"We are focused on creating a just public realm," said Chelina Odbert, Hon. ASLA, CEO and founding principal of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. And by just, "we mean free, inclusive, accessible, unbiased, and equitable". A "just public realm is open to everyone.” There is unlimited access to streets and public spaces so people can travel to school and work and be full members of their communities.
Unfortunately, the public realm is instead often “intimidating, exclusionary, inaccessible, unjust, and inequitable” for many women, LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities, and people of color. Landscape architects, planners, and others need to understand who feels safe and comfortable in public spaces or there is a risk of perpetuating inequalities, Odbert argued.
Odbert met a single mother in an informal settlement who didn’t feel safe walking to work, so she had to work locally. This limited her economic opportunities. She knows a transgender woman who didn’t feel safe riding the bus to university so had to pay extra for taxis. The extra cost became a burden so she quit classes. A woman with a child stroller couldn’t access a local planning meeting so she didn’t attend. Lack of access compounds issues, causing broader social and economic impacts.
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Unlocking Urban Potential: Street Vending Integration Strategies in Informal SettingsFor centuries, “urban planning has been dominated by white men,” Odbert said. The resulting lack of a gendered perspective has led to many inequitable decisions about urban form. “Workplaces are at the center of the city. Households on the periphery. Transportation systems were built for men’s commutes to city centers and back, not for women’s journeys.” Also, women have also been told "they don’t belong in public planning meetings. They have been excluded. Women may choose to withdraw rather than participate. As a result, equity and prosperity is limited.”
To combat this, KDI has applied a gender-inclusive planning and design approach to its public space and transportation projects in the U.S. and worldwide. The organization received the Cooper-Hewitt 2022 National Design Award for Landscape Architecture for this work.
In Kibera, one of the largest informal settlements in Kenya, 300,000 people live in a space the size of Central Park. “There is a lack of access to clean water and sanitation. There is food insecurity. And there’s non-existent public space,” Odbert said. KDI knew any public space in such a dense community would need to be a multi-use, multi-functional public space. For example, shade structures were designed also to be laundry racks.
Using an inclusive process led by women, KDI and the community co-designed and co-built a dynamic public space that is equally as accessible to women, men, and children. “This is what happens when women have decision-making power. They create spaces that are good for women and everybody else,” she said. Women continue to maintain the space, and local politicians now call on them when they need to reach the community. “The space catalyzed cultural shifts.”
In another project in Kibera, the women of the community and KDI redesigned a dangerous thoroughfare, creating a new green street. It’s now fully accessible to residents and provides space to sell goods and racks to hang laundry. It saves neighborhood women time because they no longer need to walk their children to school and back through a muddy, garbage-strewn pathway.
In La Favorita Mendoza, Argentina, KDI focused on gender equity in a community-led redesign process. With support from the World Bank, Argentina has been upgrading its public realm. KDI learned that one park — Plaza Aliar — was a “no-go zone.” It was unsafe due to its large scale and exposure and the pathways to the park were “too raw.” Given men would drink there, it also discouraged women and their children from going to the park. “It wasn’t designed for women.” Developing six potential designs with community members, the team looked at how to weave in multiple uses. The park, which was completed in 2022, now includes a playground, amphitheater, and community center that extends into the park. “It’s well-used and well-loved.”
At the same time, KDI also looked at the broader public realm — the transportation systems to Plaza Aliar. They found that buses were overcrowded and “hot spots for sexual assaults and harassment.” Inadequate street lighting also created a sense of “real and perceived danger.” Bus stops were reimagined to include bathrooms, kiosks, and a lending library — all uses that would add more people and increase safety. In their work on mobility infrastructure, KDI found that “men use direct, longer routes, while women take shorter trips, with multiple stops at the grocery, childcare, and sometimes the same destinations multiple times per day," Odbert said. "Women therefore spend more than men do on transportation because of transfers. They use less efficient modes of transit. They also face a greater risk of harassment. In many places, travel is an inefficient and dangerous experience for women. The lack of access can have generational ripple effects."
In the Eastern Coachella Valley of California, KDI has been working on a network of “purpose-built public spaces,” including the Nuestro Lugar Park, and public transportation systems to access these spaces. “We can create a new park, but how do you get there?” They found that gender-focused neighborhood mobility plans were needed to ensure equitable access. Through a community design process, sidewalks were removed from the exposed right of way and instead designed to be wider, multi-modal, and meandering. “What they wanted was surprising. This is what happens when you bring other voices and genders into the process.” Women from the community also led the process of designing shade structures for Eastern Coachella Valley bus stops. “They became the public face of the stops — and media darlings.”
Odbert ended her lecture by describing the Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, a report created by KDI for the World Bank. “It’s our most ambitious project to date.” The handbook tackles the gaps between policy and practice. It provides best practice guidelines that answer the questions: “What is gender inclusion? How can we make it happen? What level of housing and parks are needed? How does urban planning and design fit in?” Odbert hopes to build on the handbook and create new resources that outline “what is catalytic for community groups, city governments, and national governments.”
This article was originally published on The Dirt.
