their sense of belonging, their freedom.

If the space doesn't feel like yours or safe for you, it limits everything.

23:24

It absolutely does.

It connects directly to how our identities are formed, not just internally, but through our everyday interactions with the world around us.

That's such a crucial point.

It's not just infrastructure, it's about control and who the space serves.

So pulling this all together, the transport issues, The Walking issues, how did the actual planning of cities, the big strategic decisions contribute to all these gendered inequalities?

23:48

This is where Schmucky really connects the dots.

Looking at the role of the planners themselves, she argues that the streets we see today weren't accidental.

They were intentionally transformed into efficient channels for cars.

By whom?

By this new professional class that emerged, transport planners.

24:05

And, crucially, these experts were almost entirely men.

So a male dominated profession designing the arteries of the city.

Exactly.

And this masculine control, as Schmucky might term it, over the design process fundamentally shaped how cities were built, how they functioned, and, inevitably, who they functioned for.

24:25

So how did their thinking evolve?

Schmucky outlines different phases, right?

Yes, she identifies 4 main paradigms or dominant ways of thinking that shaped British transport planning throughout the 20th century.

Each had its own philosophy and huge impacts.

24:41

OK, let's break them down.

What was the first one?

The first was the Traffic Friendly City, roughly from 1945 to 1955.

This is immediately post war, lots of rebuilding, a desire for a fresh start, a better Britain.

Makes sense?

Key figures like Alker Trip were really influential.

24:58

Their big idea was strict segregation.

Keep cars, trams, bikes and pedestrians completely separate to improve flow and reduce accidents.

Segregation for efficiency, right?

But what that meant in practice was often pushing pedestrians off the main streets entirely, into subways or newly built arcades alongside the roads.

25:16

Get them out of the way of the vehicles.

Removing them from the street level.

Pretty much.

And notably, British planners at this time also heavily favored motor buses over trams, partly because buses were seen as more flexible for traffic flow, less unsafe than trams fixed on rails.

25:32

So even early on, vehicular efficiency was king.

OK, so that's the traffic friendly city.

What came next?

Next came the era of the Automobile Friendly City from about 1955 to 1971.

This is when car ownership really took off.

The car becomes central.

Absolutely central, it became the main focus of all planning.

25:50

You had influential ideas spreading like the German concept Diotto Gerechtechstadt, literally the automobile friendly city.

A clear statement of priority.

No kidding.

In Britain, the big influential report was calling Buchanan's Traffic in Towns in 1963.

While it talked about balancing needs, the emphasis was heavily on designing road networks for maximum traffic.

26:10

Flow moving cars efficiently was the goal.

Overwhelmingly, and Shmookie highlights this really chilling detail ecommerce, it's at the time like RJ Smead actually calculated the economic cost of delays and they concluded that delaying vehicles cost the economy far more than delaying pedestrians or even the cost of accidents involving pedestrians.

26:30

Wow, so human cost was secondary to traffic flow cost?

That was the hold economic logic used to justify prioritizing cars and pushing pedestrians further aside.

And remember who had the cars back then?

Predominantly men.

Right.

That 73% year is 29% figure.

26:47

Exactly.

So cities were being physically redesigned by men, largely for men driving cars.

It really solidified that gender divide in access and mobility.

OK, that sounds pretty bleak.

Did things start to change after 1971?

Yes, the third phase, from about 1971 to 1980, is what Schmucky calls city key friendly traffic.

27:06

This period saw the first real challenges to the dominance of the car.

Why the shift?

Growing public.

Awareness and concern about things like pollution, traffic jams, the sheer noise and danger cars brought.

People started realizing the traffic machine was maybe damaging the cities it was supposed to serve.

So a bit of pushback.

27:21

Yeah, you start seeing tentative moves towards traffic calming and importantly, A renewed official recognition of pedestrians and cyclists.

Planners started talking about their needs again.

But was it a complete turn around?

Not quite.

Old habits died hard.

27:39

Schmucky uses the example of the City York around 1970.

They were doing innovative things like creating pedestrianized foot streets to improve the environment.

That sounds positive.

But at the same time, they were also drawing up plans for a massive inner ring Rd. that would have basically destroyed large parts of the historic city center to accommodate more traffic.

27:58

So doing contradictory things simultaneously.

Exactly.

It shows the tension, the slow, often confused transition away from pure car centric thinking.

A step forward, maybe, but with one foot still firmly stuck in the past.

Right, which brings us to the final phase.

28:14

The final paradigm is the human friendly city, starting from the 1980s onwards.

Here, ecological concerns became much more prominent and public protests against destructive Rd. schemes like the famous campaign in York had a real impact.

People power making a difference.

Definitely, and the whole philosophy started shifting.

28:31

The idea of shared space emerged, recognizing that streets are for more than just cars, They're complex social environments.

More holistic view.

Yes, and you saw things like the Renaissance of tramways which have been ripped out decades earlier.

Trams often became key parts of new, more people focused urban designs.

28:52

Sounds like progress.

Was it consistent?

Well, Schmucky notes that Britain actually lagged behind many other European countries in implementing these changes.

Why was that?

Largely due to government policy at the time, the Thatcher administration heavily prioritized investment in roads and cars over public transport or pedestrian infrastructure.

29:11

So political choices slowed down the shift towards a more human friendly approach.

Seems so, and this lack of investment in good alternatives actually pushed more people, including the elderly and women who might have preferred not to drive, towards relying on cars simply because the other options weren't good enough.

29:27

It reinforced car dependency again.

So across all these phases, who is making the decisions?

That's Schmucky's crucial underlying point.

These traffic engineers, the planners shaping our cities, were overwhelmingly middle class men who owned and drove cars.

Right, their own experience was the default.

29:44

Exactly.

They defined their job, their idea of efficiency, based on their own lives.

Their focus was on the technical stuff, mathematics, engineering, managing abstract traffic flows.

And not so much on lived experience.

Especially not the lived experience of people different from them.

30:00

Women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities, pedestrians, cyclists, their needs, their fears, their patterns of movement were largely ignored or treated as secondary problems to be managed.

Because the planners reality didn't include those perspectives.

30:16

Precisely.

And this deep, often unconscious bias embedded in the planning profession itself helps explain why women faced so many systemic barriers to moving freely and comfortably through urban spaces for so much of the century.

It makes you realize that objective planning is often anything but.

30:32

It's rooted in who's doing the planning.

Absolutely.

It's rooted in their experiences, their values, and often their unacknowledged biases.

Wow.

OK, This whole deep dive, it paints such a clear and, yeah, sometimes really infuriating picture of how profoundly gender has shaped our cities and how these deliberate planning choices created and locked in so many inequalities.

30:56

It really does.

And listening to all this, thinking about Schmucky's research, it just makes the need for something like the Feminist Park feel so incredibly obvious, so necessary.

Doesn't it?

The connection is incredibly direct and powerful.

How do you see Schmucky's work directly informing or validating that concept?

31:14

Well, first and foremost, this whole history of marginalization, the difficulties on public transport, the fear walking down the street, it powerfully validates the necessity of creating spaces like a feminist park.

It shows why it's needed.

Exactly.

It tells us this isn't just some nice progressive add on for the future.

31:29

It's a direct, urgent response to a century of Urban Development that has systematically failed women and other excluded groups.

It's about correcting a historical imbalance.

So it's remedial in a way.

You can see it that way.

And 2nd Schmucky's detailed findings.

31:45

Women's fears, their struggles for safe paths, that desire for community spirit on the bus, they directly inform the design principles for such a park.

How so?

Because knowing these specific historical problems allows us to consciously design against them.

32:01

It means prioritizing pedestrian safety above all else, ensuring genuine accessibility for all bodies and needs, actively fostering community interaction, and making a clean break from that car first mentality.

Like learning from the past to design better.

Precisely if women felt safer with conductors, what design features in a park today could create a similar feeling of security or positive social presence?

32:25

These are the kinds of questions Schmucky's work prompts.

Right.

And the broader context?

Well, thirdly, her research provides this vital theoretical and historical context.

It shows the problems of feminist Park tackles.

Safety, access, belonging, inclusion aren't new or isolated.

They're deeply rooted in those 20th century planning paradigms that just ignored diverse experiences for the sake of efficiency.

32:46

It grounds the project in history.

Yes, it underlines why we need a fundamentally different approach, one explicitly designed with an intersectional gendered lens from the ground up.

It's not just tinkering, it's rethinking the foundations.

And what about the challenges it highlights?

33:01

That's the fourth point.

Schmucky shows how that masculine control of public space by planners created cities for cars and commuters mostly assumed to be male.

This history highlights the systemic challenges of Feminist Park seeks to overcome.

Challenges like.

Like moving beyond those purely objective metrics, remember the cost of vehicular delay versus pedestrian lives, and truly embracing human centered inclusive design.

33:27

It forces us to admit the old default gender blind approach was never neutral, it was biased.

We have to actively dismantle that bias.

So it's about changing the very definition of good design.

Exactly.

And finally, and this really resonates, Schmucky talks about visualization, giving a voice to historically silent groups.

33:44

Children, women, pedestrians, the elderly.

Making the invisible visible.

Yes, and that directly mirrors the mission of a feminist park to consciously foreground and design for those previously unheard voices and unmet needs.

It's about translating historical invisibility into present day visibility, empowerment, and a real sense of belonging through thoughtful, intentional design.

34:09

That's incredibly powerful.

What really stands out to you most from this whole deep dive?

It's just so clear that the spaces around us are anything but neutral.

They're packed with history, with power dynamics.

It really makes me wonder, you know, how much of my own daily experience, the way I choose to move through the city, is shaped by these hidden histories I never even thought about before.

34:27

It's such a crucial take away, isn't it?

And it leads to a really important question for all of us listening.

Schmucky suggests that if we understand these path leading paradigms of planning, we can actually shape a better future.

OK, so given this history, this deeply embedded gender bias, how can city planning today genuinely move beyond those old habits, beyond the supposedly objective calculations in the historically male perspectives?

34:52

How can it really reflect everyone's reality?

Exactly how can it truly reflect and design for the diverse, gendered, intersectional, lived realities of all citizens, ensuring our cities are liberating spaces for everyone, not just a select few?

That's a huge question.

35:08

It is, and maybe a starting point is for each of us to become more critical observers of our own daily journeys.

How do you mean?

I mean really pay attention as you move around your city or town.

After listening to this, do you notice gendered patterns?

Who uses which spaces?

35:24

How safe do different areas or types of transport feel, especially at different times?

Tuning into those subtle feelings or observations, yeah.

How does your own identity, your gender, age, ability, race, class, shape, your experience?

Are there places you avoid without really thinking why?

35:41

Or modes of transport you prefer purely based on comfort or safety.

Things we might take for granted.

Exactly because the more where we become of these patterns in our own lives, in the spaces around us, the better equipped we are to question them and advocate for change.

That's a really powerful challenge.

35:58

It definitely changes how I'll view my commute tomorrow morning.

It makes you think.

Imagine, just for a second, imagine if we flip the script entirely.

Imagine if we designed our city, our transport, by starting with the needs of historically marginalized groups, Women, kids, the elderly, people with disabilities, prioritizing their safety, their comfort, their need for community.

36:21

Instead of starting with the car.

Exactly what kind of radical, amazing, liberating transformations would we see, What kind of truly vibrant, inclusive, human friendly cities could we build if we centered the most vulnerable instead of the most powerful as our default user?

That's a question worth pondering long after this deep dive ends.

36:39

This knowledge is a tool, really.

A tool for seeing your city differently and potentially for helping to change it.

It's been a really insightful deep dive.

I think this document provides such a vital framework, especially for projects like the Feminist Park Project that are trying to build something fundamentally different.

36:55

It shows just how interlinked urban design and social justice are.

It really does, but it also shows the scale of the challenge right.

It requires sustained effort, real commitment and a genuine willingness to shift power dynamics in and how cities get made and managed.

Definitely.

37:11

It makes you think about how we ensure those voices, the ones that have been excluded, are actually heard and centered.

There's another quote from Sarah Ahmed in the Handbook that feels relevant here.

Go on, she says.

If you have to shout to be heard, you are heard as shouting.

37:29

That's powerful.

It makes you ponder, doesn't it?

How can the design of public space itself work differently?

How can it amplify the voices of those who've been historically silenced, ensuring their needs are met without them having to shout just to be noticed?

How can design itself listen?

37:44

That's a really provocative thought to end on a.

Lot to think about.

Indeed, thanks for joining us for this deep dive.