JESH

How Vienna’s Gender-Sensitive City Model Inspires Change in Central and Eastern Europe (Austrian Academy Of Sciences / Boku)

In 2017 I won an Austrian Academy of Sciences JESH Fellowship. This helped me further develop my long-term interest in gender-just cities at the place considered the role model for gender planning around the world– Vienna! I spent two months at the Institute of Landscape Planning, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), hosted by Professor Doris Damyanovic. More about the research can be found here.

I analysed planning documents and conducted interviews and focus groups with the main stakeholders involved in the creation and international dissemination of gender planning in Vienna.  My research concludes that the Viennese model of a gender-just city is deeply rooted in the local – morphological, historical and political context. Various actors, institutions and networks have been engaged in the transnational transfer of this model, but it can not be easily copied to other places. On the other hand, networks that initially served for the transnational transfer, today locally empower the actors in Vienna to resist anti-gender and neoliberal tendencies that are starting to transform the city. The research was published in the journal Territory, Politics, Governance:

Ana Pajvančić-Cizelj (2022) Spatialities of feminist urban politics: networking for ‘fair shared cities’ in Central and Eastern Europe, Territory, Politics, Governance, 10:4, 487-503, DOI: 10.1080/21622671.2020.1799849