Designing inclusive cities: What’s more important - being safe or feeling safe?
Credit: Jas Lehal | Courtersy of We Made That | Womens Safety Audits - Lambeth
I moved to London for the same reasons that many people do: the huge cultural offering, rich job opportunities and amazing nightlife, to name a few. I’d never really considered the difference between being safe and feeling safe before, but having lived here for three years and hearing about more incidents involving women, I can see how important it is to have both.
Eight in ten young women have experienced sexual harassment or assault in London in the last two years, according to research funded by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and The National Lottery Community Fund. And even more young women worry about being harassed. This is just one of many staggering figures that evidence this issue, which becomes even more prevalent among certain demographic groups, for example minoritised ethnic young women.
Unfortunately, tackling this issue isn’t as simple as telling perpetrators to stop, though recent London Underground ad campaigns by TfL with this aim are welcome. The design and use of our public spaces, and ensuring those affected have a voice, play a crucial role in preventing such behaviour. This was the guiding principle for We Made That’s Women’s Safety Audits Pilot Project, commissioned by TfL and MOPAC. The project aims to give women, girls, and gender-diverse people a voice in making public spaces feel safer and more inclusive.
The auditing process involved hiring community researchers in five locations across London to develop tools to capture and assess experiences of safety in public spaces. These audits included women aged 17-79 from London’s diverse communities who worked together to inform decisions on public space design, planning, and management.
A subsequent panel discussion with We Made That, TfL, MOPAC, and two community researchers highlighted the importance of communicating with women, girls and gender diverse people to ‘design in’ safety.
Women’s safety in public spaces needs to consider accessibility, the threat of violence and harassment, and a sense of belonging. This is why involving those who use the space in the design process is fundamental.
Appointing community researchers allowed for peer-led research to gather detailed insights into what makes women, girls, or gender-diverse individuals feel unsafe, rather than making assumptions. There’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, as different locations and communities have different needs.
For example, while more street lighting is often used to make a space feel safer, one finding from the research was that white, clinical lighting can negatively affect neurodivergent people to the point where they avoid these areas. So by attempting to improve women’s safety with additional street lighting, some groups can inadvertently be segregated.
One of the locations discussed was Brixton High Street and the adjacent Windrush Square. From a design perspective, the panellists speculated that the single, irregularly-placed seating was likely implemented to deter groups from gathering. However, it actually encourages lurking individuals, which can make people feel uncomfortable and unsafe. As someone who lived on a residential street by Windrush Square for over a year, I can attest to this. I often found myself going around the square rather than through it to get to the tube station – quite the opposite of the intended use.
As highlighted in We Made That’s work, the key priority in addressing women’s safety in London must be comprehensive engagement with the people who live in the areas where development is taking place.
It’s not just London, everyone deserves to feel safe in the city that they choose to live in. There is no single solution to this complex issue, which is why involving grassroots communities in the design process is essential.
From a communications perspective, this is a process our industry should support, learning and sharing how other cities are successfully implementing design strategies that tangibly improve public safety for women, girls and gender diverse individuals.