Feminist Urban Design:
A Gender-Inclusive Framework for Cities
Click Here to View The Blueprint for a Feminist City |
CHANGE, Data-Pop Alliance and Open Data Watch are proud to announce a new initiative and the accompanying Inception Report: Feminist Urban Design: A Gender-Inclusive Framework for Cities.
The movement to create inclusive and safe cities for women, girls, and diverse gender identities has evolved since the 1970s. Historically, urban planning often neglected their needs, leading to unsafe and inaccessible public spaces. This changed with the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which highlighted the need for gender-sensitive urban planning. Over time, this concept has expanded from simply reducing violence to a holistic, interdisciplinary approach. By 2011, the Third International Conference on Women s Safety in New Delhi, entitled Building Inclusive Cities , emphasized the importance of ensuring safety for women in urban settings through an integrated approach that combines urban planning, community involvement, policy-making, and enforcement. It also underscored the significance of involving local communities, particularly women, in decision-making processes to ensure their needs are addressed.
Feminist urbanism
A framework that integrates feminist principles into urban planning and design to create cities that are equitable and inclusive for all genders.
Traditionally, the struggle for urban space has been viewed through economic and class lenses. However, the right to the city as a public, political space involves ensuring movement and freedom for all, contrasting with a purely economic focus on property rights. Instead, this approach advocates for the inclusion of women s and gender minorities experiences and needs in urban development processes, ensuring that public spaces, transportation, housing, and services are designed to enhance safety, accessibility, and participation for all individuals. Ultimately, feminist urbanism seeks to dismantle the patriarchal structures embedded in urban environments, arguing that spaces are not neutral but instead shape behaviors and convey messages about acceptable conduct, promoting a more just and inclusive urban experience.
Gender data is an important part of this mission.
Working with cities to collect, understand and use gender data
Gender data is critical to informing feminist urbanism and enhance gender equity in urban spaces due to its role in capturing differences in the status, conditions, and experiences of men, women, and non-binary individuals in various aspects of life, including health, education, employment, income, political participation, and social and cultural practices. Gender data, which is not limited to sex-disaggregated data, encompass both quantitative (numerical information) and qualitative data (descriptive information), offering a comprehensive understanding of gender dynamics.
Yet, municipalities frequently lack detailed gender data due to a number of factors, including: i) lack of technical expertise; ii) inadequate data collection mechanisms; iii) fragmented data systems; iv) focus on traditional metrics; v) political and cultural barriers; vi) limited resources.
Considering these factors, CHANGE, alongside Data-Pop Alliance and Open Data Watch, is building a framework that helps city leaders and planners to rethink traditional approaches to urban design and governance, putting gender equity at the forefront.
The primary objective of this project is to create a comprehensive gender data framework specifically tailored for urban contexts. This framework will be utilized by the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE) to assess and promote gender equity across its network of cities. Rather than making direct comparisons between cities, this project aims to support cities to:
Assess their own progress across a number of broad outcome areas.
Learn from gender policies and programs in other CHANGE cities.
Strengthen their gender data collection and monitoring processes.
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The rationale behind this initiative is to enable decision makers to quickly assess their city s progress in achieving gender equity across various metrics and to understand how policies and programs from other cities in the CHANGE network can improve outcomes. Additionally, it aims to tackle some of the critical challenges listed above. Finally, the project aims to not only create a robust framework and data collection tool to foster comprehensive data systems and improve technical expertise but also foster a collaborative environment where cities can share experiences and lessons learned, ultimately advancing gender equity across urban settings. |
About the Framework
The primary goal of the gender-inclusive framework is to equip city planners with a tool that facilitates ethical and high-quality data collection while identifying areas needing critical intervention, ultimately enhancing gender equity and inclusiveness in cities. Hence, the framework incorporates five main goals:
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- Not only assess inclusivity but also actively promote it
- Establish a baseline
- Facilitating peer exchange
- Enhancing citizen engagement to drive meaningful change
- Empowering action through data
Existing frameworks for urban development and gender equality often fall short due to binary gender views, a lack of intersectionality, and excessive focus on quantitative data. Our proposed gender-inclusive framework will use a multidimensional strategy inspired by Martha Nussbaum s capability approach. This approach emphasizes what people experience in their daily lives, focusing on ten core capacities necessary for a dignified life: life, bodily health, bodily integrity, senses, imagination, emotions, practical reason, social affiliation, respect for other species, play, and control over one s environment. Here, social justice is assessed by the extent to which individuals can exercise these capabilities, while pluralism and diversity are also core tenants of the approach. Nussbaum s framework is universally relevant but adaptable, allowing for cultural variations based on societal values and histories.
Our framework will be based on and guided by four key principles:
Considering the principles highlighted above, the framework is structured around three pillars:
Governance
How the city is governed
This dimension focuses on the processes, policies, and institutions that guide urban development and decision-making. It emphasises the importance of inclusive and participatory governance to ensure that the needs and voices of all residents are considered.
Infrastructure
How the city is built
This dimension focuses on the physical and structural elements that make up the urban environment. It examines how the design, construction, and maintenance of infrastructure impact the accessibility, functionality, and inclusivity of the city.
Behavioural Patterns
How the city is used and experienced
This dimension explores how different groups of people use and experience urban spaces in their daily lives. It examines the diverse ways that individuals interact with the city’s infrastructure, public spaces, and services, highlighting the varying needs and challenges faced by different populations.
Acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, this framework will utilise a mixed-methods strategy, incorporating both measurable (quantitative) and descriptive (qualitative) indicators. Specifically, within the realm of qualitative methods, the framework will incorporate participatory indicators.
Learning from our 5 pilot cities
Five cities in the CHANGE network were selected as pilot cities to help develop this new framework: Mexico City (Mexico), Barcelona (Spain), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Nairobi (Kenya), and Quezon City (Philippines). By becoming acquainted with the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT), the resulting framework and its data collection tool will be designed to be both scalable and adaptable, ensuring its relevance to any city globally.
The heart of this project and the inception report is collaboration. By working closely with communities impacted by how their built environment is shaped and has been shaped, we re ensuring their voices shape the design and policies that affect their daily lives. Pilot cities are already using the framework to share successes, troubleshoot challenges, and learn from each other. Whether it s improving lighting in public spaces or building gender-sensitive transportation systems, these efforts are already sparking meaningful change.
Looking Ahead
This initiative is more than a framework; it s a movement to create cities that reflect and respect the diversity of the people who live in them. As we continue to expand this project, we re committed to sharing insights, tools, and strategies with cities within the CHANGE network and beyond. Together, we can create urban spaces where everyone feels safe, valued, and empowered. Stay tuned for more updates as we work toward a more inclusive urban future!
Explore the blueprint for feminist urban design to discover specific indicators, the roadmap to the data collection tool, and city specific lessons from the inception phase.
About the authors
Agustina Pérez Mirianco
Director for “Geographies of Inequalities” and “Resilient Livelihoods and Ecosystems” Programs at Data-Pop Alliance
Agustina oversees research and initiatives addressing inequality, sustainability, and urban resilience. She holds an MSc in Public Policy and Human Development from Maastricht University, The Netherlands, and an MSc in Sustainability from Deakin University, Australia, awarded through a prestigious ANII Scholarship. Her academic work has centered on urban resilience and inequality, with her research offering novel insights into the socio-environmental impacts of floods in urban areas across Latin America.
At Data-Pop Alliance, Agustina has led and contributed to a range of high-impact projects commissioned by international organizations such as UN Women, UNDP, and the World Bank. Her notable contributions include research on the drivers of sustainable and inclusive development in Liberia, the impacts of COVID-19 in the Sahel region, and the application of innovative methods to map multidimensional poverty in Brazilian favelas. Her work has resulted in the publication of policy briefs, technical reports, and actionable recommendations that shape global development strategies.
Agustina has also worked as a consultant for CAF the Development Bank of Latin America where she advanced green finance methodologies and supported the institution s sustainability commitments. Her prior roles at Willis Towers Watson and Trafigura further enhanced her expertise in global project management, financial analysis, and data visualization.
A multilingual professional fluent in Spanish, English, and French, and proficient in advanced analytical tools such as QGIS, R, and Tableau, Agustina combines technical expertise with a deep commitment to addressing pressing global challenges. Her work is distinguished by its focus on leveraging data to drive evidence-based policies and sustainable solutions that promote equity and resilience.
Francesca Perucci
Director of Policy and Partnerships at Open Data Watch
Francesca is an expert in the field of development data and global data initiatives, she leads ODW s work to scale up data and statistical capacity, technical services, and strategic partnerships. She brings many decades of experience at the United Nations, most recently as Assistant Director of the UN Statistics Division. A true trailblazer in the use of data and statistics to inform policy, monitor progress, and influence decision-making, she led the development of the Sustainable Development Goals indicators that now are the basis of SDG data work around the world.
Jahanara Saeed
Programme Director at Open Data Watch
Jahanara is responsible for the planning and coordination of work program activities at ODW. Prior to joining ODW, she was an associate director at EAB, an education research and technology firm, where she conducted best practice research on student success and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Jahanara holds a Master s degree in international economics and international relations from Johns Hopkins University s School of Advanced International Studies, and a B.A. in economics from Smith College
Anna Spinardi
Program Director for Data Feminism at Data-Pop Alliance
Anna leads Data Pop Alliance s efforts to integrate gender equality into data-driven development strategies. At DPA, Anna has spearheaded and managed over 15 high-impact projects that lie at the intersection of gender equality, technology, and development. Her portfolio includes initiatives focused on building gender and data capacity, as well as training programs designed to equip stakeholders with the tools and knowledge needed to address systemic gender inequalities. She has successfully employed both traditional and non-traditional data techniques, leveraging big data and innovative methodologies to inform policy and promote gender equity in development practices.
Anna s commitment to gender justice goes beyond research and policy advocacy. She is particularly focused on creating intersectional, feminist, and LGBTQIA+ inclusive frameworks that drive meaningful social change. Through her work at DPA, Anna seeks to build evidence-based policies and advocacy strategies that not only address the challenges of today but also foster long-term, sustainable progress in the fight against gender inequality. Her vision is to harness the power of data to promote inclusive development that benefits everyone, regardless of gender, identity, or background.
Prior to joining DPA, Anna conducted research on conditional cash transfers and women s empowerment in Colombia, examining their potential to reduce poverty and enhance gender equity. She also served as a Gender Advisor at the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the United Nations in New York, providing strategic advice on gender-related issues and guiding the Brazilian delegation s contributions to global policy frameworks, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
She holds an MSc in Global Development from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and a BA in International Relations from the Pontifical Catholic University of S o Paulo, Brazil. With a career spanning over seven years, Anna has developed extensive expertise in addressing gender inequality and gender-based violence through innovative, data-driven approaches.
