Un-Gendering the City: How Can Designers Design An Infrastructure of Safety?
A look at gendered urban inequality

“Belonging-ness and identity are as intrinsic to urbanity as autonomy and anonymity.” (Miranne, Young)

Cities offer the opportunity of anonymity - a sense of “social escape”. This veneer of anonymity intrinsically contributes to the feeling of security we feel when we move through an urban public realm. In many cities, there’s an inequality in this experience of anonymity, particularly through the lens of gender.

The absence of anonymity causes body language, clothing and movement patterns amongst other things to be co-opted to achieve a similar result.

To achieve real change, we need both tactical and systemic approaches for creating impact.

A society and environment that does not actively address the disconnect and fear of the public realm only serves to normalize and perpetuate it, deepening the cycle.

Gendered urban inequality is a result of deep-rooted socio-cultural values and/or structural systems of inequality. Tactical measures can help address immediate concerns, but are only truly effective when working hand-in-hand with deeper drivers of change like awareness and education.

Image Credit: Safetipin

To design a safe experience through a city, designers need to address actual and perceived fear appropriately.

To do this, let’s recognize the difference between actual fear and perceived fear, and their dissimilar contributions to the perception of safety. Actual fear is experienced in response to an existing stimulus. Perceived fear is the fear experienced in the anticipation of a preconceived danger. In the context of human safety, perceived fear is the more omnipresent and arguably, the more pervasive of the two. In other words, it’s not just about the crime stats of a particular place, it’s also about how safe it looks and feels and why— exactly what designers care about!

“We shape our buildings, thereafter, they shape us” — Winston Churchill

This is critical because perceptions of safety fundamentally impact how we choose to engage (or not engage) with the city. These perceptions can breed a deliberate distancing from the public realm — avoiding public places and public transportation, changing commute routes and countless other safety practices. When an individual deliberately disengages from a setting out of fear due to their gender identity, the possibility of the strengthening of the same elements that are perceived unsafe only increases.

The examples chosen illustrate distinct design approaches to address women’s urban safety. There are three broad categories (1) Urban design and planning (2) Community Awareness and Art (3) Emergency mobile apps. (1) addresses both perceived and actual fear, (2) and (3) are restricted to primarily perceived fear and actual fear respectively.

01\ Safety Audit (Delhi, India)

Image Credit: Women in Informal Employment:Globalizing and Organizing

Approach

Safety audits are a tool through which women can begin to participate in the shaping of their environment. First developed in the 1980s by the Metropolitan Action Committee on Public Violence against Women and Children (METRAC) in Toronto, Canada. METRAC defines a safety audit as a methodology developed “to evaluate the environment from the standpoint of those who feel vulnerable and to make changes that reduce opportunities for assault.”

As part of the UN’s Safe Cities Global Initiative, a women’s safety audit was conducted in four participating cities across the globe including Delhi, India. The process recognizes that a woman’s journey through the city greatly different from a man’s based on regular activities. It involves leading a group of women through routes they regularly traverse while consciously evaluating its spatial qualities through the lens of safety. Some of the issues that are assessed and recorded carefully through the audit questionnaire are sight lines, lighting, maintenance. Another method also involves having the women markup a map with their perceptions of safety and physical factors that contribute to it.

The purpose of the audit is not only to create a feeling of control and trust in their physical environment for the women, but also to submit these findings to officials and policy-makers to implement a hard change.

Learnings

Changes in the physical environment are difficult to bring into effect, and the main issue faced is when no changes are made — leading to feelings of discouragement among the women. An important learning from successful outcomes of safety audits is that changes in the built environment can be effected through public participation provided the methodology of arriving at the proposed changes is systematic and can be sincerely validated.

02\ Plan India (Delhi, India)

Street plays and workshops at the Plan India Safer Cities campaign. Source: YouTube

Approach

Plan India, a non-profit in Delhi, started an initiative called “Safer Cities” in Mongolpuri located in the Greater Delhi area. The project involves one hundred houses or shops that were carefully chosen and marked with a neon painted sign reading “Surakshit Shehar” (translating to “Safety House”). At any time of day or night, should a woman feel threatened or unsafe she is welcome to knock on any of those doors. (Plan India)

The houses were chosen either based on members of the organization who live there or the NGO’s ability to personally vouch for the inhabitants of the development. Specific buildings on street corners or near parks where unsafe elements were observed were incorporated to help offset the embedded perception of fear. The inhabitants of the chosen buildings were also trained by the NGO to be aware of how to correctly address any emergency they might face.

Image credit: The Better India

Impact

The program’s success can be measured by the perpetrators’ awareness of this safety mechanism in place. The neon signs visible from the street act as a visual reminder not only to deter unsafe elements but also instilling a sense of security in the women traversing those streets.

This project shows how a network of community members and local authorities can be effectively directed to create a safe environs. The significance of this project is that it does not involve changes in the built and physical environment in any way (apart from the painted signs) and works unseen to subvert the unsafe happenings in this area.

03\ Blank Noise Project (Bengaluru, India)

Blank Noise, Walk the Night. Source: Rajesh Dangi, Wikipedia (Creative Commons)

“Averting eyes, giving way on the sidewalk are more typical of women’s behavior” — Caroline Andrew

Local Context

Bengaluru is a cosmopolitan city, the capital of the state of Karnataka and has been undergoing rapid urbanization and growth since the IT boom in the 90s. Associated with monikers like “IT Capital” and “Silicon Valley of India”, its residents are typically considered to be more progressive and cosmopolitan than most the country’s urban population. However, this does not come with the assurance of safety. According to the National Crime Records Bureau statistics for 2015, Bengaluru reported the third highest attacks; 718 against women with an intent to outrage their modesty among 53 Indian cities. (Kalkodl)

This coupled with the fact that 58.1% of women polled responded that they did not report sexual violence, (particularly comments, sexual jokes, whistling, leering and obscene gestures) and 40.1% did not report touching, brushing or groping (of the breast or buttocks) situates a telling context for projects such as the Blank Noise Project in Bengaluru. (Kalkodl)

Approach

The Blank Noise Project was started in Bengaluru and has subsequently spread to multiple cities across the country. It primarily addresses issues of street harassment through public art and engagement. The project does this by tackling the need for a change in public perceptions of women and safety in India’s urban cities. (Pal)

Issues partially stem from deep rooted socio-cultural origins and are entrenched in modern day society to the extent that topics regarding everyday harassment and mass molestation are normalized by not just the women themselves who are vulnerable to these experiences but even political leaders (Safi). Instead of taking direct action to address these issues, typical responses range from questioning the moral character of the woman/en in question to suggesting that some victims invite attacks due to their behavior. (Bhalla)

Considering this context, projects like Blank Noise working bottom up, seek to create platforms for participatory actions and public debate to challenge existing norms. Furthermore, recognizing that the perceived fear of sexual offence has become ingrained in the city’s female population, their initiatives also seek to empower women to break through their personal, limiting ideas of accessing the city. (Pal)

Primary modes of public engagement involve urban art projects, marches, and pop-up events. In addition to these, a permanent network of “Action Heroes” and a database of testimonials also instills a strong identity within the participants of this movement.

The issue that the Blank Noise Project appears to face primarily lies in the depth of its reach. At present, both its audience and participants belong to a limited demographic — upper middle class, educated women — both students and young professionals. Though this is not deliberate and some of their organized events (Eg. Talk to Me) have actively engaged different classes and members of society, it would be useful to break socio-economic barriers in a more permanent way.

“Talk to Me” Source: Blank Noise Project

Learnings

The Blank Noise Project shows us the necessity for a platform to break the cycle of “unconscious bias” that plays a big role in perceived fear. An unconscious bias or implicit bias is a social stereotype that is formed outside of one’s conscious awareness. (University of California) One of its initiatives in Bangalore, “Talk to Me,” placed the women feeling threatened literally across a table from those they felt threatened by. This initiative facilitated an enlightening dialogue in a healthy, mediated environment between the two groups. Allowing both parties the opportunity to interact and understand each other has led to better relations at present and has had a direct impact on the feeling of unsafety experienced at that location.

Learn more at: http://www.blanknoise.org/home

Case 04\ Safetipin Mobile App

Safety Audit feature on the Safetipin app (Image credit: Safetipin)

Approach

With the penetration of mobile phones into India’s urban market, the idea of emergency apps for cell phones holds potential in its ability to engage a broad audience regardless of age, gender, class or religion. Emergency mobile apps aim at providing immediate assistance to women in need. This assistance is multifold typically aimed at pre-incident user defined emergency contacts and/or the authorities. (Ravelo)

Safetipin was a mobile app developed by Jagori (the same NGO that conducted the safety audits in Delhi) to address issues of safety in the city when moving to a new place. Apart from GPS tracking that can help ensure the user’s safety, users themselves can determine safety scores for different locations based on their inputs on factors such as lighting, openness, people density, security and feeling. The safety score is calculated and mapped with the analysis being visible for users to utilize, along with data such as closest ATM, pharmacies etc. Users can also post information on the condition of infrastructure such as broken street lights or malfunctioning traffic lights.

Safetipin is further unique because it has collaborated with Uber (who after a recent rape case perpetrated by an Uber driver, has installed external cameras on cars) who sends its photographs of different parts of the city so that Safetipin can effectively incorporate this information for its users.

Learnings

Safetipin has many useful features, however since many them are crowd-sourced it is reliant on the public being participatory. The organizers have circumvented this in a limited way by having volunteers kick start the data collection which has encouraged more users to start participating.

Learn more at: https://safetipin.com

In Conclusion…

What makes your movement through the world feel safe to you? What doesn’t? Put yourself in someone different’s shoes — consider gender identity, socio-cultural background, linguistic abilities, economic stability — all of these issues are intersectional.

How does this change your sense of security and safety? How would this impact the way you move through the world and the choices you make?

Let’s get designing!

…

REFERENCES

Bhalla, N. (2014, February 6). Using rape as an excuse for moral policing in India. Thomson Reuters Foundation News. England. Retrieved from http://news.trust.org/item/20140206103830-xwq7d/

Facts and figures: Ending violence against women. (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2017, from http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures

Kalkodl, R. (2016, September 17). NCRB: Bengaluru 3rd among cities in molestation cases — Times of India. The Times of India. Retrieved from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/NCRB-Bengaluru-3rd-among-cities-in-molestation-cases/articleshow/54373165.cms

Pal, S. (2016, September 6). Reclaiming the Streets: Bengaluru’s Blank Noise Project Is Encouraging Women to Fight Fear. Retrieved from http://www.thebetterindia.com/67337/blank-noise-jasmeen-patheja-bengaluru-women-india/

Plan India. (2016). Because I am a Girl — The State of the Girl Child in India 2016. Retrieved from https://www.planindia.org/publication

Ravelo, J. L. (2017, March 15). How mobile apps are making cities safer for women. Retrieved from https://www.devex.com/news/sponsored/how-mobile-apps-are-making-cities-safer-for-women-89768

University of California, San Francisco. (n.d.). Unconscious Bias | diversity.ucsf.edu. Retrieved April 19, 2017, from https://diversity.ucsf.edu/resources/unconscious-bias
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['Gender Equality', 'UX Design', 'Cities', 'Urban Planning', 'Technology']