How the Project Began
As discussions around inclusion and gender equality gain momentum among social scientists, policymakers, and urban designers, it is essential that interventions address root causes rather than simply alleviating surface-level symptoms. Gender, intersecting with other forms of social differentiation, plays a crucial role in shaping how cities are imagined, planned and lived. It influences urban planning and the design of social and physical infrastructures that respond to contemporary urban challenges. Yet gender remains largely sidelined in dominant urban theory, policy, and practice, often treated as an add-on rather than a core concern.
Initiated in 2021, this project aligns with the ambitious vision of the City Centre Transformation Programme (CCTP), which aims to transform Newcastle’s city centre into safer, more inclusive, and equitable spaces. Drawing on a feminist reading of Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), this research frames walking as a fundamental, embodied method for experiencing and understanding urban space.
The project was successfully funded in 2022 by Northumbria University’s Research and Innovation Fund. It seeks to bridge the gap between policy and practice, intention and action, by demonstrating why and how gender inclusion can be integrated into urban planning and design. Specifically, it examines various participatory methods for knowledge gathering in the (re)planning and (re)design processes, guided by the following three objectives:
Objective 1: Embedding gender-sensitive planning
This objective focuses on enhancing gender-inclusive representation in urban design by integrating characteristics that address women’s needs and experiences. Exploratory “Gender Walks” will be conducted to identify critical areas—“black spots”—where social and spatial inequalities manifest. These walks will generate collaborative insights into current gender disparities within the city’s physical and social structures, providing the basis for informed interventions.
Objective 2: Making streets safer and more accessible
The second objective aims to improve urban safety and accessibility through (re)planning and (re)design. Strategies include eliminating hidden or poorly lit areas, widening sidewalks, removing physical barriers, and developing “movement plans” that ensure no areas are isolated or deserted. This approach seeks to accommodate women’s typical patterns of movement and city use, making the urban environment more convenient and secure for all.
Objective 3: Establishing an international research network
The final objective is to build a collaborative network of scholars focused on practical approaches, activities, and design guidelines for participatory and inclusive urban design. This network will explore how cities are experienced and used from the perspectives of all citizens, sharing insights and best practices for implementing inclusive and participatory design processes globally.
Research and Projects Informing This Work
Prior to initiating this research, we reviewed a wide range of sources, including books, peer-reviewed journal articles, and existing research and design projects. Two references have been particularly influential in shaping the conceptual and methodological foundations of this project.
The first is Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), which provides a foundational framework for understanding how individuals navigate, experience, and assign meaning to urban space through everyday practices. De Certeau distinguishes between the “strategies” of planners and institutions—who conceptualise the city from above as an organised system—and the “tactics” of everyday users, who experience the city at street level and produce space through their movements, routines, and improvisations. A feminist reading of de Certeau highlights how these everyday tactics are deeply shaped by gendered power relations, revealing how access, mobility, and spatial negotiation differ across social groups.
The second key influence is ARUP’s publication Cities Alive: Designing Cities That Work for Women. This work offers a practical and methodological framework for directly engaging women in urban decision-making processes, ensuring that their needs, concerns, and lived experiences inform planning and design at all stages. Its emphasis on participation, safety, accessibility, and everyday use strongly informs this project’s approach to inclusive and gender-sensitive urban design.
The literature review, together with insights generated through the development of the gender-inclusive cities project, identifies several key findings that are highly relevant to our following approaches. These findings highlight structural challenges within current planning and design practices, which can be summarised as follows:
Design is not neutral: Current urban environments embody and perpetuate gender inequalities through design choices that prioritise male experiences and movement patterns.
Intersectionality is essential: Gender intersects with race, class, disability, sexuality, and age to create compounded experiences of exclusion that must be explicitly addressed.
Safety is foundational: Women’s restricted access to and use of urban space due to safety concerns represents a fundamental denial of their right to the city, with cascading effects on economic participation, health, and wellbeing.
Data gaps perpetuate inequality: The absence of gender-disaggregated data in planning decisions makes women’s needs invisible, resulting in design that systematically underserves them.
Urban transformation requires integration: Isolated interventions are insufficient; gender-responsive planning must be mainstreamed across all urban governance & design.
Current Progress and Impact to Date
The project has been running since 2022 and has now entered its fifth year. During this period, it has generated substantial academic, policy, and public engagement outputs, including events, talks, and publications.
In its early phase, the project contributed ideas, methods, and spatial insights to the ongoing Newcastle City Centre Transformation Programme, while also testing and adapting these approaches across different urban contexts. A key outcome has been the development of a Gender Mainstreaming Toolkit, which translates research into actionable guidance for integrating gender considerations into local planning and design processes. The toolkit directly supports more equitable decision-making by addressing the everyday spatial needs of diverse users and promoting gender equality in urban development. The toolkit has been designed for a wide range of practitioners and decision-makers, including:
- professionals responsible for formulating and implementing planning policy (planners);
- elected members involved in shaping planning priorities and policy content; and
- practitioners responsible for delivering planning policy in practice, such as development control planners and development facilitators.
Beyond formal outputs, the project has actively disseminated its research through conferences, media contributions, and public platforms. Importantly, it has prioritised dialogue and reflexivity by listening carefully to feedback from those engaged in the planning process, including community groups, organisations representing women and men, and advisory bodies such as consultants and planning aid organisations. This iterative engagement has ensured that the research remains relevant, practical, and responsive to real-world planning challenges.
In the longer term, the project aims to deliver lasting impact by addressing persistent gaps between policy and practice, intention and implementation. It provides evidence-based recommendations that demonstrate why and how gender inclusion can be meaningfully embedded in urban planning and design, offering transferable lessons across diverse global city contexts and supporting more just, inclusive, and gender-transformative urban futures.
Join Us in This Research
This study brings together a range of interconnected activities, including in-depth interviews, focus groups, cinematic workshops, gender walks, and collaborative co-mapping sessions. Together, these methods help us better understand and recognise the diverse needs, lived experiences, and perspectives of different individuals within urban planning and design.
You can explore our upcoming events here. Before taking part, we encourage you to familiarise yourself with the purpose of the research and what participation will involve. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.
We also welcome collaboration with researchers working in related fields. We are keen to learn from different approaches, exchange ideas, and explore opportunities for joint funding applications. If you are interested in collaborating with us, please drop us an email here.