Jeddah Waterfront, Jan 2021
How can we create safe public/green spaces for women? What are the considerations and guidelines?
This was the prompt I was asked to respond to this morning in a dialogue session on public spaces in cities.
It was a super fun session to be part of and I learnt a lot reflecting on the topic and hearing from the other panelists and of course the audience. Here are some of the key themes which came up:
- Safety is such a low threshold. It\’s a good place to start but we need not only safe but also accessible, functional, comfortable spaces for women.
- When talking about safety, what we\’re actually talking about is perceived safety. If people do not perceive a place to be safe they are less likely to use it, regardless of whether or not it is actually safe (and vice versa).
- Research has shown that the lighting and the presence of people are two of the biggest factors enhancing perceived safety for women in public spaces (thank you Dr. Maria Panta for sharing).
- In terms of accessibility, smaller neighbourhood parks which are easy and cost-effective to get to can be more important than the large urban parks for women.
- In order for public spaces to cater for women, they also need to cater for the people which women are likely to be care-givers to – that includes both the young and the elderly.
- Public spaces in Arab cities are often gendered, and many spaces lie in the middle of the spectrum between public to private (i.e. are semi-public or semi-private spaces). There are important cultural considerations of which to be aware and respectful.
- There are trade-offs and balances to be struck between the environmental, social, and economic aspects of sustainability – e.g. lighting a space for safety vs reducing energy use. Of course, for arid cities there is the classic one of incorporating vegetation vs reducing water consumption (which I\’ve discussed before – see here and here).
A personal anecdote I shared during the talk received particular attention. A few months ago, when I first landed in Jeddah (KSA) to live here, I asked the person picking me up from the airport whether or not the city is safe for me to live in as a single women. He assured me it is and to prove his point he took me to the waterfront area which had a lovely public open space that was packed with both women and men from all ages walking, cycling and just enjoying the space. There were many women-only groups and even some women on their own. It was almost 10 pm. Seeing this was all the evidence I needed.
