Making the divided city whole: Mainstreaming gender into planning in the United Kingdom

Women have long identified the problems that they encounter in seeking to combine their home and work roles, in cities divided by traditional land-use zoning. This paper draws on work for the British Royal Town Planning Institute on mainstreaming gender considerations into spatial planning, including the creation of a 'Toolkit' to do so, along with research on accessible city centres. City-wide transport policies are examined, along with race equality and local accessibility issues. It is argued that promoting mixed land-uses, higher densities, and less car use, can be as problematic for women as old fashioned zoning. This is because policy-makers still hold a divided world view, in which women's needs are secondary to public realm considerations. It is concluded that gender considerations must overarch and crosscut all spatial policy-making, however above reproach, in order to create a unified city that meets the needs of everyone.