And you might love it too, if you: believe in valuing and celebrating care work; joke about (or sincerely dream of) living in a commune with all your dearest friends someday; want a book on urbanism that isn't all about America, for once! Leslie Kern's Feminist City is an accessible introduction to feminist geography that helps readers break it down (though only in some ways; more on that later). In a world where the male gaze is so often the only gaze considered, so much so [that] most people don't even think of it as being gendered in any way, Feminist City is revelatory. It is time to dismantle what we take for granted about cities and to ask how we can build more just, sustainable, and care-full cities together. It's a short read, but I was hoping it might be a little more dense with insight on feminist geographies and world-building, and biases in urban planning (as promised on the book's jacket).

These housing developments focused on the collective needs of lower-income communities with shared spaces for cooking, housework and childcare.

luckily, the author always considered more marginalized sectors, with an emphasis on what the "feminization" of the city means for all the people inhabiting it. There are points where I thought what would happen if changes were made or what are the effects, and I wanted that to be explored more than the general concept of we will now be living in a feminist diverse city; I wanted things to go a level deeper. You wouldn't necessarily suspect that complexity exists from the text presented, nor are readers given quantitative data alongside the qualitative observations and anecdotes concerning the issues discussed.

A more revised approach to mainstreaming may include broadening binary gender categories, recognising the intersections of gender with other social dimensions of power and the development of participatory methodologies in line with these broader conceptualisations ( Rachel Tolhurst et al, 2012). Second, except for a few points that emerge at the end of the chapters, the author does not provide concrete and comprehensive answers to ‘women’s questions’ as the provision and interpretation of ‘alternative visions’ are largely left to the reader. Residential isolation not only affects women’s independence but also contributes to the decay of the public realm, as the famed urban critic Jane Jacobs argued back in the 1960s. She has been living in Athens since 2019, working as a freelance architect on environmentally sustainable designs and collaborating with the office LandmArch on landscape and urban projects.Kern has a really clear view on any approach having to be intersectional and how a feminist city needs to be liberating for all. Kern maintains that cities are generally designed with white able-bodied men in mind and points out the deficiencies in cities that make it harder for women to live there. The home was strangely more like a public space, since girls didn’t feel a sense of privacy or control over their bedrooms and possessions here.