The overlapping care crises of COVID-19 make the case for feminist cities clear ? and more urgent. While there are still many unknowns about the coronavirus pandemic, one thing has become certain: Our cities aren?t taking care of us like they should. Sidewalks are too narrow. Buses are too slow. Parks are too crowded (if there?s even a park to go to). Homes are too cramped (if you?re fortunate enough to have a home). Working from home isn?t always an option, and is nearly impossible for those who have children.
To Leslie Kern, an urban geographer, associate professor at Mount Allison University, and the author of Feminist City: Claiming Space In The Man-Made World, out now from Verso Books, none of these problems are new; they?ve just become more apparent during the pandemic. ?There?s a broad economic reliance on unpaid and underpaid labor, a lot of which is done by women, women of color, recent immigrants, and other minority groups,? Kern says. ?What the pandemic has shown is that when this kind of labor, like childcare or education, is not able to function then everything else kind of also has to shut down ? We?ve created a really shaky foundation for our basic human needs: everything from care of the elderly to getting our groceries to looking after our children.?
Our cities are designed around optimizing the economic growth of a certain strata of society and not around the day-to-day needs of everyone else. The overlapping care crises of COVID-19 make the case f...