Feminist Town Planning in Rural Scotland?
SRUC's Lorna Pate recently blogged to share insights from ongoing work on childcare challenges in rural Scotland. This explored the range of challenges faced by rural families in accessing childcare, and the knock-on effects for rural communities, including reducing employment rates and depopulation.
Childcare has long been a feminist issue, a priority for communities, and an issue which communities organise around. Recently, childcare was delivered before schools and the community council in Tornagrain New Town, Inverness. When Kinning Park Complex was occupied by local residents in the 1990s the first community-led project was childcare. The need for good childcare resonates with me personally, and I expect with many readers.
Reflecting on Lorna's childcare work in terms of my research on town planning, I wondered: what would it mean to have a Rural Feminist Town Planning policy in Scotland?
What is Feminist Town Planning?
There is a long literature on feminism in the built environment, including Jane Jacob's paradigmatic call for neighbourhood and domestic-scale design (1961) and Clara Greed's work on gender mainstreaming and the povision of public toilets (2003). The Royal Town Planning Institute conducted wide-ranging research on gender in planning recently, arguing for implementation of planning policies sensitive to gender-specific needs into all policy, legislation and decision-making processes (Divine and Bicquelet-Lock 2021).
Invisible Women (Criado Perez 2019) popularised the notion of (unconscious) design bias which excludes women/s needs. One example is transport data, which has historically excluded the multi-stop and multi-modal trips women make more frequently for caring duties, flexible work, and domestic administration, focusing instead on 9/5 commuting and car-based journeys. To give another example, "Make Space for Girls" (2024) has highlighted how parks, play equipment and public spaces for older children and teenagers are currently designed for male use as default, with the result of teen girls using public spaces less.
Building on work in Vienna, Barcelona, and Bilbao, in 2022 Glasgow City Council passed a motion for feminist town planning, declaring it "fundamental that women are central to all aspects of planning, public realm design, policy development and budgets" (Bruce 2022). Implementing this includes adopting a feminist approach in new policy, and gender data disaggregation in evaluating local authority work. Feminist design approaches being advanced include widening footpaths for prams and wheelchairs, and providing better lighting and safer walking routes at night.
As the examples above illustrate, feminist town planning is an intersectional endeavour, with gender, age, mobility, class, and other social factors intersecting to influence what people need from the built environment to live well. Rurality has a significant impact on these unequal gender outcomes, but has been absent in recent Feminist Town Planning research and discussions. There is a growing body of research on inclusive rural areas, which is largely not being translated into policy in the same way as the urban responses outlined above. Initial priorities for Rural Feminist Town Planning are set out below to spark discussion, and this blog ends with a call to action.
What would be included in Feminist Rural Town Planning policy?
- Childcare. This is provided indirectly through town planning through new development. Plans to provide much needed housing should consider childcare early (as well as school places!) and will need to address current unmet need. Given the enduring challenges in delivering housing in rural and island areas of Scotland, an approach which looks beyond housing delivery may be needed.
- Farms and safety. Sally Shortall's "Planning the farmyard: gender implications" examines gender bias in the farmyard, identifying that a lack of land governance in farms has particular implications for female new farming entrants (2019).
- Access to public toilets. A notable issue in areas with few public facilities; rural workers like female farm workers can face difficult situations.
- Pedestrian safety. Lack of safe footpaths in rural areas has long been identified as an issue and has specific implications for carers and those with less mobility.
- Safe communal play and recreation spaces, which can be absent.
These ideas are put forward as a call to action, hoping to inspire more research and policy development on rural land, gender and inclusivity. Will any Scottish local authorities pass a feminist town planning motion, and forge the way in implementing the ideas from Vienna, Barcelona and Glasgow into a rural context? Given rural Scotland's strong community sector, I expect the likely way forward will be community-led feminist planning policy. Perhaps there is a local place plan author or community landowner working on this already.
If you're interested in developing rural feminist town planning, fill in our survey here about your priorities.
Carey Doyle
August 2024
Photo: Carey Doyle of informal play space in Knoydart
References
Bruce, Holly. 2022. "Feminist City - Motion, as Adjusted, Approved." Glasgow City Council. https://onlineservices.glasgow.gov.uk/councillorsandcommittees/viewSelectedDocument.asp?c=P62AFQDNZ3T1DXZL2U
Criado Perez, Caroline. 2019. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Abrams Press.
Divine, Jenny, and Bicquelet-Lock, Aude. 2021. "Women and Planning (Part II) Creating Gender-Sensitive Urban Environments Post-Covid-19: Challenges and Opportunities." Royal Town Planning Institute. https://www.rtpi.org.uk/research/2021/march/women-and-planning-part-ii/.
Greed, Clara. 2003. Inclusive Urban Design: Public Toilets. London: Routledge.
Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House.
"Make Space for Girls" 2024. https://www.makespaceforgirls.co.uk/.
Shortall, Sally. 2019. "Planning the Farmyard: Gender Implications." In The Routledge Companion to Rural Planning, 326-35. Routledge.