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Gendered Intersections: Differencing design for more inclusive streetscapes
Master’s Thesis, University of Washington Dept. of Landscape Architecture, 2010
Abstract
Euro-American streets are plentiful, crucial sites of sustainability, livability, public social interaction, and social capital building, all of which are undermined by exclusion. A review of the historical-social-material interactions that have produced streetscapes shows that women experience gendered exclusions from city streets through threats of violence and crime, fear, graphic representations, the male gaze, mobility barriers, a lack of public toilets, and a lack of suitable spaces to support the types of activities they tend to want to carry out in public. The practice of streetscape design is reconceptualized to include alternative epistemologies that validate a-rational approaches to planning and design and focus on experience and emotions as drivers of behavior. Through pedestrian counts comparing users of two streets in Copenhagen, Denmark, women’s preferences in street spaces—defined as spatial connectivity, visual transparency, complexity, proximity, pleasant sensory experiences, talkscapes, a feeling of security, an atmosphere of support, and evidence of care—are examined. In Seattle, Washington, an alternative design method is proposed and applied to streets feeding a new, mass transit station in a culturally diverse neighborhood, that are lacking women’s preferred qualities. To lift mobility barriers, a traffic reroute is proposed and to introduce qualities women seek in street spaces, selected locations are redesigned. Design strategies aimed at alleviating problems caused by darkness, the male gaze, noise, and a sharp public/private divide are presented in a menu of tactical options. The menu is intended for practitioners’ use so that they may ‘pick and choose’ tactics to apply on a site-to-site basis rather than relying on a ‘one size fits all’ approach. This approach is intended to generate streetscape designs that are experienced as safe and inviting to women and therefore more inclusive to all streetscape users.
Every strand feels the loom And always does.
The cloth is never ‘made.’
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Sculpture, Collage, Painting, and Process
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What does it take to make a livable city? Neighborhoods for People is a 50-page, practical guide to creating livable neighborhoods and vibrant public spaces in North America. I co-created this document when I was working at the office of Gehl Architects in Copenhagen, Denmark, 2009.
Plastic-a-holics: a collaborative concept for an installation to help us break our reliance on plastic.
You are what you live in: Exploring Lawrence Halprin’s process, graphic term paper, 2009.
