ancient cities

572 Nuclear War
planning. Ideally, this process should eventually
result in non-sexist cities being created, but adoption
of recommendations has been slow so far.
A series of methodologies have been developed
to enable local governments to better carry out
this task, such as the Royal Town Planning
Institute toolkit, which sets a series of questions
that need to be asked at each stage of the planning
process to raise gender awareness and ensure that
women’s as well as men’s needs are taken into
account as follows:
1. Who comprises the policy-making team?
2. What is the representation of men and women?
Minority groups?
3. Who are perceived to be the planned? Men,
women, workers, minorities?
4. How are statistics gathered? Are they
disaggregated by gender?
5. What are the key values, priorities, and
objectives of the plan?
6. Who is consulted, and who is involved in
participation?
7. How is the plan evaluated? By whom? On what
basis?
8. How is the policy implemented, managed, and
monitored?
Emphasis is put on the institutional context and
changing the composition of who is making the decisions.
For example, urban renewal and regeneration
decision-making bodies tend to be drawn from the
male-dominated commercial property development
sector. There is no shortage of interested women,
but they tend to be found working in community
groups, which need to be involved, too. Changes
also need to be made to the statutory planning system,
planning law, funding, and administrative
processes, all of which can restrict the implementation
of non-sexist urban spatial policy. Women’s
issues are often deemed “not a land-use matter”
because they do not fit into existing concepts of
what planning is about. Further barriers to creating
change are presented by other departments and professions
that exercise a measure of control over the
built environment, especially technical officers in the
fields of engineering, highways, and building control.
Such staff members generally possess limited
social or gender awareness, but their decisions can
derail the best of intentions by introducing physical
barriers to women’s access and movement around
the built environment. To change the city, one needs
to change the education, worldview, imagination,
culture, awareness, priorities, and gender composition
of those who shape it.
Clara Greed
See also Béguinage; Gendered Space; Gender Equity
Planning; Urban Planning; Urban Space; Women and
the City
Further Readings
Anthony, K. 2001. Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race,
and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press.
Birksted, J. K. 2009. Le Corbusier and the Occult.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Boulding, Elise. 1992. The Underside of History. London:
Sage.
Darke, J., S. Ledwith, and R. Woods. 2000. Women and
the City: Visibility and Voice in Urban Space. Oxford,
UK: Palgrave.
Darling, E. and L. Whitworth, eds. 2007. Women and the
Making of the Built Environment. Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate.
Fielding, A. J. 2004. “Class and Space: Social Segregation
in Japanese Cities.” Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers Journal 29:64–84.
French, M. 1992. The War against Women. London:
Hamish Hamilton.
Greed, C. 1994. Women and Planning: Creating
Gendered Realities. New York: Routledge.
Hauirou Commission. 2008. Report of the Women
Caucus of the World Urban Forum IV on
Harmonious Cities at Nanjing China. New York:
United Nations Habitat Secretariat.
Morgan, Elaine. 1975. The Descent of Woman. London:
Souvenir Press.
Reeves, D. and C. Greed. 2003. Gender Mainstreaming
Toolkit. London: Royal Town Planning Institute.
Uteng, T. and T. Cresswell. 2008. Gendered Mobilities.
London: Ashgate.
Wadud, Amina. 2006. Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s
Reform of Islam. Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications.
NU c l e a r wa r
The specific influence of thermonuclear weapons on
urban systems and urban design has received little
attention in urban studies despite the importance of