Content
Skip to Main ContentAccessibility Help
The 180

Cities are sexist

When you walk down the street, you're probably not thinking about how the design of your city is sexist. But developer Carla Guerrera thinks that Canadian cities actually need to be thinking about women. She says that men and women move around cities differently and that should factor into planning.
CBC Radio ·
Carla Guerrera says women's saftey should be considered in the design of a city, as well as factors like how women move around a city using sidewalks and transit. (Yiu Yu Hoi)

City planning in Canada has long been based around people being able to drive to a downtown core to get to work.

Only recently have planners begun looking at ways in which transit and cycling and be incorporated into urban designs.

Carla Guerrera, an urban planner and founding principal of Purpose Driven Development Planning and Strategy, thinks that women should also be factored into how a city is planned.

For most women, myself included, there's a palpable discomfort that we confront in many parts of the cities we live in and visit, and it can be very challenging on a regular basis for us to figure out how to navigate the cities that we inhabit and its infrastructure.- Carla Guerrera

The discomfort comes down to a lack of both safety and access in the designs, Guerrera says, and much of the safety issues are centred around transportation.

Carla Guerrera says women often change their travel patterns around the city to avoid areas where they feel unsafe. (Carla Guerrera)

"Things like train stations, parking lots, bus stops on dark isolated streets, make it really difficult for women to use transportation systems the same way men do and to feel the same amount of safety and security when they use these systems."

Guerrera says that this causes women to change their travel patterns, often leading them to take a longer route to their destination. She says this can also affect other aspects of a woman's work or school life.

Even things like making the decision to stay late a work to finish a project, when you're relying on public transit, if you're a woman you've got to think about your safety of getting from work to home ... you might actually forfeit your compensation in order to safely get home.- Carla Guerrera

The tasks that women do day-to-day, such as looking after children, should also be considered, Guerrera says.

"Because women are still continuing to be significant caregivers and managing the home, but they also work, what happens is that their travel patterns are different. They're making more frequent stops during the day, they're moving and occupying the city in different ways than men."

She says that even small changes like ensuring there are sidewalks in every community could be helpful to how women move — especially with strollers and wheelchairs.

The good news here is that the way we adjust for that, to bring more equality in cities for women, actually makes cities and communities more livable for everyone.- Carla Guerrera

Guerrera says that a solution could be the planning and development of mixed-use communities, where there's "shopping opportunities, and doctors offices, day cares, schools and work all within close proximity of their home."

More from this episode