Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World

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I've been thinking about, reading about, and writing about feminism all throughout my college career. What is explored here is the ethos of the feminist city rather than what the city itself would look like, and is therefore frustratingly without 'solutions,' both in terms of design and new ideas, which are few and far between the personal anecdotes and how it is woven with observations from existing scholarship in the fields of feminist geography and urban studies. Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out an intersectional feminist approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future. I did not enjoy this as much as I'd hoped to, because of US/Canada-centric nature of the analysis (understandable, given the author's own location, and a reflection not on the book, but on my subjective preferences as a reader).

In providing such self-reflection, she acknowledges her position as a white, middle-class, cisgender woman, although this acknowledgement is not always apparent throughout the chapters, leading to an intermittent positionality problem in which the author becomes both an insider and outsider to certain inequalities that concern, for instance, particular racial and sexual minorities. To realize the extent and influence of such norms, one can look at the very presence of women in public spaces.

As a result, as Kern mentions, queer women, trans and non-binary people attempt to seek alternative ways for establishing inclusive spaces as an essential part of their urban survival.

On the other hand, more examples are needed, both from the Global North and South, to point out new possibilities for overcoming these inequalities.

Looking through the lens of geography, pop culture and public and personal history, the book exposes how female bodies are ostracised in urban spaces. Some of this content overlapped with Caroline Criado-Perez' incredible Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, which I would recommend for a more thorough, all-encompassing perspective. An indicator that speaks volumes about urban space and dynamics of power is the possibility to walk alone in the street. An optimistic, pragmatic book, which points to already extant solutions and looks forward to a more just, joyous urban future.