Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World

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In Feminist City Leslie Kern analyzes what physical, social, and economic barriers women encounter in their everyday urban life and points out alternative scenarios that work for all. Dr Ellie Cosgrave is Co-Director of UCL Urban Laboratory and Lecturer in Urban Innovation and Policy at UCL's Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, where she is Co-Director of the Urban Innovation and Policy Lab. True, sometimes Kern remembers that there are other, much less privileged women than her, and makes a formal declaration about privileges. Kern maintains that cities are generally designed with white able-bodied men in mind and points out the deficiencies in cities that make it harder for women to live there. Except for a few pages, for instance, there is no detailed analysis of how environmental pollution and climate change affect women’s experiences in urban areas.

Leslie Kern's Feminist City is a tremendously readable and fascinating introduction to feminist geography, and how cities are frequently designed and built to be hostile to women. When I posted this book on my Instagram story, I soon received an essay-masquerading-as-a-DM from someone in my hometown. Leslie Kern is an associate professor of geography and environment/women's and gender studies and director of women’s and gender studies at Mount Allison University.While recognising the concerns of Kern, the broader scope of this gender mainstreaming approach, I argue, has the potential to pave the way for a more inclusive urban space. There's a lot about this book that is fascinating and seeing the dots being connected just continues to show how strongly patriarchal values are embedded in our system.

My very first realisation about how gendered inequities are built into urban landscapes came with a strong urge to pee–and no public restrooms for women in sight. Throughout the book, she often doubts whether urban policy can truly serve as a tool for change as she sees the risk of reiterating existing inequalities and the tendency towards privatization. You wouldn't necessarily suspect that complexity exists from the text presented, nor are readers given quantitative data alongside the qualitative observations and anecdotes concerning the issues discussed.She deploys an intersectional lens to explore such themes as mobility, protest, adolescence, and friendship, weaving together an impressive array of sources from academic writings and popular culture (Doreen Massey appears alongside Two Dope Queens). She describes how cities, despite their flaws, are also "providing the environments where women can make and sustain these connections [of friendships], perhaps even over the course of a lifetime", in a way that challenges the norm that a heterosexual romantic partnership is the most important (or only) relationship to structure a life around.

I did not enjoy this as much as I'd hoped to, because of US/Canada-centric nature of the analysis (understandable, given the author's own location, and a reflection not on the book, but on my subjective preferences as a reader).Kern] introduces readers to a number of different ways the city is at once emancipatory and endangering. Kern clearly loves cities, and believes in their potential: "The city is the place where women had choices open up for them that were unheard of in small towns and rural communities.