Urbani izziv, volume 32, no. 2, 2021
134 Reviews and information
Iva LUKAN
Feminist City
Title: Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World
Author: Leslie Kern
Publisher: Verso
Place and year of publication: London, 2020
Number of pages: 225
Leslie Kern, an urban geographer, re-
searcher of the cities, and lecturer at 
Mount Allison University in Canada, 
looks at the city through feminist the-
oretical lenses in her book Feminist City. 
She describes the city as a place of care, 
friendship, personal space, protest, fear, 
and hope. The author combines two 
theoretical streams, urban geography 
and intersectional feminism, and offers 
an original view on gender inequality in 
practice, or, in the author’s words, “on 
the ground”. The second sex is not an 
abstract category created by even more 
abstract structures. The second sex is 
created by actual, material geography, 
which is reflected in women’s limited 
access to (urban) space. “Any settle-
ment is an inscription in space of the 
social relations in the society that built 
them  .  .  . our cities are patriarchy writ-
ten in  stone, brick, glass and concrete” 
(p. 13).
Built environments reflect the relation-
ships between the people that made 
them. It is no wonder, then, that in cit-
ies, as in other spheres of society, half 
the world’s population is overlooked 
and invisible. However, not only does 
the city reflect social relationships, but 
it also creates them. In addition to creat-
ing relationships, the city also influences 
power relations and reproduces inequal-
ity. Thus, urban design shapes and de-
termines opportunities for individuals 
and social groups. Kern illustrates the 
dialectic of depicting and shaping social 
relations using concrete examples such 
as suburban settlements, public trans-
port, the right to personal space, and 
the issue of urban fear.
Today, suburban settlements are taken 
for granted, even though they are a 
child of their time, an urban symptom 
of power relations after the Second 
World War. The suburbs were a ready-
made solution to re-establish normative 
gender roles between men and women 
shaken by war and the growing pres-
ence of women in the public sphere. 
The overly empowered women that oc-
cupied (male) factory jobs during the 
war had to be re-pacified and domes-
ticated. This domestication, however, 
succeeded precisely with suburban 
houses, which placed women back in 
the private sphere of unpaid care work. 
In parallel with the expansion of the 
suburbium, skyscrapers were growing 
in the cities, which Kern understands 
as “monuments to male corporate eco-
nomic power” (p. 27).
The number of suburban housewives 
has been declining for a long time, but 
data still show that women do 75% of 
the world’s unpaid care work. This fact 
is reflected in the mode of daily travel 
in the city. Men commute from home 
to work and back, primarily by car. 
Women are more likely to use public 
transport to commute, and their routes 
are complex because they consist of trip 
chains between preschool, school, the 
workplace, and shopping. Therefore, 
women pay the “pink tax” on public 
transport. They pay much more for 
the same service as men because their 
commute comprises trip chaining, but 
tickets are for one-time use. Kern finds 
that in New York women, as primary 
caregivers, pay a substantial pink tax 
monthly estimated at one hundred dol-
lars. The issue of public transport does 
not end with the pink tax. Kern draws 
attention to sexual harassment and the 
difference in body language between 
the sexes on public transportation. Men 
sit with their legs spread wide, thus oc-
cupying more than only their seats. By 
doing so, they force and socialize others 
to occupy as little public space as possi-
ble. It is similar on playgrounds. Have 
you ever seen a group of girls occupy an 
entire sports field?
“The most that women in public spac-
es can wish for is that no one will no-
tice, address, or whistle at them” (p. 
164), observes Kern. Namely, the right 
to personal space is violated in cities. 
Hence, women in the city engage in all 
sorts of self-restraint to avoid unwanted 
attention and control over their bodies 
and behaviour. Every city is also a city 
of (women’s) fear of the “dangerous 
stranger”. Therefore, women adjust their 
Urbani izziv, volume 32, no. 2, 2021
135Reviews and information
clothing and travel habits to avoid dark 
areas of the city. However, the author 
warns that “no amount of lighting is go-
ing to abolish the patriarchy” (p. 157). 
Gender equality will require much more 
than feminist urban planning. Human 
relations, cultural patterns, social inter-
actions, and economic determinants 
must also be changed.
Despite all the problems presented, 
Kern sees the city as a place of liber-
ation. The anonymity of urban space 
offers women a different and free life 
compared to suburban enclaves and 
small towns. The city provides educa-
tion, work, and political engagement. 
The city expands the horizons of the 
possible and, even though it is tailored 
for men, represents hope for radical 
social change. This is where the book’s 
main shortcoming emerges because the 
author remains only at an abstract and 
critical level and does not say what rad-
ical social change means and how to 
actually achieve a feminist city in prac-
tice and “on the ground”. The book thus 
lacks examples of good practice, which 
the author repeatedly mentions have 
existed for centuries.
Undoubtedly, Kern successfully navi-
gates among the traps posed by iden-
tity politics. In the book, she rejects 
feminism, which measures its success 
in terms of improving the status of 
white, economically successful women. 
According to the author, such feminism 
introduces only aesthetic interventions 
into the city, which are nothing but 
gentrification and the removal of oth-
er, different, and deprived social groups. 
The book points out that a feminist city 
is not feminist without the poor, work-
ers, and migrants. The author suggests 
that any feminist urban planning should 
consider not a white middle-class wom-
an but the needs and perspectives of the 
most vulnerable members of society. In 
doing so, she moves away from her own 
position. As a white woman and moth-
er, she advocates for the accessibility of 
wheelchair spaces; she also fights for 
physically challenged or older people. 
When she advocates for more public 
spaces, she also has other races, nation-
alities, and classes in mind. This, in turn, 
requires a lot of self-reflection on one’s 
own position and privileges.
Physical spaces reflect and create rela-
tionships between people. We rarely 
talk about the urban landscape as a con-
tributor to gender inequality. Hence the 
book is a welcome and must-read for all 
stakeholders in urban planning. In times 
of the #metoo movement, it is vital to 
consider gender inequalities in architec-
ture and urban planning. However, as 
Kern points out, we need to be careful 
about this; all too often, this means that 
we understand an economically success-
ful white woman as a typical user of the 
city. Such an understanding, however, 
brings gentrification. Feminist urban 
planning must therefore operate inter-
sectionally, taking into account margin-
alized social groups and unpredictable 
social life. It must take into account all 
the residents of the city. “Planning from 
below, where the margin becomes the 
centre” is the future of urban planning.
Iva Lukan
Faculty of Architecture
University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
E-mail: iva.lukan@gmail.com
Biography
Leslie Kern is an associate professor of geog-
raphy and environment, and the director of 
women’s and gender studies at Mount Alli-
son University. She is the author of Sex and 
the Revitalized City: Gender, Condomini-
um Development, and Urban Citizenship.
Information about the book
https://www.versobooks.com/
books/3227-feminist-city