In the Indian summer of 2022, ZIJkant and Wetopia united 25 young people with very different interests and backgrounds around a piece of Brussels they share: the skate park at the church of La Chapelle and its immediate surroundings, in the Marolles. It is a place and a neighbourhood where none of them feel really free or safe. Together they thought about how their city could become a more inclusive place, for themselves, but also for their parents, friends and neighbours. Their proposals were translated into recommendations for urban planners. A team of architects went on to work with some of the concepts.

Podcast

Listen to the girls, their perceptions of the city, and their dreams for a more gender-inclusive public space in this podcast series created by Elena Dikomitis. You can also find the podcasts on podcast platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts en Spotify.

The project in a nutshell

In 2022, the City of Brussels launched a call for projects on gender and urban planning. Girls Make The City was one of the six selected projects. Equal.brussels, the equal opportunities department of the Brussels Capital Region, also supported the initiative.

For this project, ZIJkant teamed up with regenerative development practitioner Joke Quintens, who works with Wetopia on collaborative city-making, in new alliances and from the potential of a place. Previous Wetopia projects with young people have already taken place in Cape Town and Marseille. Joke Quintens designed the methodology of Girls Make The City and supervised the content of the co-creation process.
You can read the full story of Girls Make The City on the left pages. It is a Brussels project. Yet there are a number of lessons we can draw from this process, and pass on as general handles to policymakers and urban planners. You will find these below, on the right-hand pages. First, we talk about the motivation for this project: gendered public space, a hot topic that has been with us forever.

The participants

Twenty-five girls and young women are taking part in the process. They live in the Marolles, go to school there or use the skate park. Despite their shared place, many would never meet, as they have very different lives and backgrounds.

They come from six organisations/collectives:

• Le Foyer des Jeunes des Marolles is a youth centre in the heart of Marolles, where young people can go for help with schoolwork, after-school activities and exchanges. Animator Rachida El Baghdadi supports the workshops run by Joke Quintens (Wetopia).
• Residents of the densely populated social housing blocks can visit Habitat & Rénovation for coffee and assistance, as well as to participate in community projects to improve their neighbourhood. Community worker Francesca Gualino engages with the project.
• Les Mèrolutionnaires are like their logo with a raised fist: combative. This collective of mothers and locals, guided by Ikram Moudden Ridai, advocates for a warm and safe neighbourhood. Their parties are known far beyond the Marolles.
• The stately Sint-Jan Berchmans College overlooks the Ursulines skate park, next to the church of La Chapelle.
• At this skate park, more and more skate girls are practising their tricks, empowered by the feminist slogans colouring the drab concrete.
• Rollergirls are also claiming the city on wheels. Some unite in the non-profit organisation La Patinerie, which organises meet-ups every Wednesday for girls, women and individuals who do not conform to traditional cisgender norms.

The supporters

Girls make the city, but they do so with the help of these supporters and inspirers.

• The architecture collective, consisting of students Thijs Vleeschouwer and Rebecca van Daalen, architect/artist Laura Nsengiyumva and community architect Kevin Kimwelle, develops the ideas together with the participants.
• The analytical insights of the feminist platform L’architecture qui dégenre fuel the project.
• Artists Nora Juncker and Manon Brûlé, creators of the empowering frescoes at the skatepark, design the illustration and visuals of Girls Make The City.
• Cultural centre Les Brigittines welcomes us when the wind outside is too strong. Many of the girls have never set foot in this modernist chapel.
• Podcast creator Elena Dikomitis captures the girls’ dreams.
• Photographer Lynn Delbeecke creates the images.
• equal.brussels and the City of Brussels support the project.

The process

• WORKSHOP 1: UNDERSTANDING PLACE

During the first meeting, we walk through the Marolles, past all the organisations involved in the project. The girls explain why they are participating.

We then scan every place using three questions. What gives 1) vitality, 2) viability, 3) liberty (and what does not)?

Afterwards, the girls are given a postcard with the same questions, which they can ask their family, friends, neighbours…

The results of this workshop can be find in this brochure.

• WORKSHOP 2: SEEING THE POTENTIAL OF THE PLACE

At a second meeting, we settle under the trees at Les Brigittines. We bring together all the findings from the exploratory walk and postcard contributions, and reflect on why people love this neighbourhood. What is good for girls and what could be better, both around the skate park and more broadly, in the Marolles?

We arrive at seven strengths. This is the potential of the place.

How can these strengths give value to concrete interventions? It soon becomes clear that, to make public spaces more inclusive, building is not necessarily the way to go. Social interventions, borne by the girls themselves, are all the more important.

1. Interventions in public spaces: seating, lighting, social interaction, visibility, open spaces without fences, sports activities for girls (martial arts, yoga…), women’s toilets, greenery, colour
2. Occupy public space: organising events or sports activities for girls, skate and roller-skate lessons at the skate park
3. Working together in the public space: raising awareness among men, boys and the wider environment: messages and slogans, forging alliances, debate and exchange

The results of this workshop can be find in this brochure.

• WORKSHOP 3: ROLES TO DEVELOP THE POTENTIAL

City-making is teamwork. To make it clear that everyone has a responsibility in making public space more public, we organise a role-play. Who can do what?

The results of this workshop can be find in this brochure.

• WORKSHOP 4: CONCEPTS FOR INTERVENTIONS, OCCUPYING AND COLLABORATING

At the final workshop, the girls meet the architects. We divide them into groups according to the three tracks: 1) physical interventions, 2) claiming the space through programming and activities, and 3) awareness raising and collaboration.

Inspiring examples from other countries help them on their way. Together, they come up with nine proposals to make public spaces more inclusive.

The results of this workshop can be find in this brochure.

• CO-DESIGNING WORKSHOPS

The architects, together with some participants, continue to work on these nine proposals in two additional workshops. They distil concepts from each of the three avenues (physical interventions / occupying the space / cooperation with boys and men), which are validated by the full group. The realisation of these three (social) designs will continue through 2023.

• An inflatable bubble / fold-out kiosk that can be put down anywhere, and quickly built
  up and taken down. Here the girls can make music, project films, or just socialise.
• Programming of the occupation of the space with and by the girls: workshops of screen
  printing, building beginners’ skate ramps, (roller) skate lessons, martial arts initiation…
• A ‘wall of truth’: taking up a wall with feminist quotes, messages, photos… to raise awareness and with a link to activities e.g. workshops micro aggression

Inauguration party and continuation of Girls Make The City

During a neighbourhood festival at Place de la Chapelle, organised by Les Mèrolutionnaires,
the new installations are inaugurated.

Girls from very different backgrounds have joined hands. This is their neighbourhood too. Thanks to the co-creation process they shaped together and the collaborations they forged, these townspeople have claimed their place, in word and deed. But the story doesn’t stop there: ZIJkant and Wetopia continue to lobby the city to structurally implement the ready-made proposals of the Girls Make The City participants, and make public space truly public.

Brochure for city planners

How can we make public space a truly public place? Girls Make The City started with that question. In this brochure you will read more about the project, and discover our recommendations for urban planners and policy makers.

Gender & public space

Our cities are patriarchy written in stone, brick, glass, and concrete,” says feminist geographer Jane Darke. Public space is still made for men and by men. This is not illogical, considering they also make up the majority of policymakers, urban planners, architects and engineers. And that group traditionally has a blind spot for all those who are different from them.

Eva Kail, the mother of the concept of gender planning, puts it this way: “Urban planners think that what is good for them is good for everyone, but they are mainly white, middle-class and male and therefore do not take a lot of people into account.”

Those people feel that first-hand. For pregnant women or young parents, crossing the city feels like an obstacle course, especially if they are carrying a pram and groceries: poorly laid sidewalks, lack of (clean!) public toilets, too narrow bicycle racks, awkward revolving doors, broken escalators, non-functioning lifts, overcrowded trams, and no place to nurse a screaming baby. In fact, most of these obstacles also reduce freedom of movement for older people and people with disabilities.

The car still rules in many cities, while we know that women are more likely to use soft mobility, especially for daily journeys. That public transport is also clearly conceived by men. The supply of buses and trains is tailored to the hourly schedule of a 9 to 5 worker, but women very often work part-time, and thus travel during less-served ‘off-peak hours’. And poorly conceived street lighting reinforces the ever-present feeling of insecurity.

Fortunately, things are changing. In Austria, urban planner Eva Kail has been pushing for gender mainstreaming in urban planning policy since the 1990s. She is the founder of the Frauenburo in Vienna and the driving force behind the city’s first pilot project in which female needs were explicitly considered in the design of an apartment complex. ‘Frauen-Werk-Stadt’, designed entirely by women architects and completed in 1995, was followed up. The city has already launched sixty gender-sensitive pilot projects and assessed a thousand others.

Other cities such as Paris, London, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Stockholm and New York are also experimenting with gender planning, with the aim of making the city more inclusive. ‘The gendered landscape’ in Umeå, Sweden, has an international reputation.

Meanwhile, people start to realise that a gender-friendly public space is about much more than pink benches and rainbow-coloured zebra crossings – although there is nothing wrong with that. In her book ‘Feminist City’, geographer Leslie Kern describes the feminist city as a place where barriers – both physical and social – are demolished, a place where all bodies are taken into account. Or as the architecture platform L’architecture qui dégenre puts it, “A feminist city is one that treats its inhabitants with care, regardless of gender, orientation, age and disability.”

Particular attention in gender planning goes to teenage girls. Unlike their male peers, they are one of the most invisible groups. Popular films and series starring teenage girls do not have the city but the bedroom as their setting. Indeed, according to researcher Eva James, girls are much more likely to meet indoors because they do not feel at home on the streets.

This is confirmed by a survey of Belgian research centre Kind & Samenleving (2019): far fewer girls (37 %) play outside than boys (63 %). A balance can nearly be found among young children, but in the 9-11 age group, only 27 % of children playing outside are girls. Girls of all ages are also more likely to play under adult supervision. The researchers also counted far fewer girls among the children on the move, leading them to conclude that girls are simply less present in public spaces than boys.

Specifically for teenage girls, the (feeling of) insecurity is an issue. According to Plan International, nine out of ten girls in Antwerp, Brussels and Charleroi have already experienced sexual street harassment. Half of these girls adapt their behaviour on the street or on public transport, fundamentally restricting their freedom of movement. They avoid certain places, take a different route, only go out with a friend or dress differently.

What also plays tricks on them: the ‘masculine’ design of public spaces. With only 15 % girls, sports zones are really boys’ places. Of course, girls also like playing football or basketball, they just don’t feel welcome in a place dominated by others – mostly boys – where competition is central.

ZIJkant’s engagement

Girls* Make The City is a new episode in projects around gender and public space, a theme that ZIJkant has been investing in for several years. In 2020, the progressive women’s movement organised a feminist bike trail along female street names and street art. The end point, a fresco by ZIJkant, shows a girl cycling towards her freedom. Women Bike The City had follow-up editions in Antwerp and Ghent. But women are also allowed to appropriate public space without the help of a two-wheeler. The more ZIJkant focuses on public space, the more we realise that the gender discriminations around which we have campaigned for decades – the gender pay gap, the under-representation of women, (sexual) violence – are perpetuated by the organisation of this space. At the same time, cities are not set in stone: as places of innovation and encounter, they spur women to action.

Inspired by foreign initiatives such as England’s ‘Make Space for Girls’, ZIJkant wants to give the city to girls so they can claim their place.

Moreover, it has been repeatedly proven that an inclusive public space benefits everyone. A safe, social, accessible and mixed neighborhood creates more interaction and social cohesion. A win-win for everyone, in other words.

Winner Matexi Awards

Our project won the prize for most connecting neighborhood initiative in the ‘private individuals’ category at the seventh edition of the Matexi Awards. Both local authorities and private individuals could submit a project that strengthens the bond between neighbors and enhances the livability of neighborhoods. In addition to the prize for the most connecting initiative, there is also the prize for the greenest initiative. Both are awarded a jury prize and a public prize. This year there were 140 entries.

During a festive awards show on Thursday evening, Nov. 24, the 20 laureates were honored. Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem and Investment Committee Chairman Gaëtan Hannecart jointly presented the awards. This video of Girls Make The City, realized by Matexi’s communications team, was shown on a large screen.