What if Women Designed the City? 33 leverage points to make your city work better for women and girls

What if Women Designed the City? offers a unique perspective on urban development through the eyes of women from diverse backgrounds. Author May East identifies 33 leverage points for all those engaged with city design to create greener, wilder, more inclusive, liveable and poetic cities. The book highlights the benefits of involving women in city design, such as prioritising proximity, promoting active travel, connecting green spaces, enhancing safety through community engagement, and fostering a love for nature among residents of all ages.

May East was born in Sã o Paulo, Brazil, and now lives in Edinburgh. She is an international urbanist and regenerative practitioner bringing vitality and viability to eco-communities, mining cities, indigenous villages, informal settlements, transition and ghost towns. She currently works with local and regional government, private sector and intergovernmental agencies providing policy guidance for initiatives aimed at enhancing gender-sensitive urban planning, decreasing carbon emissions, establishing sovereign wealth funds, and developing symbiotic eco-industrial parks.

Foreword 1 Foreword 2 Preface 1 | The Context 2 | Women and Cities: A Co-Evolving Mutualism Perspective 3 | Systems Thinking for Urban Systems Change 4 | Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System 5 | Regenerative Design Bringing Vitality to Urban Systems 6 | Mapping Women’ s Presency through Walking Interviews 7 | 33 Leverage Points (LP) to make your city Work Better for Women and Girls 1 – Cultivating Biophilia 2 – Developing Spaces for Gathering and Belonging 3 – Designing Urban Extensions while Evolving the Whole 4 - Shifting from a mentality of maintenance to an attitude of care 5 – Redistributing land use and budget allocation for equality and gendered landscapes 6 – Creating conditions for wildness 7 – Devising a library of women-tailored bike saddles 8 – Growing and foraging for health and well-being 9 – Designing adventurous playgrounds for children and carers 10 – Working with men to redistribute power, balance representation and transform legal and planning systems 11 – Building confidence through easy to access self-defence training and seminars on rights of women and domestic violence 12 – Improving natural surveillance by design 13 – Scheduling regular patrol walks by wardens who belong 14 – Making Practical Cycle Awareness Training mandatory for drivers 15 – Encouraging active travel as a way of life 16 – Rethinking the bus fare system for trip-chaining and redesigning buses for encumbered travel 17 – Designing fresh air routes and low emissions zones from women’ s and infants perspectives 18 – Promoting earlier interventions and co-creating values-based educational pathways 19 – Expanding the use of public space in the evenings by creating bio-cultural-spatial conditions 20 – Co-developing sympathetic infrastructure enabling a sense of co-ownership and care 21 – Maximising use of available local resources available in urban interventions 22 – Practicing a culture of deep listening in the design and development of local plans 23 – Fostering regenerative tourism that enhances the bio-cultural-spatial uniqueness of place 24 – Adopting 20-Minute neighbourhoods 25 – Co-creating transitional safeguarding public spaces for young women 26 – Combining gender and nature-based approaches as strategy to transform urban environments 27 – Infusing beauty in cities form and function 28 – Reconnecting Broken Links 29 – Promoting schemes on electric bicycles usership 30 – Refurbishing pavements to accommodate high heels 31 – Delineating and flowing through cycling infrastructure 32 – Purpose-building intergenerational housing 33 – Co-designing Places with (not only for) teenage girls 8 | Bridging the Gender Gap in Urban Planning 9 | Afterword: Storylines Glossary of Terms Categorisation of 33 Leverage Points Bibliography