Gendering the City: Women, Boundaries, and Visions of Urban Life

This volume challenges the imagery of cities by looking through a gendered lens at how women utilize urban space. Focusing on the conceptual and methodological manner of boundaries, the book reminds us that women are members of multiple and diverse groups and as such, they can be active, creative, and powerful agents. Multidisciplinary essays, contributed by urbanists, geographers, political scientists, and historians, explore the ways in which women confront, break down, resist, and form new boundaries and interconnections, both visible and invisible. Arguing for a change in the traditional agenda of cities, the authors investigate how aspects of urban life and space would look considerably different if the alternatives and options presented by women and other marginalized groups were taken into account. They urge us toward a better understanding of how diverse social groups interact, how urban space can enhance such interaction, and what role formal and informal laws, by-laws, policies, and other planning measures should play.