We developed Gender Sensitive Urban Design Guidelines to ensure our city is a place all Canberrans are proud to call home.

In July 2023 we released the Guidelines which take the form of a framework and implementation toolkit.

Crowd mapping provides valuable insights into how people collectively experience our urban spaces.

Throughout February to March 2022 we invited the community to crowd map experiences within five typical Canberra urban spaces by:

• registering anonymously and sharing non-identifying demographic information
• choosing a map or maps and dropping a pin or pins to share your experiences in these spaces
• ranking how these spaces make you feel when you visit them and what might improve your experience in these spaces.

Experiences could also be shared via attendance at a Walkshop or via representative or member-based community groups.

Our public spaces are vital for our health and our mental wellbeing – they make our urban environments walkable, provide access to green spaces, help address loneliness and when designed according to the values of the community – they bring us together.

Cities throughout the world are recognising that many public spaces are not welcoming or inclusive particularly for women, girls, gender diverse groups and vulnerable people.– we want to change that in Canberra.

As our city expands, we need to ensure our popular public spaces reflect the needs, interests, and routines of our diverse community, particularly women, girls, gender diverse groups and vulnerable people.

We looked at five (5) typical and popular urban spaces found across the city:

• High density, mixed activity pedestrian link – Civic - City Walk
• Transport hub – Gungahlin - bus and light rail interchange
• Town square – Dickson – library and group centre
• Street - Tuggeranong – Anketell Street
• Recreational Park – Belconnen – skate park

We undertook audits of each site, seeking views and experiences of individuals and representative groups, and reviewed how other cities are redesigning urban spaces to be more welcoming and inclusive.

Your views, experiences and insights helped inform Canberra’s first Gender Sensitive Urban Design Guidelines. The Guidelines will help our planners, engineers, architects, landscape designers and approval bodies when designing our urban spaces to make a practical difference to the lives of women, girls, gender diverse groups and vulnerable people in Canberra.

This might include:

• Improving access and mobility like greater ease walking with a pram or with a mobility need because the public space is designed for this activity with gutter lips and wide paths.
• Improving health and safety like cycling through a urban park where there is adequate space to navigate.
• Improving access at any time of the day like enjoying a public space that has effective lighting and a landscape design that promote safety with passive sight lines.
• Improving health and hygiene like finding more public bathrooms or water fountains when being active.
• Improving safety like being able to move routinely through public spaces for work, life and play with confidence because of lighting, passive sight lines and other security features like CCTV.

Community input will ensure our city is a place all Canberrans are proud to call home.