What Does a Feminist City Look Like?

Cities have never been neutral spaces. They are in constant flux, and the very embodiment of politics in action. While we’re used to seeing cities as sites of resistance and revolutionary possibility (e.g. Stonewall, Black Lives Matter, Anti-War protests), we tend to overlook the politics of the built environment itself. Cities are not merely containers for social action or politics, but political projects in and of themselves.

With this in mind, our Olio will focus on the ways that cities not only hold gendered spaces, but function with a gendered logic. We will think through the relationship between gender, urban space, and labor, from the advent of the suburbs, to ‘pink-collar ghettos’, and suburban McMansions. We will outline the difference between ‘feminine’ cities and ‘feminist’ cities and ask, what does a feminist city look like?