Moving towards gender-sensitive urban mobility planning: Unpacking the role of knowledge

Urban mobility planning has the potential to enact more inclusive cities. Yet mobility planning around the world largely remains insensitive to gender, despite the rich scholarship on gendered mobility in diverse urban contexts. This insensitivity, we argue, is rooted in planning’s epistemic dimensions. Analysing what we term mobility planning knowledge through a feminist epistemological lens, we highlight the role of power in knowledge production. Through two steps, we offer the first comprehensive analysis of the intersections between knowledge and gender insensitivity in mobility planning. First, we review existing research on gender-insensitive planning around three categories: the basic assumptions underpinning mobility planning; knowledge production; and knowledge use practices. Second, we develop a research agenda comprising three directions for gender-inclusive planning research and practice: adopting a ‘commoning mobility’ perspective; interrogating ‘context’; and expanding planning’s methodological and disciplinary toolkit. Using these approaches to analyse gender insensitivities in urban mobility planning, we argue, allows us to explore alternative urban imaginaries based on collective, collaborative principles of gender justice that further discussions of just mobility transitions.