Call for papers
10th International Conference on Urban History organized by the
European Association of Urban History (EAUH), 1st-4th September 2010,
Ghent
Deadline 31.12.2009

Specialist session S23.

Feminine theory of urban design, 18th-21st centuries: texts and
proposals for the city

The metaphorical topos in which a female form, or even body, is
ascribed to the image of the city - as in the Whore of Babylon or
Jerusalem the Bride - has a long history. The topos is a response to
an aspect of the city that exclusively involves the process of
appropriating space. By contrast, it is more difficult to link the
topos clearly with the production of space, which will be the central
concern in this session. Examples illustrating a feminine city that is
defined conceptually and productively are extremely rare - as in
Christine de Pizan's Le livre de la cité des dames (1405), in which
the founding of the city and the city itself are used as allegorical
representations of a female history. This approach was hardly ever
imitated in the centuries that followed. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's
feminist utopia Herland, published in 1915, is the only example we
know of in which a city with female connotations is designed for a
community of women.

With the development of women's studies during the 1970s, female
planners and architects such as Ulla Terlinden and Myra Wahrhaftig
initiated a critical feminist debate on city planning and regional
development planning, focusing on the usage of space. Two main aspects
were criticized: the limited extent to which women are able to
appropriate space in the urban context, and the unequal distribution
of public space. In Victorian England, Octavia Hill had already been
concerned with fundamental issues of the availability of urban space,
which she regarded as a social resource and demanded as such in her
pamphlets. Concrete physical space, which is the focus of attention
from the urban-planning point of view, was regarded and interpreted by
Octavia Hill as at the same time representing social, abstract space.
A theoretical consolidation of discourse concerning space in the field
of gender studies was achieved in investigations by the art historian
Irene Nierhaus (1999), which included architecture, and analyses
conducted by the sociologist Susanne Frank (2003) of the preconditions
for and effects of gender arrangements in the production of the city.
Their approaches, which open up important insights concerning the ways
in which the city is produced, provide evidence once again of the
absence of women, both in reality and in historical writing, from the
processes involved in the conception, planning, designing and
implementation of urban reality.

The first contribution to exploring the historical presence of women
in the field of active urban planning - i.e., in the production of
space - was provided by the American historian of architecture and
urban planning, Dolores Hayden (1981). Hayden identified female
pioneers in the field of design and planning and documented their
work. By contrast, more recent women theorists such as Alison
Smithson, Denise Scott Brown and Elizabeth Pater-Zyberk obtained
access to the public sphere through the established channels of the
architectural and urban planning system. Efforts to identify women's
share in conceiving and implementing urban-planning projects are still
in their infancy, and one concern of this session will be to
investigate the contribution made by women to the conceptual
development of urban planning. Although historical social conditions
excluded women from the operational aspects of city production - with
a few scattered exceptions such as legislative measures introduced by
Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria - women were still able to express
themselves in the theoretical field, and did so. One major example is
Countess Adelheid von Dohna-Ponińska, who in 1874, using the militant-
sounding male pseudonym Arminius, drafted a full-scale theory of urban
planning, which she presented in the canonical form of a treatise.
Although there were certainly other women who would have been capable
of expressing opinions on urban-planning issues, they generally used
genres quite different from the traditional medium of a theoretical
treatise. This was because women were excluded from educational
structures, courses of professional study and institutional posts - a
fact that influenced the way in which the positions and theories they
developed in urban planning were defined from the point of view of
social usage, although it also made it possible for them to establish
new paradigms. Female theory is thus often articulated negatively, as
a critique of the existing city - for example, by the French socialist
writer Flora Tristan in the mid-19th century in her accounts of
travels in England, or by the English author Frances Trollope, who
visited metropolises in Europe and America and commented on them with
expertise. A century later, the American civil-rights campaigner and
non-fiction writer Jane Jacobs similarly criticized the declining
urban quality of the big cities.
Architectural assignments that have highly feminine associations -
mainly involving the design of residential buildings and homes - are
exceptions to the rule that female influence is excluded from the
production of urban reality. Creative and innovative impulses can be
identified here not only in the way in which the rooms and the
infrastructure of the interior are arranged, but also significantly
affect the urban standard used. An example of this is Melusine Fay
Pierce's idea, influenced by Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, of
'cooperative housekeeping' - i.e., kitchenless apartments with
communal kitchens and communal washrooms - which was an important
contribution to the development of new concepts in urban planning. It
may also be suspected, and hopefully it can soon be confirmed, that
these new and sometimes subversive ideas for ways of arranging
residential space and organizing kitchens imply an experimental design
for testing new visions in urban planning.

The specialist session proposed here is designed - on the basis of
women's texts of various genres and provenances, dating from the 18th
century to the present day - to document the contribution made by
women to urban-planning discourse, i.e. their share in the production
of urban space. The aim of this investigation is to trace a possible
'other' theory of urban planning that explicitly draws on social
commitment and reforming concerns as its sources, and which focuses on
society.
Suggested major topics:
- Theories of space. Production and use of space: public and
private space; concrete and abstract space, etc.
- Theory formation: text genres as strategies, critique of the
city, new paradigms, biographies and spheres of influence, etc.
- Concepts of residence and urban planning: new models, apartment
and kitchen as a micromodel of the city, detached houses and suburban
districts in green areas as tools for segregation, etc.
- Monograph presentations of female theorists

Contributions from all disciplines especially from the historical
disciplines, sociology, anthropology and the political sciences are
welcome.

Session organizers

Dr. Katia Frey & Dr. Eliana Perotti, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Paper proposals can be submitted on the website:
www.eauh2010.ugent.be/paperproposals