Construction of a tool for urban planning of daily life: the case of Barcelona

Abstract

All human beings are part of groups and communities and, therefore, we are interdependent. That is why, at some point in our vital processes, we need help from other people: in childhood, in illness, in old age and, very often, in everyday life. People are also eco-dependent: we need air to breathe and the ecosystems to survive. The capitalist model has historically omitted these two dependencies, causing inequalities and imbalances.

Traditionally, in our urban and social culture, productivity and market economy have been related to the public sphere, while domestic and care activities, traditionally assigned to women, have been devalued, made invisible and relegated to the private sphere. The gender perspective aims to make visible and problematize these inequalities and provide a new perspective when designing and building cities.

Urbanism from a gender perspective puts the focus on life processes of the different groups, and seeks to allow and support everyday needs and, at the same time, be respectful with ecosystems.

Life support activities such as: buying food, visiting a medical center, caring for children or sick people, playing, socializing or participating in the community ... have a spatial and temporal translation.

With the purpose of making these activities visible we have designed a tool “Manual of everyday life urban planning”.

This tool has been built after extensive research, in the city of Barcelona, thanks to different projects carried out, the Map of everyday life (Barcelona Regional, 2018), Map of Jane Jacob’s walks (Barcelona Regional 2018), Gender differences in the use and discourse of public space (IGOP, 2009) and various collaborations in the academic field.

In those projects we have used a set of techniques for the qualitative analysis of the city: documentary research, social cartography, go along methods, workshops, open surveys and participant observation. Those methodologies and techniques have allowed us to: a) an in-depth approach to the different urban realities analyzed; b) the possibility of generating theoretical knowledge on care in the daily life of cities and c) the production of relevant information for the construction of the tool, the main objective of our work. This research has followed a process based on grounded theory. Unlike deductive methods that begin with a general theory and use hypotheses for experimental tests, the grounded theory is an inductive method that begins the research by direct observation and then forms patterns, relationships, or general categories and concepts.

The tool presents a series of templates that evaluate the spaces according to quality criteria, with respect to six elements of the physical and social space, including facade, floor, urban elements, environment, people and social uses. We try to reevaluate and make visible the care activities in urban public spaces and place people's lives at the center of the urban agenda. Thus, the objective of the inclusive city tool is to collect data from people and their environment through observation in an effort to analyze and diagnose what factors facilitate care activities in the public space. The data collected will help planners in Barcelona, and other cities with a similar urban net (compact and diverse), to anticipate the challenges and opportunities of spaces from a gender perspective and, therefore, to design more inclusive spaces.