Can Wuppertal become a gender-equitable city?

After designing a queer-feminist city map called "Stadtkaleidoskop", students Kira Sandrock and Anna Nill have now launched the "queering the city" project, which is committed to inclusive and gender-equitable urban design. They publicise their work and projects on the website "queeringthecity.org" and the Instagram channel @queeringthecity_wuppertal.

Kira Sandrock and Anna Nill are studying for a Master's degree at the University of Wuppertal and have been campaigning for a gender-equitable city in Wuppertal for a few years now. As avowed lovers of creative design, their degree programme in Public Interest Design plays a decisive role in this. "Public Interest Design is an interdisciplinary Master's programme made up of students from the social sciences and design," explains Sandrock, "we deal with urban development, participation, transformation in general and social problems, which we then work on."

Urban kaleidoscope

In August 2023, the two students presented their guide to places that are important for women, lesbians, inter, trans, non-binary or agender people (FLINTA*) at the 'die börse' cultural centre. Under the title 'City Kaleidoscope', the printed city map, which is also available online, raises awareness of the issue of gender discrimination. "We have created a low-threshold directory of contact points that is accessible to everyone and is aimed at FLINTA* people in order to give them more visibility," explains Sandrock and continues: "The city kaleidoscope opens doors to places in Wuppertal that celebrate individuality and strengthen community. These include advice centres and contact points, networks as well as bars, cafés, clubs, events and digital offerings. We want to highlight the places in our city and encourage people to discover them."

queeringthecity.org

The website www.queeringthecity.org and the Instagram channel @queeringthecity_wuppertal make the projects visible. This allows interested parties to engage with the content retrospectively, even if they were unable to attend the events. For example, the regularly organised city walks can now be carried out independently: The map can be used and suitable audios can be played at the stations. "Our aim is to make the content we have developed as accessible as possible," explains Nill. This means that everything collected is now available online at a glance.

"Gender Equitable City" exhibition at Laurentiusplatz

Sandrock and Nill are working diligently on their projects. "Following the publication of the city kaleidoscope, we focussed even more on the urban space in order to then address the issue of a gender-equitable city with various project modules in 'queeringthecity'," explains Nill. Back in spring, they presented a participatory exhibition on Laurentiusplatz for International Women's Day. "We wanted to deal with the topic, but we didn't want to impose anything on the citizens, we wanted to enter into dialogue with them and first ask how the people who live in Wuppertal perceive the city," says Nill. "We developed this participatory exhibition to find out." Various information boards provided information on who is actually remembered in public spaces, while hands-on activities gave interested visitors the opportunity to place dots on a map of the city to show which places make them feel comfortable or uncomfortable. A letterbox invited people to write down their own stories and experiences of discrimination and empowerment in public spaces and hand them in to the organisers. "This letterbox then travelled to a number of initiatives and groups, where even more people were able to write down their stories. We then incorporated these stories into our city walks."

City walks

The city walks are another format that has evolved from past projects. "We have developed city tours, i.e. city walks, that last around two hours," reports Sandrock, "We start at Laurentiusplatz and do a tour of Wuppertal. We stop at eleven places that are relevant to gender-equitable urban design and provide information on various topics, such as the male-dominated culture of remembrance, fears of FLINTA* in public spaces, leisure activities, care work and architecture. In these free guided tours, we also draw on the stories from the letterboxes."

Three-day workshop examines gender problems in the city

The two organisers recently held a three-day workshop in which they took an in-depth look at the city with the participants. Nill explains: "In one part of the workshop, the participants were asked to go out into the city themselves to take photos of discriminatory structures in a power-critical way. We then used these impressions to define problems and develop solutions. Finally, individual exemplary ideas were developed creatively, which were then shown in an exhibition at the following event in the 'LOCH' cultural centre." A concept paper with demands that would make Wuppertal a more gender-equitable city was presented to the Equal Opportunities and Anti-Discrimination Unit on the evening of the event. The topics were explored in greater depth in a panel discussion with experts from the fields of urban planning, architecture, research and anti-discrimination work. Together, they discussed how public spaces need to be designed in order to offer people of all genders safety, accessibility and quality of life.

How should a gender-equitable city be designed?

"A gender-equitable city must definitely address the needs of all people, and not just include their needs, but also give the people concerned the power to shape the city," says Sandrock. "It is still the case that urban design and decision-making positions are often occupied by men. You can superimpose a gender mainstreaming approach on this, which means that gender issues must always be taken into account, but it's not that simple. Power must also be redistributed so that all population groups have the opportunity to participate. On the one hand, this can happen with people in decision-making positions, but also through opportunities for participation." The culture of remembrance needs to be reconsidered because it is very male-dominated and this can be seen, for example, in street names or monuments. "There are actually more streets named after birds in Wuppertal than streets named after women," she explains. The situation regarding public toilets also needs to be changed, as this extremely restricts the freedom of FLINTA* people. The issues of safety and fear need to be addressed in order to create a greater sense of security in the city, and the topic of leisure activities is also important, as even these are mostly male-dominated.

For the organisers, it is particularly important to increase the visibility of the topic and encourage discussion. "There is some discrimination that we are not even aware of because we have grown up in this world," Sandrock emphasises at the end. "We need to raise awareness of this, including in urban structures. There is currently no mention of gender-equitable planning or gender-equitable measures in the urban development concept. That has to change."

Uwe Blass

Kira Sandrock and Anna Nill are studying Public Interest Design in the Master's programme at the University of Wuppertal