To ensure a uniform understanding of inclusivity and provide a gender perspective for urban planning under different local contexts, our partner urbana organised a series of successful internal project training sessions with each of our pilot cities. Find out more about them below!
For sustainable urban mobility interventions to be truly effective, inclusivity is essential - this principle lies at the heart of ELABORATOR, and our partner urbana has been hard at work to provide partners with the right tools to ensure this. Through internal project training sessions, open conversations were held to ensure a uniform understanding of inclusivity and gender perspective in urban planning under the different local contexts.
Navigating gender-inclusive mobility (in theory)
What do we think about when we discuss mobility? urbana shared with us 6+1 key facts on urban mobility:
Transport systems are designed around commuting.
46.1% of working women choose part-time jobs because of the increased, invisible and unpaid care work they perform daily.
Men tend to have linear mobility from home to work and vice versa by private vehicle. Women, on the other hand, make multiple polygonal trips due to the daily performance of care work activities, mostly at the neighbourhood level, walking or taking public transport.
Women's mobility, due to multiple polygonal trips, is more sustainable compared to men's.
91.6% of women, aged 16 to 25, have experienced harassment on public transport.
A sense of safety shapes the mobility of women and other vulnerable social groups, such as queer people.
People in these social groups incur additional travel costs to move around the city safely and often have to change their routes to feel safer.
So, what do we eventually know about people's mobility in cities? Are the mobilities of care visible? How much data do we have, taking into account the gender, age, functionality, origin and economic status of people who move or do not move every day? How well are mobility networks adapted to the needs of women and other vulnerable social groups?
Above and below: Images from the internal inclusion project training sessions.
Navigating gender-inclusive mobility (in practice)
Our partner urbana put these questions on the table and began their focused research on gender and mobility, together with the ELABORATOR Work Package 2 team. The 6+1 facts are some of their hundreds of findings as urbana synthesises data, identifies material and gaps in the literature, and creates tools for evaluating the city and structures that make these issues visible. Indeed, our Work Package (WP) 2 partners have been hard at work to finalise the Inclusion Plan, namely a guide for partners to follow during all the stages of the project to guarantee inclusion while working for more active and sustainable urban mobility solutions.
In turn, the internal project training sessions provided further support to the municipalities of European cities participating in our project, who are undergoing the inclusive transformation of their cities. These were all finalised last December, with a total of 5 workshops of 2 hours each, involving a total of 45 participants from 25 partner organizations.
The training sessions were a success: the cities participating in the workshops shared photos of the public spaces where they want to implement interventions and discussed together how to apply their ideas from an inclusive and gender-sensitive perspective. This helped the cities gain a broader perspective on what is needed mostly for people who use public spaces daily, through their everyday mobility and life in each city.
Through an anonymous feedback form, they shared the following in their own words: "We haven't thought of care mobility patterns before but we could apply a gender-sensitive planning approach", "being more aware of these topics will help us in the design of public spaces" and "I did not realize how "deep" and diverse are gender inequalities in urban mobility from conception to daily habits. We will keep in mind the inclusivity criteria all along, trying to implement multiple aspects of it".
These insights will of course feed into the Inclusion Plan, which will provide a bigger picture on how to truly enact a gender perspective in sustainable urban mobility actions.
Stay tuned for more!