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Planning: Attracting Women and Children as New Urbanites

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Gender in the Post-Fordist Urban

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Abstract

This chapter goes deeper into cases of urban planning in which women, children and families are targeted as desired new inhabitants. It 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’s urban 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.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    see www.wow-rotterdam.nl, poster retrieved September 27, 2010.

  2. 2.

    The “social minimum” is a national policy measure to ensure all citizens a basic income level, which is annually adjusted. Basic income support (Bijstand, Wet werk en bijstand: WWB) is based on this calculation.

  3. 3.

    The definition of “the family” is broad in the policies. The Dutch national government uses a similar broad definition, thus including gay couples with children, or single parents.

  4. 4.

    http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/to-save-our-cities-put-children-first retrieved July 20, 2016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Marguerite van den Berg

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  1. Marguerite van den Berg
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van den Berg, M. (2017). Planning: Attracting Women and Children as New Urbanites. In: Gender in the Post-Fordist Urban. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52533-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52533-4_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52532-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52533-4

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