Our City, Our Streets: Women, design and the built environment

Can design make you feel safe? What role does the built environment play in replicating gender inequality? Why does so little data reflect the experience of women and girls in public spaces? Where are our stories and who is telling them? And why it is important to think about the design of our streets and public spaces through the lens of gender?
Our streets are the relational frame through which we participate in public life and they have historically been planned, designed and built around the absent voices of women and girls- people who have rich, varied, complex and diverse relationships with their city, but whose day-to-day activity and stories are often missing from the design, planning and making of urban spaces.
In recent years significant progress has been made to acknowledge how gender inequality is embedded in and replicated by the built environment and the impact this has on women and girls. Gender inequality is undeniably a complex issue that requires broader consideration across disciplines. This session will amplify the work of a network of planners, designers and urbanists working across the UK and internationally to re-imagine our streets and public spaces, explore new design perspectives and ask: What changes are needed, from the fine details to the bigger picture, to create truly inclusive spaces and new urban narratives?
LSE Chair:
Dr. Dena Qaddumi, Fellow in City Design and Social Science, Department of Sociology
Panelists:
Manijeh Verghese, CEO of Open City; Mayor’s Design Advocate
Dr May East, Urbanist, UNITAR Fellow and author of ‘What if women designed the city?’
Anna Rose, Director, Space Syntax
Rhiannon Jones, Futures Specialist, Kantar