Planning: Attracting Women and Children as New Urbanites

Abstract

builds on two empirical cases to further unpack the concept of genderfication. First, it investigates how in contemporary state-led gentrification policies women and families currently are considered gentrification pioneers. The chapter zooms in on Rotterdam’surban planning programme for the “child-friendly city”, in which current urban dwellings are replaced by new, larger and more expensive “family-friendly homes” as a strategy for urban regeneration. Second, it investigates the Rotterdam urban planning programme for the “City Lounge”: plans for an urban public space that is especially designed for middle-class consumption and leisure. This public leisure space is targeted at middle-class urbanites and explicitly meant to stimulate a consumption-based economy that is to replace the Fordist economy of previous decades. Both planning strategies aim at producing space for affluent populations that adhere to gender equal norms and are here thus considered as strategies of genderfication