Locating women in urban landscapes

Landscape and nature have a long-standing cultural association with women’s sex and gender, but urban landscapes are rarely examined as a gendered concept. Even feminist urbanism critique has had little engagement with urban landscapes. In relation to women, urban landscapes are often addressed through concerns of safety and access inequality. This paper argues that the spatial equity discussion has been misguidedly focused on conventional spaces that were conceived when women’s social subordination was the norm. Instead, the paper proposes that interstitial urban landscapes are potential sites for investigating and promoting gender equity. The paper analyses the contradictory gendered meanings of the concepts of urban, landscape, and nature, and how women’s grassroots actions in interstitial urban landscapes could begin to resolve some of these contradictions. Women’s participation in the production of urban landscapes on interstitial sites in Glasgow is discussed, presenting its opportunities and challenges to advance gender equity.