Time-based solutions for gender equal, low carbon, sustainable urban transformation: Learning from European Time-Planning Practices

The European feminist planning community (including the authors) has been addressing the challenge of a gender-just transition to climate neutral cities offering high quality living conditions for all users for decades. The planning model of a “City of proximity” – originally postulated by feminist planners– has recently evolved to the model of the “15 Minute-City”. It is time to revisit 50 years of European urban time policies underlying this planning model and the theoretical ground for a temporal just city (“zeitgerechte Stadt”). The research project “DraussenDaheim” (=At Home Outside) puts this into practice.

The project aims to develop a methodology and toolbox which not only serves the participatory assessment of urban public spaces and their complex spatio-temporal use patterns, but also the co-creative simulation-based design of different planning scenarios. Taking into account a gender- and group-specific perspective, the focus is particularly on the development of less “gender-blind” participation tools that serve the analysis, assessment and co-planning of public open spaces. The target group-specific application of a digitally supported tool mix is described on the basis of two use cases and its added value for the key elements of a temporal just city, procedural and distributional justice, is shown. By making public spaces and vulnerable user groups a focus for the participatory implementation of temporally and spatially just urban transition, this will help to ensure that the transformation is inclusive, responsive to community needs, environmentally sustainable and socially just.

As the core of this paper, examples from European city-regions on time-planning practices as well as from the use cases of the DraussenDaheim project are presented with the purpose of informing gender-responsive participation and planning tools.

The conclusions highlight both the potentials and pitfalls of time-planning approaches in collaboratively assessing urban public spaces. Moreover, they anticipate a crucial endeavor: enhancing the adaptability and usability of these spaces for care-givers and care dependents. This task is a crucial step towards a more inclusive and gender just urban transformation.