Exploratory walks, a feminist tool for rethinking urban planning 

12.08.2022

Written by: Clémence Morin

Translated by: Aurélie Bugnard

(Original: French)

The idea of public space appeared in the 1960s to name the intermediate sphere “between private life and the monarchical state^[1]BASQUIAT Brigitte, « Le mouvement des femmes et l’accès à l’«espace public » des années 1970 aux années 1990 : exemples français, suisses et irlandais », dans Sylvette Denèfle (dir.), … Continue reading” in France and England in the 18th century. This notion, put in the plural, nowadays refers to “places accessible to the public: “these are streets and squares, forecourts and boulevards, gardens an parks, beaches and forest, country or mountain paths, broadly the road network and its sides which allow the free movement of everyone, with the double respect of accessibility and free access^[2]PAQUOT Thierry, « Introduction », dans Thierry Paquot éd., L’espace public. La Découverte, 2009, p. 3”. The gendered separation of public and private spaces remains “a social constant, even in Western societies^[3]FORTIER Corinne, « Vulnérabilité, mobilité et ségrégation des femmes dans l’espace public masculin : point de vue comparé (France-Mauritanie-Égypte) », Égypte/Monde arabe, Troisième … Continue reading“, with public space generally associated with men and private space with women. Moreover, it is mostly men who are in charge of the planning of urban spaces. As a consequence, the preponderance of men in the decision-making processes that think and create the city leads to “an appropriation of urban space by men to the detriment of women^[4]DELEVOYE Vanessa, « La ville faite par et pour les hommes », Urbismag, online, November 23, 2018“. Yves Raibaud, a geographer specialist in gender issues, reminds us in his eponymous book published in 2015 that “the city is made by and for men^[5]RAIBAUD Yves, La ville faite par et pour les hommes, Belin, 2015, 80 p.”. By studying the Grenelle des mobilités held in Bordeaux in 2012, he shows that citizen participation in urban planning is also dominated by male presence. Indeed, he notes “the relative absence of women in assemblies (25%), in speaking time (10%) and among the [invited] experts (0%)^[6]RAIBAUD Yves, « La participation des citoyens au projet urbain : une affaire d’hommes ! », Participations, vol. 12, no. 2, 2015, p. 74” and describes an underlying sexism during plenary sessions that contributes to the discrediting of women’s speeches (unsolicited interventions, cutting of the floor, hubbub in the audience, request to cut short the intervention, etc.).  

Faced with this observation of a systemic absence of women in urban planning, which leads to the creation of public spaces designed for and by men, the exploratory walks are a participatory research-action tool to take into account the experience and expertise of women in urban planning.   

This article looks at the origins of exploratory walks in order to understand its process and the needs to which they address. The specific case of France will be addressed in a second time, where this tool is increasingly recommended by public authorities, still has its limits. Finally, it becomes all the more necessary to integrate gender issues when thinking about sustainable cities.  

Exploratory walks, a tool born in Canada to meet a need for safety 

The concept of exploratory walks appeared in Toronto in 1989. Created by Metro Action Committee on Public Violence Against Women and Children (METRAC) from Toronto, these Walks aim at measuring women’s feeling of lacking safety in the public space^[7]Marches exploratoires, Conscience urbaine, online (as well as children’s, to a lesser extent). Named “safety audits”, these exploratory walks give women the opportunity to express themselves for the first time on their practices in the urban space and to make suggestions for improvement. This concept then expanded to the city of Montreal from 1992, with a hundred exploratory walks that gave birth to an “survey guide on women’s safety in the city^[8]HENAULT Marielle, LAHAISE Marie-Dominique & MICHAUD Anne, Pour la sécurité des Montréalaises : guide d’enquête sur la sécurité des femmes en ville, Ville de Montréal, 1993, 44 p.” inspired by METRAC’s. This guide was then translated and adapted for European and African cities within the framework of international institutions such as the European Forum for Urban Security (EFUS) and the Safer Cities Programme of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat).  

This guide questions six planning principles^[9]Femmes et villes international, Ensemble pour la sécurité des femmes, Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, 2010, 62 p that make urban space safe for women: the principle of knowing where you are and where you are going (thanks to the presence of neighbourhood maps, visible signage, etc.); the principle of seeing and being seen (public lighting, large vistas to avoid hiding, etc.); the principle of hearing and being heard, of acting together, of being able to escape and obtain help (frequentation of places according to time, formal and informal surveillance); the principle of living in a safe environment (the principle of the “safe place”). ); to hear and be heard, to act together, to be able to escape and to get help (frequentation of places according to time, formal and informal surveillance); to live in a clean and welcoming environment (accessibility for all, maintenance). 

Focusing on safety issues, the exploratory walks question urban practice according to gender and in particular women’s avoidance strategies or “invisible walls^[10]DI MEO Guy, « Les femmes et la ville. Pour une géographie sociale du genre », Annales de géographie, vol. 684, no. 2, 2012, p. 109” that exist in their urban travels. This approach aims to “point out things that men in ties would not see^[11]ALOUTI Feriel, « Des marches exploratoires « pour réinvestir les espaces publics occupés par les hommes » », Le Monde, online, May 20, 2017“, as Sophie Latour, director of the association Interm’aide, reminds us in an article in Le Monde published in 2017. 

Dominique Poggi, a French sociologist specialising in conducting participatory action research, underlines in 2018 that exploratory walks also help to reduce gender-based violence in public space by promoting social mixing and the reappropriation of all urban spaces by women^[12]BADRE Marie-Pierre & DAULNY Paul, Femmes et espaces publics, Centre Hubertine Auclert, May 2018, p. 18. Indeed, the avoidance strategies developed by women are an obstacle to their right to the city. The right to the city, a concept developed by Henri Lefebvre in his book of the same name published in 1968, is the idea that accessibility to all of urban spaces and free circulation constitutes a foundation of democracy. According to him, the search the right to the city for all must lead to both urban and social changes. Finally, the exploratory walks are a tool for integrating women into the decision-making process of urban planning, which, thanks to collective and gendered action, participates in a new form of local democracy. 

How does an exploratory walk take place? 

An exploratory walk is a medium-term project that lasts between 3 and 6 months. The first step consists of mobilising the actors concerned^[13]The word “actor” is used in its geographical meaning : “all the agents (individuals, groups of people, organizations) likely to have, directly or indirectly, an action on the … Continue reading: on the one hand those responsible for urban planning and public decision-makers, and on the other hand, the women who will constitute the working group. The project is carried out on a neighbourhood scale and is often supported by a local association that knows the target audience well and can host the meetings on its premises. Once the working group has been formed, it begins by mapping its movements in the neighbourhood as well as the places it frequents and avoids in order to establish the route of the walk, which will be carried out at different times of the day and also at night. The walk, which lasts from one to several hours, allows the women to express their feelings of ease or insecurity in the places they pass through, as well as the types of urban facilities that are adequate or need to be improved. A guide to concrete issues such as signposting, public lighting and traffic, allows women to express their feelings about these spaces, as during an exploratory walk in the Lombardy district of Rouen. – Muddy ground. – Is it easy to find your way around? – No, not at all – lack of lighting, – and in any case hidden in the trees, i.e. they are perhaps badly laid out^[14]Ville de Rouen, Rouen – Marches exploratoires, Les “Lombardines” en marche, March 16, 2016, Online video“. 

Photographs and annotations are taken, allowing for the pooling and drafting of a report with the help of technicians and specialists in urban planning to list the proposals retained following the territorial diagnosis carried out. The report is then given to the public actors mobilised at the beginning of the project. The working group can receive training in public speaking for the march organised with the local elected representatives. Finally, a closing meeting allows the latter to give their opinion on the feasibility of the proposals and their potential timeframe for implementation. Follow-up work is recommended to observe the concrete effects of the exploratory march several months later. 

Experiments in France: results and limits 

The exploratory walks, which was experimented in France from the 2000s, focus on working-class neighborhoods, identified as Sensitive Urban Areas (ZUS) by the Urban Policy^[15]BADRE Marie-Pierre & DAULNY Paul, Femmes et espaces publics, Centre Hubertine Auclert, May 2018, p. 18. Thus, in France, the exploratory walks are a tool that public authorities have adopted to serve a state dynamic of reducing social inequalities in so-called “sensitive” urban areas. In 2009, this approach was tested in two neighborhoods classified as ZUS in the city of Dreux^[16]PERICARD Estelle, Fiche d’expérience de Villes au Carré – Expérimentation des « marches exploratoires » de femmes, Villes au Carré, January 2009, 5 p. This experiment made it possible in particular to assess the urban renewal carried out in only one of these neighborhoods with similar socio-economic profiles. By going beyond the original security audit aspect of the exploratory walks, French local authorities are also trying with this tool to develop new forms of local democracy in neighborhoods seen as difficult and where the public authorities are in retreat. The participation of residents is one of the major approaches of urban policy.  

In 2014, the State Secretariat for Urban Policy, the State Secretariat for Women’s Rights, the Interministerial Secretariat for the Prevention of Delinquency and the national public body for spatial planning (Commissariat Général à l’Égalité des Territoires) commissioned an experiment of large-scale exploratory marches in 12 French cities^[17]FERRAND Laure, « Les marches exploratoires de femmes. Quand un dispositif à visée participative renforce le pouvoir d’agir des professionnels de l’action sociale », Pensée plurielle, vol. … Continue reading: Amiens (80), Avignon (84), Arcueil (94), Bastia (2B), Bordeaux (33), Creil ( 60), Lille (59), Mons-en-Baroeul (59), Montreuil (93), Paris 20th (75), Rennes (35) and Saint-Etienne (42). France Mediation, a national association which brings together local mediation actors, was mandated to coordinate these exploratory walks and the various actors involved, over a period of 2 years. 

Since this experience on a national scale, the exploratory walks have been increasingly favored by local public authorities, as shown the Center Hubertine Auclert’s report on women in public space^[18]BADRE Marie-Pierre & DAULNY Paul, Femmes et espaces publics, Centre Hubertine Auclert, May 2018, 100 p.  commissioned by the Ile-de-France region. This report includes the tool of exploratory walks in these 17 policy proposals to move towards more social diversity in urban space. French transport companies such as SNCF and RATP have also adopted this approach to improve transport infrastructures. Since 2015, SNCF and RATP have also developed this tool^[19]BADRE Marie-Pierre & DAULNY Paul, Femmes et espaces publics, Centre Hubertine Auclert, mai 2018, p. 42 by focusing on the issue of women’s feeling of safety in transport and around stations on the one hand, and on the issue of station design on the other.  

The aim of the exploratory walks is to produce concrete results on the daily urban practice of women. During the French experiments, women recommended rehabilitating outdated urban facilities, such as redesigning pedestrian crossing markings in Creil, improving public lighting in Avignon, installing adapted street furniture such as benches and playgrounds at the exit at schools in Bordeaux, and creating a clean and welcoming environment by repainting graffitied walls in Creil. In another project, an experimental walk in a In another experimental walking project in a ZUS-classified district of Rouen, the women worked on the development of a forest pathway, in particular by recommending the concreting of the ground and the installation of benches, to enable as many people as possible to use this shortcut to access the city centre and local services.  

However, the exploratory walks in France have limits. Firstly, the implementation of this type of experiments remains complex, with the mobilization of different actors and in particular the participation of women who have to invest a lot of time in it, combining this activity with daily tasks and their work, sometimes with shifting hours. Secondly, the lack of information, from dissemination to evaluation, is still problematic for the development of exploratory walks in France. On the one hand, the the Fédération Nationale des Associations d’Usagers des Transports (FNAUT)  estimates in a 2017 survey that “only 13% of the women questioned know the principle of exploratory walks [and that] 1% of them have already taken part^[20]Ibid..” On the other hand, there is no public scientific evaluation to measure the medium and long-term effects of these walks. For example, the coordination work of France Médiation carried out from 2014 to 2016 was evaluated by the LERFAS (Laboratoire Étude, Recherche, Formation en Action Sociale), but the final report is not available to the general public. Most of the documentation available in France on the exploratory walks is produced by the actors concerned, which necessarily implies the existence of a politisation of this tool and a bias as to the results obtained. Finally, some researchers, such as the sociologist Laure Ferrand, criticize the exploratory surveys, which, according to her, maintain injunctions acting on the women participants^[21]FERRAND Laure, « Les marches exploratoires de femmes. Quand un dispositif à visée participative renforce le pouvoir d’agir des professionnels de l’action sociale », Pensée plurielle, vol. … Continue reading. In particular, she mentions the injunction to participate and emancipate, while the framework for expressing their thought remains normalised by the technical codes to be used during restitutions and in the report produced. She also perceives the objective of local democracy as an illusion because elected representatives, mostly men, remain in the ”position of decision-makers^[22]Ibid. Laure Ferrand also considers that this tool maintains certain gender stereotypes by confining women to their role as mothers, perceived as vulnerable people who must be protected in the public space. She concludes with the thesis that “exploratory walks are one example among many others of these spaces “technocratically” thought to be “emancipatory” spaces but which do not reexamine the formation of opinions, the pyramidal conception of public and social space^[23]Ibid.”.   

An increased need to develop this tool with the development of sustainable cities 

Gender inequalities in public space are still little integrated into the thinking and design of eco-districts. Studying the final report of the 2012 Grenelle des mobilités in Bordeaux, geographer Yves Raibaud notes that only 10 lines are devoted to gender issues in a 186-page report^[24]RAIBAUD Yves, « Durable mais inégalitaire : la ville », Travail, genre et sociétés, vol. 33, no. 1, 2015, p. 43. However, according to the researcher, the new uses of the city in the light of ecological awareness, such as the development of soft mobility (cycling, walking, car-pooling, public transport), will disadvantage women in their use of the city^[25]RAIBAUD Yves, « La ville durable creuse les inégalités », le journal CNRS, en ligne, September 10, 2015. He stresses that this consensus on soft mobility must be questioned according to gender inequalities, as women are mainly responsible for the daily tasks of shopping, taking care of children and accompanying the elderly, which limits their ability to dispense with the use of the car. The perception of users when considering urban development is totally disguised, which relegates women’s specific practices to the rank of special cases, to private matters, even going so far as to make those who “would not want to make an effort^[26] Ibid.” to participate in a more sustainable city feel guilty because they continue to use the car for their travel.  

Yves Raibaud then describes the model of the sustainable city as an urban space whose “new practices resemble like two drops of water the practices of young men, free of family obligations and in good health^[27]RAIBAUD Yves, « Durable mais inégalitaire : la ville », Travail, genre et sociétés, vol. 33, no. 1, 2015, p. 46“. The geographer therefore invites us to integrate the question of gender into the planning of sustainable cities^[28] RAIBAUD Yves, « La participation des citoyens au projet urbain : une affaire d’hommes ! », Participations, vol. 12, no. 2, 2015, pp. 57-81 in order to stop invisibilising women’s practices in public space by listening to them, for example, during exploratory walks, but above all by associating them with the decision-making processes in order to go beyond the stage of simple citizen consultation.  

Exploratory walks are one of the tools that can be put in place to take account of gender inequalities in urban planning. They intend to go beyond a purely security-oriented reading of urban planning to consider women’s practices in public space in their entirety (mobility, leisure, etc.). Urban redevelopment designed to integrate ecological issues is an opportunity to take into account gender inequalities and women’s practices, as has been done with questions of the practices of people with reduced mobility in public space. In France, the exploratory walks are also a tool designed to restore local democracy in neighborhoods classified as ZUS. While they can be an interesting first step in integrating women into decision-making processes, the researchers insist on the need to develop the presence of women in official bodies. Finally, urban redevelopment, in the light of ecological awareness, presents an opportunity to rethink spaces with an intersectional reading (gender inequalities, social inequalities, capacity inequalities, etc.).  

Bibliographie  

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BASQUIAT Brigitte, « Le mouvement des femmes et l’accès à l’« espace public » des années 1970 aux années 1990 : exemples français, suisses et irlandais », dans Sylvette Denèfle (dir.), Femmes et villes, 2004, pp. 501- 511, url : https://books.openedition.org/pufr/422  

DI MEO Guy, « « Les femmes et la ville. Pour une géographie sociale du genre », Annales de géographie, vol. 684, no. 2, 2012, pp. 107 – 127, url : https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-geographie-2012-2-page-107.htm?contenu=plan  

FERRAND Laure, « Les marches exploratoires de femmes. Quand un dispositif à visée participative renforce le pouvoir d’agir des professionnels de l’action sociale », Pensée plurielle, vol. 43, no. 3, 2016, pp. 97-109., url : https://www.cairn.info/revue-pensee-plurielle-2016-3-page-97.htm?contenu=article 

FORTIER Corinne, « Vulnérabilité, mobilité et ségrégation des femmes dans l’espace public masculin : point de vue comparé (France-Mauritanie-Égypte) », Égypte/Monde arabe, Third series, 9, 2012, url : https://journals.openedition.org/ema/2999  

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RAIBAUD Yves, La ville faite par et pour les hommes, Belin, 2015, 80 p. 

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BADRE Marie-Pierre & DAULNY Paul, Femmes et espaces publics, Centre Hubertine Auclert, May 2018, 100 p., url : https://www.centre-hubertine-auclert.fr/sites/default/files/fichiers/rapport-femmes-espaces-publics-fev2018-hyperliens.pdf 

Centre Hubertine Auclert, Guide méthodologique des marches exploratoires, des femmes s’engagent pour la sécurité de leur quartier, Cahiers pratiques, Hors-séries, 2012, 32 p., url : https://m.centre-hubertine-auclert.fr/sites/default/files/fichiers/sgciv-guidemarcheexploratoire.pdf 

Femmes et villes international, Ensemble pour la sécurité des femmes, Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, 2010, 62 p., url : http://femmesetvilles.org/downloadable/together%20for%20womens%20safety%20fr.pdf 

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SEII & DDCT, Rapport sur la situation en matière d’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes à Paris, exercise 2019, Ville de Paris, December 2020, 71 p. url : https://cdn.paris.fr/paris/2021/01/05/7a64249f959e548b6f691b25ffda817d.pdf  

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ALOUTI Feriel, « Des marches exploratoires « pour réinvestir les espaces publics occupés par les hommes », Le Monde Online, May 20, 2017, url : https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/05/20/des-marches-exploratoires-pour-reinvestir-les-espaces-publics-occupes-par-les-hommes_5131077_3224.html  

DELEVOYE Vanessa, « La ville faite par et pour les hommes », urbismag, Online, November 23, 2018, url : https://www.urbislemag.fr/la-ville-faite-par-et-pour-les-hommes-billet-509-urbis-le-mag.html  

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Ville de Rouen, Rouen – Marches exploratoires, Les “Lombardines” en marche, Youtube, Online, March 16, 2016, url : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bRACdxAn