Rethinking Planning and Spatial Assessment from a Care Perspective

The implementation of the New Urban Agenda in most cases focuses on one of the UN Strategic Development Goals (SDG2030), for example either on 5) Gender Equality or 11) Sustainable Cities & Communities. Nonetheless, a considerable body of knowledge exists [see references] that brings together gender and sustainability, and explains how strategies to achieve Gender Equality and Urban resilience can enhance each other. The empirical studies underlaying these insights demonstrate that implementation requires a radical transformation of planning processes and methodologies towards collaborative planning cultures and residents’ involvement. While direct dialogue needs to have a structural place in planning, in practice, it is difficult to include residents in all steps of the planning process, particularly preparing structural development plans on a larger scale. Moreover, there are parts of planning processes that can, and should, be done by professionals, such as preparatory analyses and making synergies of local data and conditions. In this contribution, we argue that this needs to be done with an understanding of gender-inequalities because gender-blindness will lead to reproducing gender stereotypes, and re-inforce the existing inequalities in its wake. However, gender competences are often not part of planning and urbanism curricula, and few planners have the necessary knowledge and skills to transfer knowledge from genderstudies into planning decisions. In this paper we argue for an approach that puts ‚care‘ in the heart of planning and studies its implications at different scale-levels. Our approach is based on the Austrian pilot project “Smart through Gender+” and builds on two decades of research and exchange amongst European Gender Planning Experts