Feminist Urbanism: How sex shapes design in Glasgow city

It's been two years since Glasgow was declared the UK's first "feminist city". What does it really mean to put women at the heart of urban design?

The winter sun is just beginning to rise as a man kisses his wife and heads out the door, briefcase in hand. He drives the family car to the office. Eight hours later, he buttons up his coat, waves goodbye to colleagues and makes the same journey home. Monday to Friday, this is the unremarkable, commonplace routine that Glasgow was built for.

Meanwhile, the woman of the house bundles up the children and walks them to school, pushing a baby in the pram. She navigates the narrow, crumbling sidewalks dodging rogue pavement parkers and wet clumps of foliage. After the school run, she might need to do other errands around the community, from getting the shopping to visiting an elderly relative or attending appointments. For many, this is also an unremarkable, commonplace routine. But this is not the kind of lifestyle that most cities were built for.

The pandemic was in full swing and Holly Bruce was working for the leader of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvie, when she stumbled upon the concept of feminist town planning in the book Feminist City by Canadian geography professor Leslie Kern. “It was a light bulb moment in terms of my own interaction with the city and how it doesn’t serve me as a person,” Holly recalled.