Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World

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In sum, Feminist City is a highly readable introduction to the idea of and need for claiming space in man-made cities. In the chapter on protest this came to a head, as Kern more often than not emphasized that challenges of protesting have made it difficult for her to participate in them, whether for reasons of international travel, motherhood, or logistical concerns. According to the author, the possibility to ‘simply be’ in the public space tells us about who has their right to the city guaranteed, and who is instead considered ‘out of place’.

This book is ultimately a guide to loving our urban neighbors well—providing better access to public restrooms, making public transit more accessible and hospitable for pregnant women, keeping women safe from assault and harassment on the street, resisting gentrification, and ensuring marginalized groups feel consistently welcomed in the spaces they navigate through. A lot of other works on gender and urbanism don't acknowledge other identities past cis-women so this was refreshing. Women can never fully escape into invisibility because their gender marks them as objects of the male gaze. These analyses reveal an intersectional understanding of how urban renewal processes prioritise ‘particular product brands, styles, and kinds of activities’ (40) and reinforce intersectional inequalities while excluding working-class families and mothers from gentrified urban environments. This suggests that forging alliances across communities, activism, and collective action represent the drivers to realize the aspiration of feminist cities.

Leslie currently lives in the territory of Mi’kmaqi in the town of Sackville, New Brunswick with her partner and their two senior cats. Indeed, women's lack of comfort in certain spaces can be used as justification for a host of problematic interventions that increase danger for others, for example homeless people and people of colour, in pursuit of comfort for middle-class white women. Her discussion of gentrification starts with the interesting argument that women can be both the drivers and beneficiaries of gentrification and urban renewal ( Winifred Curran, 2018). Not that I'm against the discourse of feminist geography – actually, I think it's a topic worth exploring. It predominantly focuses on the geographic perspective of gender and how sexism functions on the ground.

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. Through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities are built into our cities, homes, and neighbourhoods. I am not married, and my vacation times don't usually match with the people who I wouldn't mind traveling with.During the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in North America, cooperative housing developments emerged as part of feminist city design initiatives. 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. Combined with the author’s engaging content on popular culture through references to movies, television series and books, this makes Feminist City enjoyable and accessible to a more general audience. Kern does well, however, in packing a wealth of information into a very compact book and recognizing her privilege.

That being said, this book does not really offer "an alternative vision of the feminist city" in the ways one might expect it. From the analysis of queer women’s spaces to racialised social movements, it adds scholarly value to the literature not only on urban feminist geography, but also urban planning and policy as well as the social sciences more broadly. Kern delves into the interlocking inequalities and systems of oppression that take concrete shape in cities, using an intersectional feminist approach to explore the gendered aspects of urban space. And you might love it too, if you: believe in valuing and celebrating care work; joke about (or sincerely dream of) living in a commune with all your dearest friends someday; want a book on urbanism that isn't all about America, for once! He has postgraduate degrees in Political Science and European Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the London School of Economics and Political Science respectively.and includes stories about Toronto, Kigali, Hanoi, and Delhi); believe in women's friendships, urban spaces, and an equitable future for our cities. I want us all to live in an environment more full of care, protection, and solidarity than the one we live in now. Starting from an analysis of gendered aspects of the urban space, Kern aims to bring ‘women’s questions’ into the discussion by combining her own biographical experience, feminist urban scholarship and popular culture.