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The design and planning of cities need greater participation of diverse citizens to offer more inclusive public spaces for all their inhabitants (European Commission, 2019). This was a reality before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the conditions set by this global emergency made it even more visible (Pantic et al., 2021).
The aim of this article is to analyze Her City, an initiative based on ICT that promotes female inclusion and participation for the redesign and recovery of urban public spaces, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, identifying the novel challenges and opportunities for the participation of girls and young women in the shaping of more inclusive cities.
Cole et al. (2020) have pointed out that the pandemic worsened existing “patterns of uneven urban development which have led to concentrated poverty, segregation, and environmental racism” (p. 1). It also showed the lines of exclusion already existing in the cities, making visible how difficult it is for some sectors of the population to access public spaces, within or without their neighborhood radius (Gehl, 2020; Geropanta & Ampatzoglou, 2022).
The need for better communication and access to public spaces has highlighted the role of local governments for an effective and swift response to local needs. The current return to the urban neighborhood as the space that concentrates human activity has been noted by Moreno et al. (2021), who propose the concept of the 15-minute cities, a residential urban development concept in which most daily necessities can be reached by either walking or cycling from residents' homes. This shift emphasizes that among the “most important aspects of sustainable urban planning [are] the open and green spaces as spaces for health and well-being” (Mouratidis, 2022), along with low neighborhood density, a mixed-use distribution of spaces outdoors and indoors, and a good accessible system of public transportation (Litman 2020). Unfortunately, few cities around the world meet this target because of (1) inefficient management of public spaces (due to overlapping mandates, a lack of communication among relevant agencies, and a lack of funding to effectively manage public areas); (2) insufficient access to detailed information on public spaces and their use; (3) scarcity and not efficient distribution of public and green spaces around the city; (4) lack of accessibility for vulnerable and marginalized groups, as public spaces are not always adequately designed for children, women, disabled or elderly people; and (5) new technologies and tools, posing risks for the respect of human rights, privacy, health and wellbeing (Mouratidis, 2022).
These weaknesses, swept under the carpet for decades, are now exposed in many cities around the world, explaining how exclusions and inequities, based on ethnicity, class, age, and gender can be strongly felt also in the use and management of public space (Gehl, 2020; Honey-Rosés et al., 2020).
At the beginning of the pandemic, when the streets, schools, markets, and plazas became out of bounds, entire families were forced to stay within their homes, many of which were not suitable for long periods of cohabitation (Hu et al., 2021). This situation was particularly severe for poor families, whose members had to crowd in reduced spaces, many times with deficient sanitary facilities.
The first lockdowns also created new exclusions overnight. For instance, semi-public spaces like shopping malls and supermarkets became very dangerous for people over 60 years old, pregnant women, and children, putting a limit in the accessibility these groups have. In many countries, more than one year later, this continues to be the case.