World · India Bureau
Cities must involve women in design to ensure public safety, experts urge
Urban planners and safety advocates are calling for women and girls to play an active role in designing public spaces as a means to create safer cities. The push comes during a national consultation marking 15 years of the UN Women's Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces initiative.
LSN India ·
Experts gathered for a national consultation have stressed that women and girls must be positioned as equal partners in the planning and design of urban public spaces to effectively address safety concerns. The initiative, which has been operating for a decade and a half under UN Women's mandate, seeks to transform how cities are conceived and built.
Participants at the consultation highlighted that traditional urban design often fails to account for the lived experiences and safety needs of women and girls. By excluding women from decision-making processes, cities perpetuate environments that do not adequately address harassment, violence, and other threats to personal security in public areas.
The call for gender-inclusive city planning reflects growing recognition that public safety is intimately connected to how spaces are designed, lit, maintained, and managed. When women contribute to these decisions from the outset, the resulting infrastructure and policies better serve the entire community.
Experts emphasized that this shift requires systemic changes in municipal governance and urban development practices across the region. Engaging women not only as beneficiaries but as primary stakeholders in city design processes is seen as essential to creating genuinely inclusive, equitable, and safer urban environments.