Women·Respect·Planning

As a whole, woman’s social status is lower than men for a long history, which is subsidiary. Man’s thought plays a leading role in urban planning. It pays little attention to human, especially to women, in current planning concepts. The Western feminism planning school has begun to focus on women, since it generated by the end of the 19th century, especially on problems in city life, such as women employment, behavior characteristics. However, it has not been accepted and approved in China. With the development of economy and the progress of society, researchers begin to focus on people-oriented theme, and pay more attention to the issue-how city make life more beautiful, no longer limit to basic life problems. On the other hand, woman’s social status becomes higher and higher. Women take much more part in city life, and begin to pursuit diverse and higher-level demands. Thus it is necessary and important to pay close attention and respect to women in urban studies.This paper studies on woman’s unique demands in city life, and analyses the difference of woman’s and man’s demands from four aspects:housing, transportation, employment and recreation. Then the author analyses the traditional planning concepts and current planning practices from feminism perspective, and points out how the concepts and practices ignore woman’s needs in city life. Finally, the paper indicates it is essential to respect woman’s demands from the following three aspects: overall planning, detailed planning and urban design. Concretely speaking, much more importance should be paid to the following eight parts in the overall urban planning:the humanism of planning standards, the characterization of city function, the compacting of urban developing pattern, the commixture of urban land structure, the humanity of transportation system, the facilitation of land layout, the rationalization of facilities layout and the activation of public participation. What’s more, it can be improved from the following four aspects in detailed planning:the convenience of transport facilities, the communication of residential space, the safety of public space and the feature of landscape. In addition, planners should focus on the following four portions in urban design:the branding of city orientation, the consideration of public facilities, the striking of urban road sign recognition and the refinement of environmental space.It is the deep and spread research on "people-oriented" to think about problems in urban planning and design from gender perspective. Only it respects women and cares for human much more in urban planning and design practice, can we truly realize the humanized planning.