So it turns out that even saving the planet isn't women friendly

[artisanparsnips]

Our local council have done lots of tree planting over half term. Which is lovely and saves the planet, and is good for us all. Etc etc etc.

Except one of the places they have chosen is open lawn/grass either side of a path which links in to community-owned fields and is a way into town for lots of people. Now it's densely planted and will turn into woodland.

It's fine now, but in 20 years time it's going to be a much less safe place for women to walk at dusk, at night, in the winter. Do I think they even assessed for this? No I don't.

So once again, it's women who are going to have to change their behaviour and men not.

I'm in a bad mood and just so sick of all this. My council hate me anyway for raising the question about girl-friendly play spaces, and I really am not sure I can face being the po-faced negative feminist being against all teh lovely green trees. But I am.

Perhaps the impact of the trees making the space hidden/covered could be mitigated though - lighting? CCTV? I think it’d be a fair point to raise, asking how do the council propose to ensure this does not become an issue, making suggestions. If you’ve already made representations on women’s rights issues then what’s the further harm in being ‘that woman’ hey although I appreciate the compassion fatigue that comes with persistent campaigning.

What was the girl-friendly play spaces thing btw?

I got fired up after reading Invisible Women. Caroline Criado-Perez points out that most play spaces for older children are actually entirely designed for and used by boys - skate parks, pump tracks, graffiti walls. This exactly described what was going on in our town. So I pointed this out when they put out plans for another, very expensive, skate park.

Our fairly right on local council did not like being called sexist, and were also really embarrassed to discover that they were meant to be doing equality assessments on everything.

Current status stalemate, but I have been promised a meeting. If you search my user name, there are a few threads with loads of links to good practice - I got some great help on here.

Oh yes I remember that now! Power to you ✊🏻

Interestingly, the design guidance for creating cycling and walking links away from roads specifically mentioneds personal safety. Ie not to run new or upgraded routes through areas that aren’t overlooked.

Seems a bit sloppy that whoever was responsible didn’t apply this in reverse.

Ooh, that would be very useful to have - is there a link to it somewhere?

Häng on...

artisanparsnips

Out of interest, what did you have in mind for female play spaces?

I’ll PM you

I wouldn't worry half of them (or more) will be destroyed (yes I know I's cynical)

Ooh. Now, this is the sort of discussion we ought to be having.
I'm a town planner - well, i prefer to say "urbanist" and, yeah, there completely IS a need to recognise that the main function of urban open spaces is to be used by the people who live there. If half the population don't feel safe there, they don't fulfil that function.
I completely wouldn't want to say "so chop all the trees down then" because then you create a boring space that nobody would want to be in. But, yeah, there's a need to find a middle ground.
(Tbh- private bugbear coming up here - what bugs me is that a massive proportion of open spaces are playing fields - which are great for the subset of youngish, fittish, mostly male people who play on them once a week- boring as hell for everyone else. (I know, I know, women play sports too.))

I work with a bunch of town planners and there's a lot of talk about 'women-friendly cities' but a lot of the points that come up still get an 'oh I hadn't thought about that' reaction. So if you can face being doubly unpopular with your council I would raise it as it may not have dawned on them, and might get them thinking about future planting strategies.

Lighting would be good, and the woods set back from the road a bit. The space right near the paths could be wildflowers! And cameras monitoring.

Wouldn't that help?

It's just depressing how planners don't think from the standpoint of half of humanity, and then get huffy when the issue is pointed out.

Stay strong. It's people like you that make the world a better place.

Well persevered for your work to date!

I've been reading some items about tree planting being a popular, easy to understand activity but one that isn't always the right thing to do and might have a more detrimental than positive impact. You've identified another one.

Thanks everyone, it really does make such a difference to know that I am not some lone loon with no sense of humour. Although this may of course also be true.

@WelcomeToTheMountaintop Thank you, it's v handy.

@Freespeecher I will try and dig out the threads because there is a load of good advice and useful links on there.

@smithsinarazz Yes, this is another aspect of what I've been banging on about; men get all the outside space and girls stop expecting that the urban realm is for them at all. There was another interesting aspect of this (where interesting actually means shit) in Hackney where the women's soccer teams are nothing like as well funded as the mens and so can't afford to block book pitches and so end up with the shit slots, and then everyone says 'oh girls don't want to play' when in fact girls, like most people, don't want to play football at 6.00 on a Friday.

@crankysaurus I emailed my tame feminist councillor and that was word for word what she said.

@ArranUpsideDown Do you have links or more info? That would also be helpful

I’d also be interested in more links/resources on this - especially around any planning guidelines or statutory requirements for EIA? I’m preparing to write to my local councillors about The Woodland Trust’s Emergency Tree Plan recommendations www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/media/47692/emergency-tree-plan.pdf it would be good to include a warning on this issue in with it.

Sorry to wander in at the last minute and suggest work but would it be a good idea to copy in Woodland Trust to this correspondence too? So they can build this into their recommendations. We need trees planted and personal safety.

From what you describe OP, this is a case of not thinking through the whole process at all. Which is so typical of certain local councils. And it’s beyond annoying. Besides the safety aspect, they also should forecast for maintenance of this new planting for the next 50-100 years at least if these are large trees. And I’m sure you’re not a ‘lone loon with no sense of humour’. You should hear me having a rant about stupid things my local council do or don’t do.

If it’s unsafe for women, surely it is unsafe for some men too and certainly for children and teenagers. Men don’t have superpowers. Reasonably well used alleywey in my small town, it is a handy shortcut with minimal lighting at night but not exactly a danger area or forbidden zone with zero recorded crime was the scene of a sexual attack in a man.
I didn’t quite get the problem with open spaces though. Is this based on observations or statistics? It’s an interesting point though.
One of my local parks which has a very large open space is regularly used by women only excercise groups and children excercise clubs, families playing group sports or dog walkers. I’ve never seen groups of men playing sports there. They have local sports clubs like football, cricket and rugby for that, where the sidelines are full of children and women during actual matches.

@Freespeecher This is the play equipment thread.

Thought this might interest you

www.ice.org.uk/news-and-insight/latest-ice-news/make-cities-more-inclusive

Yanbu .
I walk almost everywhere and rant about this regularly.
We're in the centre of town and the only routes to the other side of the ring road are through isolated underpasses. I sometimes take my car on short journeys in the winter as I won't use them in the dark. Boils my piss tbh .
If the footpaths ran alongside the main roads it would be much safer.

@WelcomeToTheMountaintop. Thank you. Have you seen the Barcelona city planning guide which aims to make the whole city gender neutral? I've only really taken in the parks and playgrounds bit, but it's also v interesting on transport and so on. In fact, I ought to go and see what they say about footpaths.

I think it would be prudent to point out that they will need to ensure lighting/CCTV, however I wouldn’t frame it as a sexism point. It’s just common sense and you’ll sound like you’ve got a chip on your shoulder.

What are girl friendly spaces ? My niece and many of her girlfriends would go to a skate park. Loads of girls skate !

I’d never given play spaces for older children a thought.

Very near me we have a BMX track but also play equipment for older children. Zip wires, large multi user swings, robust seesaws etc as well as fixed tables and chairs to sit and chat. I see lots of teen girls using that space.

I'm submitting some work today and through to Thursday. I know I have references. My introduction to this was through reading WildLakeland's Twitter feed and seeing the number of people who'd used WildLakeland's services or others of that ilk.

twitter.com/WildLakeland

Interesting story about how the Woodland Trust (among others) were very nearly complicit in the tree planting of a valuable and priority habitat grassland area:

anewnatureblog.com/2020/02/21/chronicle-of-a-grassland-saved/

I'd love to know what female friendly play spaces are too.

I don't have daughters but my favourite thing at the park was a zip wire when I was a small girl myself. That and the huge climbing frame. Rather liked hanging upside down.

Are they female?

Do you mean nice benches to sit and chat? Hope not!