Women, the city and (dis)organizing

Abstract

This essay examines changes in the discourse on cities framed by two topics – women and city organizing, the latter limited here to city management. Using periodization as a text‐structuring device, the analysis reveals that the ways in which women are situated in the city do not change much across periods, although organizing technologies and discursive vocabularies do. The essay ends with suggestions for developing a feminist theory of city management.

Keywords:

• city management
• feminist urban studies
• premodern cities
• modern cities
• postmodern cities

Notes

1. ‘The animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.’ From ‘The analytical language of John Wilkins’ by Jorge Luis Borges (1942), translated from the Spanish ‘El idioma analítico de John Wilkins’ by Lilia Graciela Vázquez, http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html, accessed January 3, 2010. This purported ‘classification from a Chinese encyclopaedia’ has been much quoted after its use by Michel Foucaut (see e.g. Bowker and Star 1999).

2. Recently, however, even Berman has joined the postmodern celebration of chaos and richness of cities like New York in the 1970s (the city seems to have congealed into this shape until today); see the collection of which he and Brian Berger are the editors, New York calling (2007).

3. Here an exception explains the rule: ‘Only women from lower classes visited Agora to do some menial tasks like fetching water from the fountain, doing odd jobs for richer families. Otherwise Agora was one of the male dominated places and women from affluent families never visited Agora.’ http://www.agora.co.uk/ (accessed July 8, 2009).

4. One of the often quoted utterances of Golda Meir (Israel’s Prime Minister 1969–1974) relates to a situation when there was an outbreak in assaults against women at night. A minister in the cabinet suggested a curfew to keep women in after dark. Allegedly, Golda Meir responded: ‘“But it’s the men who are attacking the women”. Golda responded, “If there’s to be a curfew, let the men stay at home, not the women.”’ http://www.mscd.edu/golda/golda/quotes.shtml (accessed January 29, 2010).

5. Jacobs (1961) and later Wilson (1991) have noted that many of the twentieth‐century feminist approaches still conform to this perspective, demanding more safety, welfare, and protection, shying away from demanding participation and the right to enjoy the pleasures of the city. The two authors, independently and in terms typical of the period in which they were writing, pleaded, nevertheless, for a ‘pro‐city, pro‐women’ view of the city.

6. Albert Speer (1905–1981) was Adolf Hitler’s chief architect.

7. After Jane Jacobs’ death in 2006, the Rockefeller Foundation created the Jane Jacobs Medal, ‘to recognize individuals who have made a significant contribution to thinking about urban design, specifically in New York City’. The New York Sun, February 9, 2007.