Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design Overview 2020 The World Bank “He’s just a baby… sometimes it takes a while before somebody offers me a seat. The bus takes too long and I have him in my arms, together with my purse, shopping bags… It’s all very Credits complicated.” Woman from Recife, Brazil (ITDP, 2018) WORLD BANK GROUP “It was about 7pm when I had gotten to the latrine only to Horacio Terraza — Lead Urban Specialist encounter a group of four young men. I shouted, asking them to Maria Beatriz Orlando — Lead Social Development Specialist Carina Lakovits — Urban Development Consultant leave me, and I could feel them undress me and one of them say Vanessa Lopes Janik — Social Development Consultant that they would teach me a lesson on why I should not be out at Anna Kalashyan — Young Professional that time...” Woman from Nairobi, Kenya (Amnesty International, 2010) EXTERNAL CONSULTANT Eva Kail — External Peer Reviewer and Consultant, City of Vienna Strategic Planning Unit KOUNKUEY DESIGN INITIATIVE “I’ll go out to a park and I’m not trying to be the center of Chelina Odbert — Author attraction, like they’re straight and they’re not really looking Joe Mulligan — Author at you… so I feel really uncomfortable just trying to strike a Rosie Jewell — Author conversation with a straight person because they don’t know Sabrina Ohler — Author where I’m coming from or they might take me offensive.” Lauren Elachi — Author Naria Kiani — Author Shirley Rempe — Author Transgender woman of color from Los Angeles, USA (Wendel, 2017) Paola Méndez — Research Keana Flores — Research Eric Riley — Research Adriana Carías — Graphic Design “In public spaces and in the street, the city is very dangerous. Nina Raj — Graphic Design There are gangs, robberies, assaults; you can be kidnapped, Scott Shinton — Graphic Design followed, sexually harassed, [and] raped. Walking in the streets is dangerous, especially in desolate areas; it is more dangerous at night when there is low light.” Young girl from Lima, Peru (UN-HABITAT, 2013a) “There are pay-and-use toilets built outside the Chawl which charge two rupees for each use. Sometimes, when we are sick, it becomes really difficult for us to pay every time. The open drainage flows right outside each hut, so small children use the drainage, but for me as a woman, it is very difficult at night, so we have to hold everything ‘till the morning arrives.” Woman from Jai Bhawani Chawl, Mumbai, India (COHRE, 2008) “I have no house now. Everything was lost to river erosion… I could not afford to buy food. He [my husband] left us, telling us that he was going abroad… he never returned. This kid was in my womb back then while he left us.” Woman from Dhaka, Bangladesh (Joungn, 2019) Copyright ii @ The World Bank 2019 World Bank Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, 2020 World Bank Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, 2020 iii LETTER FROM WORLD BANK Executive Summary Closing gaps between men and women, boys and girls is central to the sustainable development goals, and achieving gender equality is a core tenet within the World Bank Group’s mission of achieving prosperity for all. However, across development sectors, progress in closing gaps has been uneven and in some sectors, such as financial inclusion, even stagnant. Grasping and grappling with the complexities of gender norms, outdated institutional policies, and discriminatory laws and Urban Planning and Urban planning and design quite literally regulations — as documented, for instance, in Women, Business, and the Law shape the environment around us — and that environment, — can be a daunting challenge. Urban planning and design practitioners are not in turn, shapes how we live, work, play, move, and rest. immune to these issues — in fact, their disciplines have historically helped reinforce As such, the processes of planning and design have a direct unequal gender roles and responsibilities, with adverse consequences on mobility, relationship with the structures and behaviors that define our access to key assets and public spaces, and safety for women, girls, and sexual societies, often both reflecting and reinforcing the inequities within and gender minorities in cities around the world. Nonetheless, the role that today’s them. While it is almost universally understood that women, girls, urban planners and designers, alongside cities and community members, can play people with disabilities, and sexual and gender minorities face in promoting gender equality is significant. After all, urban planning and design significant social and economic disadvantages when compared decisions shape the very environment we live in. with able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual men, what is still not fully understood and accepted among many planning and design This handbook aims to illuminate the relationships between gender inequality, the practitioners is exactly how conditions in the built environment — built environment, and urban planning and design; and to lay out a menu of simple, and the lack of diversity in the voices shaping it — feed into and practicable processes and best practices for urban planning and design projects that perpetuate gender inequity. build more inclusive cities – for men and women, for those with disabilities, and for those who are marginalized and excluded. The work is the result of a collaborative In general, cities work better for heterosexual, able-bodied, process between experts from the Urban, Infrastructure, Social Development, and cisgender men than they do for women, girls, sexual and Gender units within the World Bank Group, and external experts with extensive gender minorities, and people with disabilities. Key aspects experience in participatory urban planning and design. Covering a comprehensive of the built urban environment – related to access, mobility, safety array of plan and project typologies and providing case studies from diverse and freedom from violence, health and hygiene, climate resilience, contexts around the world, we hope this handbook will be an invaluable source of and security of tenure – create disproportionate burdens for practical guidance and inspiration for World Bank Task Team Leaders as well as women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities of all ages consultants and clients across all World Bank regions. and abilities, thus exacerbating and reinforcing existing gender inequities. Faced with challenges ranging from transportation services that prioritize commuting over caregiving, to the lack of lighting and toilets in public spaces, many feel inconvenienced, ill-at-ease, and unsafe in the urban environment. These issues Caren Grown, Senior Director of Gender stem largely from the absence of women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities in planning and design decisions, leading to Sameh Wahba, Global Director for the World Bank's Urban, Disaster Risk assumptions around their needs and the encoding of traditional Management, Resilience and Land Global Practice gender roles within the built environment. iv World Bank Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, 2020 World Bank Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, 2020 v Executive Summary Executive Summary Over the past few decades, theorists and practitioners practices for incorporating and elevating the voices of women, have begun to ask: how might we design and plan cities girls, and sexual and gender minorities in participatory that work well for everyone? What would such a city look like, planning and design processes and how would we go about creating it? However, with women and sexual and gender minorities still largely excluded from • Give clear, specific design guidelines, appropriate for and both the professional fields of planning and design, and from adaptable to all regions, for a range of planning and project public decision-making processes around urban development, typologies carried out by the World Bank answering these questions in practical terms continues to pose a The handbook has been written to support World Bank significant challenge. staff, clients, contractors, and consultants involved in The Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and implementing projects within the Bank’s urban development Design aims to fill the gap between gender-inclusive policy portfolio. It may also be a valuable resource for external and practice, and respond to the historic exclusion of practitioners seeking to take concrete steps toward a more women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities from the gender-inclusive approach. processes of urban planning and design. It clearly presents Gender biases in the built environment contribute directly the economic and social case for gender inclusion in urban to gendered social and economic inequities, feeding into planning and design and provides practical guidelines on how the systemic oppression of women, girls, sexual and gender to implement gender-inclusive planning and design projects. In minorities, and those with disabilities. Faced with such a built particular it seeks to fulfill the following objectives: environment, women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities of Why Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design Matter all ages and abilities often: • Demonstrate the ways in which gender inequities intersect with • Struggle to access gainful employment, education and other urban planning and design, with clear, digestible summaries of basic human endowments the negative impacts for women, girls, and sexual and gender • Struggle to accumulate wealth and achieve economic minorities of all ages and abilities independence • Make the clear economic case for addressing inequity and • Spend more on basic services incorporating gender inclusion into urban planning and design • Have fewer social freedoms — hindering them from building • Highlight the need to consider gender inclusion in an social networks to cope with risk, stress, and shock intersectional way, especially taking into account sexual orientation and gender identity, ability, and age • Struggle to exercise agency in public decision-making, including decisions that shape the built environment How Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design are Done However, the social and economic costs of gender inequity • Set out overarching commitments to guide gender-inclusive in the built environment also point to a critical opportunity. planning and design processes toward meaningful, effective If planning and design processes become more gender-inclusive, outcomes and long-term improvements in the status of women, and the built environment more accessible, connected, safe, girls, and sexual and gender minorities healthy, climate resilient, and secure, then women, girls, and • Provide practicable methodologies, activities, and good sexual and gender minorities of all ages and abilities will make significant economic and social gains — and contributions to vi World Bank Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, 2020 World Bank Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, 2020 vii Executive Summary Executive Summary sustainable development — around the world. The ultimate goal of gender-inclusive urban planning GENDER-INCLUSIVE PLANNING AND DESIGN ARE NOT... and design is to advance gender equity and unlock more inclusive economic and social development. To achieve this goal, urban planners and designers must include women, • Prescriptive: designing and planning for women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities instead of with them girls, and sexual and gender minorities of all ages and abilities in planning and design decision-making processes, and work to • An add-on: considering women separately from other beneficiaries and project combat the gendered imbalances in the built environment that goals; failing to connect the dots or the actors involved prevent their full social and economic inclusion. Meeting these goals requires a fundamental shift in thinking and approach, and • Exclusive: being concerned with the needs of able-bodied women or female persons alone in particular a commitment to participatory processes, integrated approaches, Universal Design, building knowledge and power • Uninformative: operating in a vacuum without engaging with and contributing to among under-represented groups; and financial investment. broader knowledge on gender These commitments are a direct answer to the historic exclusion of women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities from planning • Disempowering: repeating or reinforcing historical imbalances in representation and agency and design, and form the starting point for the practical planning and design guidelines in this handbook. • Uninvested-in: assuming gender goals are achieved if women are among beneficiaries without investing the required time and resources to follow through GENDER-INCLUSIVE PLANNING AND DESIGN ARE... The Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design presents clear and practical guidelines for both (i) implementing gender-inclusive planning and design • Participatory: actively including the voices of women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities processes; and (ii) creating gender-inclusive plans and projects. The aim of this breakdown is to provide guidance • Integrated: adopting a holistic, cross-cutting approach that centers gender on both “process” and “product”. The Process Guidelines give throughout and promotes citizen-city relationship building guidance on flexible, adaptable actions and activities that can be applied throughout the course of a plan or project development • Universal: meeting the needs of women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities of all ages and abilities in any context, with a focus: on establishing gender principles; monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning; community • Knowledge-building: seeking out and sharing robust, meaningful new data on participation; and considerations for project implementation. gender equity Included is a menu of seven gender-inclusive engagement activities that will enable project teams to garner community • Power-building: growing the capacity and influence of under-represented groups in key decisions buy-in, gather qualitative and quantitative data, and co-design solutions with project beneficiaries. The “Planning and Project • Invested-in: committing the necessary finances and expertise to follow through Guidelines” provide guidance — including good practices and, on intentional gender equity goals where possible and applicable, minimum design standards — for the implementation of the following types of plan or project: viii World Bank Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, 2020 World Bank Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, 2020 ix • Urban Land Management • Housing Women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities make up Plans more than half of the world’s population. This handbook, a • Public Transport, Mobility valuable and much-needed addition to the existing literature and • Metropolitan Development Infrastructure, and Road resources on gender inclusion, seeks to bring their knowledge Plans Safety Interventions and skills, and their needs and desires, to the forefront of urban • Master Plans and Integrated • Streetscapes planning and design. By reimagining and reshaping cities in a Urban Development Plans more gender-inclusive way, community members, practitioners, • Public Spaces and governments can unlock new economic and social • City Mobility and opportunities to promote prosperity for all. Transportation Plans • Basic Urban Services • Neighborhood Development • Energy Plans • Water, Sanitation, and • Informal Neighborhood Hygiene Upgrading Plans • Solid Waste Management • City Climate Action Plans • Communications and ICT • Disaster Risk Management Plans Several cities around the world are making strides in gender- inclusive planning and design, providing valuable learning opportunities and sources of inspiration. Case studies of gender-inclusive projects from these cities show how simple measures to improve access to land can dramatically increase agency and wellbeing; how increasing visibility and participation for disadvantaged groups can promote safety and access to the public realm; how proper planning with a gender lens can ensure the full participation of underrepresented voices; how better representation can yield innovative designs that serve everyone — not just women — better; and how short-term, “stop-gap” measures can complement and even enable long-term strategic efforts to improve gender equity. At the same time, the case studies reveal areas in which gender-inclusive strategies can come up short — from poor monitoring and evaluation to financial under-commitment and a failure to marry simple measures that improve convenience and safety with strategic efforts to challenge gender inequity. Lessons such as these point the way to how project processes and outputs can be improved in the future. Download the full report via worldbank.org/worldurbanforum x World Bank Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, 2020 World Bank Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, 2020 xi World Bank 2020 Kounkuey Design Initiative Download the full report via worldbank.org/worldurbanforum