How did the city come to be so far ahead β and could its gains be lost? A t hectares, the neighbourhood of Aspern, Vienna, is one of the largest urban developments in Europe.
By the time it is complete in , it is due to be home to 20, people, plus another 20, workplaces, and with an explicitly family-oriented design. When Christina Atta moved to Aspern four years ago, she was one of its rare single women.
Now she is pregnant with her second child, however, Atta, 35, can better appreciate its design. It was deliberately planned with a brand identity, one that might elsewhere be considered political: all the streets and public spaces are named for women. It is symbolic, yes, but makes a clear statement: Aspern specifically takes in to account women and their needs. In this way it embodies a unique approach to urban planning that began shaping Vienna 30 years ago.
The city has since conducted about 60 gender-sensitive pilot projects and assessed another 1, As a series of crises puts Europe under strain, some cities are fighting back with innovative solutions. From hyper-specialist shops beating the online threat in Berlin to the Bulgarian city reversing the country's brain drain, from the Italian city finding new ways to tackle addiction to gambling to the Swedish town that has found innovative ways to combat extremism, we look at what European cities are doing to live better in our increasingly urban world.
But how do pavement widths and bench design relate to gender? Initially called the Frauenburo , the department was established after Kail, then a junior district planner, co-organised a photography exhibition in September that documented a day in the lives of eight different women and girls β from a young child, to a wheelchair user, to an active retiree. It was a simple concept that showed a side to the city that was rarely considered. Like most European cities then and now, Vienna was being designed by male planners for men like them: going between home and work, by car or public transport, at mostly set times.
