The lecture “Urban Space, Identity and Gender”, given for the ESOP course “Multiple Japan: Stability and Flux”, raised interesting questions about the conceptual and physical set-up of different public spaces. In connection, students were asked to conduct fieldwork in the Kagurazaka neighbourhood to observe for example how many women and men use the place, how they move across space and what kind of positions, behaviour and different relations/ interactions they are engaging in. The main aim was to analyse and understand the importance of (inangible) aspects as informal rules, bodily exposure, performance, feeling of comfort and belonging in comparison to formal aspects as regulations, security cameras or similar. These characteristics are often overlooked but are crucial when trying to understand what contemporary urban spaces are lacking and how to design better, gender-conscious spaces.
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