Enabling gender conscious inclusive spaces: a case for women centric urban environment in Kamla Nagar Delhi

Abstract

One fine Tuesday evening I realized, months after walking between the metro station to my house after work, I always take the longer route. The gali (tertiary road) which directly connected the station to my house had a heavy canopy of trees, casting unintentional shadows from the dimly lit yellow halogen lamps. It also had a chai tapir at the junction with an illegally sprung up alcohol shop. Subconsciously, hundreds of other women, like me, found nothing unusual in taking the longer, ‘safer’ road back home each day. And that was the root and inception of the idea of studying the urban realm to understand how our cities can be planned better- more equitably - to create an environment which is inclusive for all genders. “Cities are designed by men for men”, Leslie Kern said in her book feminist city. And indeed, our cities are gendered at multi-scalar levels ranging from inside the house to the urban realm. Cities have been gendered before the advent of modern planning, where European cities were planned by planners, engineers, and architects – most of them men. With the vast colonialization, this spread throughout the world. With time, and pioneering ideas of Dolores Hayden, Jane Jacobs, Elizabeth Wood, the subtle yet prominent links between patriarchy and spatiality in urban realm were knit together and the injustice of the ‘right to the city’ by women was established. Furthermore, with Lefebvre’s and Soja’s theories of space, it was reinforced that spaces is an embodied experience of the innocent space and the societal conditioning on it. This gave rise to observation of gendered spaces in the city. Mappings in the past decade in India by Shilpa Phadke (Mumbai) and other organization like Safetipin, Jagori have been working relentlessly in this field. “It’s not safe for women to be our at night”. “Don’t loiter in parks / streets without purpose”, “Don’t go alone” are some of the common statements women of diverse socio-economic backgrounds hear each day. According to a study in India, 57.4% crimes against women occur outside homes – which makes it a crucial urban design concern. Equal participation and access of women in cities cannot be seen as a standalone issue, and needs to be addressed at its roots. This way the solutions suggested won’t act merely as a bandage to the problem. The primary motive of the study is to zoom out, and associate women in the urban realm with INCLUSION, not just safety. The hypothesis of thesis states that inclusion is a precursor to safety, and if the places are inclusive to women, they will automatically be safe. The study delves into defining scope and understanding of ‘inclusion’ regarding women in a precinct in Delhi. This involves understanding the reasons of patterns of their movement (and lack of movement) and how the experience can be made more inclusive through interjections in the existing fabric, whilst proposing the future developments.