Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This volume challenges the imagery of cities by looking through a gendered lens at how women utilize urban space.
Synopsis
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.
Table of Contents
"Not named or identified" : politics and the search for anonymity in the city /Judith A. Garber --"Two major living realities" : urban services needs of First Nations women in Canadian cities /Evelyn Peters --Identity, difference, and the geographies of working poor women's survival strategies /Melissa R. Gilbert --Boundaries cracked : gendering literacy, empowering women, building community /Jennifer E. Subban and Alma H. Young --Black women as city builders : redemptive places and the legacy of Nannie Helen Burroughs /Daphne Spain --Women "embounded" : intersections of welfare reform and public housing policy /Kristine B. Miranne --Theorizing Canadian planning history : women, gender and feminist perspectives /Sue Hendler with Helen Harrison --Resisting boundaries? Using safety audits for women /Caroline Andrew --Sex, lies, and urban life : how municipal planning marginalizes African American women and their families /Marsha Ritzdorf --Manipulating constraints : women's housing and the "metropolitan context" /Christine Cook, Marilyn Bruin, and Sue Crull --Cracks, light, energy /Beth Moore Milroy.