Unlearning Vulnerability, Reclaiming Space:
How can understanding the female experience of vulnerability create positive feminist urban practices and rewrite pre-gendered space to work towards safe spaces for women?
Women are brought up informed of their vulnerability, embedding itself within their daily lives and experiences. This is displaced onto public space, inhibiting and restricting women’s use of and right to the public realm, branding all space as pregendered and the design of safe spaces for women impossible. The Alternative Feminist Urban Guide to Burnley seeks to challenge this preconceived impossibility. ‘The Alternative’ curates a feminist position to Burnley’s urban development history, adopting a historical perspective to rewrite prefigured urban spaces. This poses as a variation to the existing ‘masterplan’, challenging the topdown approach to urban design. Instead, prompting engagement with women’s narratives, to aid the design of non-gendered, safe urban spaces.
