Barcelona — I recently completed a PhD on child-friendly cities and children’s involvement in urban planning, focusing on Oslo. There are many parallels between what makes a city better for women and what makes a city better for children. I think using a mix of quantitative and qualitative data is essential to understand these topics. I am currently engaged in a project looking at neurodiversity and cities; safety and security are recurrent themes there as well.

Anna, PL

Although I currently work in a primary education, I actually collected some data about kids’ mobility at our school. I am still analysing the data, but what is important is that in the questionnaire we touched upon sustainability, not so much on safety and security. Maybe this could be an idea for the next survey though…

Safety is very important measure needs to be considered, the time of departure of the trip will determine if that particular transport is safe or not, also the route. Even the public bus stop is not safe in late evenings.

In my work I don’t work that much with data. Especially in Greece there is a huge gap in data. In SUMPs though I’m trying to collect data regarding mobility, and regarding safety and security through questionnaires for residents and school children.

Barcelona,

In my work, I’m familiar with mobility data for our studis, but normaly I have dificultis to obtain usful data from regions about mobility relatet with securtity, safety and gender.

Apart from data sources, in my job we try to incorporate urbanism measures to reduise de diferences condictions betwen mens and womans.

In Sri Lanka, men and women experience public space and travel differently due to several factors:

1.     Safety Concerns: Women face higher risks of harassment and violence in public spaces and on public transport, which influences their travel choices and times.

2.     Accessibility: Men have greater access to private vehicles, while women rely more on public transport and walking, often juggling household responsibilities with travel.

3.     Economic Constraints: Women typically have lower incomes, making transport costs a significant concern and limiting their mobility options compared to men.

As a citizen, I feel very identified with the experiences of women from other parts of the world that we have seen in the survey. In my work I’m more concerned about accessibility than security and mobility, but I think it’s very important topic to take into account in the design of better cities for all of us.

Hi,

I am Pooja Chichkar, Mumbai, India.

I work for a non-profit organisation where urban mobility is an integral part of our studies and research. So far we havent been able to built much on the quantitative data. Based on visual and shared user experiences we have been in talk with the government authorities to ensure proper lighting on footpaths to ensure safe walkable environs for commuters especially women.

I am from Bern, Switzerland. My work does not involve data collection concerning safety or security. I often use data on traffic security. The reporting of this data is not gender-sensitive, which makes me assume that the data collection wasn’t either. I think it is curcial to have more gender-sensitive data on safety and security to achieve the goal of accessible and equitable cities for all.

Currently, I am living in Johannesburg, where I do not walk or cycle at night. Women’s perceived safety here is generally extremely low and due to the inaccessibility of private cars for many people, women are forced to walk and use the public transportation.

thank you for the post