How to Design a City for Women

The obvious flaw in all of their assumptions about what women do differently in pedestrian travel compared to men is what they mention right in the first paragraph: men didn't bother writing much in the surveys.

Just because men reported only traveling to/from work does not mean that men only travel to and from work.

Jesus, another gender-hustling article. Getting past that, it's not clear that in general the changes were beneficial. They increased the variety of facilities in the local park which, surprise surprise, increased its utilization. We have a similar park down the road from us and it's great. Other than that can we say it really worked? For example:

>Circular, grassy areas dot the courtyards, allowing parents and children to spend time outside without having to go far from home.

What is the overwhelming benefit of this? Is there a problem walking to the local park? Perhaps they don't have enough parks - in which case surely increasing the number and quality of parks is the correct remedy. Is Vienna really so violent that people should be encouraged to hide away around their houses even more than they already do? Courtyards are nice, but maybe they should detail why this is a net benefit before trying to tout its success.

This bit of double-think is mildly entertaining:

>Planners also run the run the risk of reinforcing stereotypes in attempting to characterize how men and women use city space.

The entire purpose of the project was to come up with generalisations about women and then code that into infrastructure projects, but they're so cowed by the PC thugs that they can't even say it plainly - even though the project presumably meets with approval of the same PC police. Yeesh.