London can learn valuable lessons from other cities like Gothenburg in how to design places so that they are safer for women, it should aim to gain valuable allies from male members of the profession – and indeed sign up to a charter being championed by the GLA. But ultimately it is down to men in society to change their attitude, quite beyond any built solutions.

Those were some of the key messages to emerge from ‘Women’s safety in public places’ – a webinar held last week by NLA and kicked off by keynote speaker, London’s night czar, Amy Lamé.

Since her appointment in 2016, said Lamé, other cities around the world had followed suit – places like Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, New York, Sydney, and Bogota. But almost without section they concentrate on the traditional night-time economy of bars, pubs and clubs. ‘What sets London apart is that we take a holistic approach to life at night, a 360-degree view’, she said. Thus, her work covers everything that happens from 6pm and 6am as a cross-cutting department, and early research it commissioned into the area has revealed that some 1.6million people regularly work at night in London, a third of the workforce. Two-thirds of Londoners are active at night, running errands, socialising, studying, or enjoying cultural facilities, and only 4.3% of crime at night is alcohol-related. ‘You’re more likely to be admitted to hospital at night for a sports injury than you are for an alcohol-related injury’. 

But other research showed that women don’t feel safe at night, leading to the Women’s night safety charter – which has seven simple pledges Lame urged firms to get behind, plus a toolkit of recommendations. Other actions could include designing and laying out buildings and public realm to support safety at night and changing lighting. But that was where the webinar audience came in, said Lamé. ‘I’d like to set a challenge to those on the call today – to architects, designers, developer, and planners. What can you do to include a gender lens into your projects and ensure that women feel safe at night? We really do need you to think about these issues before you put pen to paper or indeed mouse to screen’.

Stephanie Barton of WSP talked about her research on the gender data gap and how this ‘one size fits all’ approach is affecting the design of public spaces, arising from a ‘chronic gender imbalance in our workforce’. Only 29% of architects are women and 13% of engineers. ‘We’ve still got a long way to go to bring that diversity and diversity in thought’, she said. Potential solutions to include safety include creating ‘complete neighbourhoods’, she said, with everything you want within a 15-minute walk, while exemplars include Gothenburg, which saved millions of pounds and improved health by redesigning its parks after consulting girls over the age of nine, including more paths entry points, benches and sports areas. 

Other speakers at the event included Satu Streatfield of Publica on the importance pf good lighting, and Professor Pippa Catterall of Westminster City Council, who said that good design is not just for women and that pieces of infrastructure should involve impact assessments on users, and that heat maps of incidents should be better utilised to inform city designers and policymakers when shaping environments. ‘We've been talking about how women can make things safer for women, so far. What about talking about how we desist those who perpetrate that violence in the first place, and what triggers it?’ Catterall pointed to the problem of people being bystanders rather than upstanders, and to Husby in Stockholm as an example of good practice, where they designed the suburb from a feminist perspective. But in the end, the principles go much further. ‘Instead of having women take care of their own safety, let's try to promote desistance in our public spaces, which means that there needs to be a total place approach, embracing planning, licensing, policing, placemaking lighting, community engagement. There isn't a single magic bullet for any of this’