Gendered space in the city
1. Women, Planning and Urban Design: A Partnership with The London Women and Planning Forum (LWPF)
The London Women and Planning Forum relocated to the Department of Geography from the Women’s Design Service in 2003. It aims:
- To improve the position of women in relation to planning, architecture and urban design
- To provide the opportunity for women to share experiences of barriers and good practice
- To promote feminist thinking in the design and use of urban space
- To establish working partnerships between academics, students and practitioners.
LWPF organizes three seminars each year (see www.lwpf.org). From 2004-6, LWPF has convened an ESRC-funded seminar series on Capital Designs: Women and Planning in Contemporary London. Seminars have focused on walking in the city; suburban regeneration; designs for school and play; healthy planning and design; and public space in the city. Extending its focus beyond London, the ESRC seminar series will culminate with a one-day seminar on Women, Planning and Design: International Perspectives on 21 June 2006, to be held at Oxford House in Bethnal Green. Speakers will talk about gender mainstreaming in Berlin urban development; affordable housing for women in Melbourne; suburban regeneration in Istanbul; and experiential insights and challenges for women planners in Africa.
Please email Alison Blunt (A.Blunt@qmul.ac.uk) for more information about LWPF.
2. Homemaking and material culture in nineteenth-century England and Wales.
This research– being undertaken by Lesley Hoskins – is investigating the material culture of everyday domestic life in nineteenth-century cities using evidence from household inventories. The project explores practices of home-making by considering the role that the ownership of goods played in shaping the meanings and uses of Victorian domestic spaces. The work is being supervised by Dr Alastair Owens in the Department of Geography in partnership with Eleanor John from the nearby Geffrye Museum – a museum of historical English interiors, based in Shoreditch, east London (www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/). For further details contact Lesley or Alastair.