Urban Development Together with Girls and Young Women

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Cover image: Her City mural in Kampala, Uganda
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Published: Oct 30, 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32891/jps.v9i1.1824
Keywords:
gender equity public space inclusive design urban planning youth perspectives innovation

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Anna Barker
University of Leeds
Luisa Bravo
City Space Architecture
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4911-8002
Laura Petrella
UN-Habitat

Abstract

Public spaces are crucial to everyday life, providing sites for community interaction, mobility, and recreation. Traditionally, however, urban planning has been shaped by a gendered perspective that privileges masculine assumptions that overlook intersectional needs and reinforce societal inequalities for women and girls. This special issue, ‘Let Her Guide You’, developed in partnership with UN-Habitat as part of the Her City initiative, underscores the imperative of incorporating gender and youth perspectives into urban planning and design. The Her City Initiative, a collaboration between UN-Habitat and the Shared City Foundation, advances this goal by equipping urban actors worldwide with tools to integrate the perspectives of girls and young women into urban development. Launched in 2021, the Her City Toolbox has supported over 350 independent initiatives with registered users in 120 countries, demonstrating its effectiveness in fostering inclusive urban environments. This special issue features papers by young academic scholars selected from the Her City Master students alumni network, including case studies of feminist planning from Heerlen (The Netherlands), Nairobi (Kenya), Stockholm (Sweden), and Weimar (Germany). It also includes a diverse range of invited viewpoints advocating for collaborative approaches to urban development together with girls and young women, complemented by illustrative case studies from around the globe, including Belgium, Iran, Italy, Jamaica, Mozambique, Palestine, Peru, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, Uganda, and the United Kingdom. By centring gender and youth perspectives in the urban planning process, this special issue highlights the potential to transform public spaces into more equitable, engaging, and sustainable environments. It calls on city makers, researchers, and community leaders to ensure that contemporary cities are designed with and for everyone.

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How to Cite
Barker, A., Bravo, L. and Petrella, L. (2024) “Urban Development Together with Girls and Young Women”, The Journal of Public Space, 9(1), pp. 1–10. doi: 10.32891/jps.v9i1.1824.
Issue
Vol. 9 No. 1 (2024): Let Her Guide You
Section
Editorial
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Author Biographies

Anna Barker, University of Leeds

Dr Anna Barker is an Associate Professor in Criminal Justice and Criminology. Her research explores the governance, regulation and policing of urban public spaces, notably public parks, (gendered) perceptions of (in)security and fear of crime and conviviality in public space. In 2024, she started a new project with Vikki Houlden, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, exploring the characteristics of both the greenspaces and residents who are(nt) using them, to understand the physical and social barriers faced by different, or intersectional, groups. Since 2022-23, she led a collaborative project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, with West Yorkshire Combined Authority, West Yorkshire Police, Keep Britain Tidy, Make Space for Girls, Leeds Women’s Aid, the Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre and the University of Leeds which exchanged knowledge, evidence and best practices to improve understanding of women and girls’ safety in parks and co-produced new research-informed parks guidance.

Luisa Bravo, City Space Architecture

Dr Luisa Bravo is a public space scholar and passionate activist, a cultural entrepreneur and an academic. After completing her PhD in 2008, she has taught, researched and lectured in Europe, the United States, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Since 2013 she is Adjunct Professor in Urban Design at the University of Florence. Luisa has a strong record of academic publications, has received grants and awards such as the Australia Endeavour Executive Award, and has been a keynote speaker at major international conferences in over 30 countries. She has actively participated in major United Nations summits, such as the Habitat III conference (Quito, 2016), the World Urban Forum (Kuala Lumpur, 2018; Abu Dhabi, 2020; Katowice, 2022) the first UN-Habitat Assembly (Nairobi, 2019) and two High Level Meetings at the UN headquarters in New York (2017, 2022). Through her non-profit organization City Space Architecture, which she founded in 2013, she has organized and curated international conferences, seminars, workshops and exhibitions to promote the culture of public space. Under her leadership, City Space Architecture became a partner of UN-Habitat and was engaged in the General Assembly of Partners (GAP), Research and Academia Partner Constituent Group.
Luisa has initiated and currently leads several public space projects, such as: The Journal of Public Space, the first, interdisciplinary, academic, open access journal entirely dedicated to public space; the Public Space Academy, the first, free, interdisciplinary educational program on public space; the Public Space Museum, a collaborative and transdisciplinary practice on public space; the web-magazine Mastering Public Space, an online and free resource with a curated collection of news on public space from influential and reliable sources. 

Laura Petrella, UN-Habitat

Laura Petrella is the chief of the section “Planning, Finance and Economy” at UN-Habitat since 2012. She is also Officer in Charge of the Urban Planning and Design Branch. She is an architect and urban planner trained at the Instituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia IUAV, in Italy. She has a wide range experience in urban development work, capacity development for local authorities and managing of local planning processes.
As section chief, Laura supervises the UN-Habitat Urban Planning LAB, the Public Space Programme, the planning for health and the finance & economy portfolio. As well as Capacity Development activities in Urban Planning, with activities in several countries and cities across the globe. In the past she has worked on slum upgrading, on environmental planning and management and on urban safety with UN-Habitat where she was in charge of UN-Habitat’s Safer Cities Programme from 2002 to 2010. She has advised and collaborated with local and national governments, civil society and academia in Italy, Kenya, Cameroon, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Nigeria, Brazil, Haiti, Mexico, Philippines among other countries.

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