The contribution of urban public space to the social interactions and empowerment of women

ABSTRACT

Public spaces are central to social interactions and cohesion, overall urban life, and therewith sustainable urban development. They can play key roles in increasing social interactions and women’s empowerment. The literature lacks empirical research on the state of women’s use of public spaces and these spaces’ effects on women’s social interactions and empowerment in Middle Eastern cities in the Kurdistan Region, where women historically enjoyed greater freedom. This paper addresses this gap by presenting insights from a comparative cross-border study with women in two Kurdish cities, Sanandaj and Sulaimani. In doing so, the paper contributes an empirically based theorization of urban public place-making, and debates its effects on the empowerment of women in the context of Kurdish urbanisms. The study developed a survey instrument to measure women’s interactions with and in public spaces and their related empowerment in these two cities across five main factors. Despite the local women’s limited interaction with and in the public spaces of these two Kurdish cities, the findings show a strong positive relationship between women’s interactions in public spaces and their empowerment. The results also suggest that socio-political and related socio-spatial changes have contributed to a decreased relevance of traditional meeting and leisure spaces but have increased the use of malls as commodified spaces, particularly in Sulaimani. The study debates the specificities of urban public spaces in Kurdish cities, and commonalities as well as differences compared with developments elsewhere.

KEYWORDS:

• Public space
• gendered space
• women
• social interaction
• empowerment
• Kurdish urbanisms

Acknowledgments

This is an outcome of a research project entitled “The modes and outcomes of interaction of (im) mobile Kurdish women with public space: a cross-cultural comparative study of different urban contexts” founded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 836194.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. She is the head of the KongraStar branch in Kobane that advocates women’s rights across Rojava

2. Takya/Khanaqa is a religious institution for Islamic ceremonies and festivals of mystic orders.

3. https://populationstat.com/Iraq/sulaimaniya

4. NRT (2021). In Facebook [Facebook page]. Retrieved June 9, 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=490444855646493

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 836194.

Notes on contributors

Hooshmand Alizadeh

Hooshmand Alizadeh (PhD in urban design) is a senior postdoc researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and associate professor of urban design at the University of Kurdistan, Iran. He has more than sixteen years’ teaching and research experiences in urban studies, particularly dealing with different aspects of urbanism in general and public space in particular. His most important scholarly achievement is the development of the concept of Kurdish city in general and women’s spatiality in specific. His research has been funded by the different public organizations in Iranian context, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 and the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Tabea Bork-Hüffer

Tabea Bork-Hüffer is Professor of Human Geography at the Department of Geography, University of Innsbruck, Austria, where she leads the interdisciplinary research group Transient Spaces & Societies. Previously she was Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Geography at the University of Cologne, Germany and Guest Lecturer at the Sun-Yat-sen University, Guangzhou. Her research focuses on the entanglements of urbanization, digitization and mobilities. In particular, she asks how these processes and their transitions affect social inclusion and exclusion and therewith social and socio-ecological sustainability. Her work has appeared in journals such as New Media & Society, Geoforum, Population, Space & Place, and Children’s Geographies and her research has been funded, among others, by the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Josef Kohlbacher

Josef Kohlbacher is Deputy Director of the Institute for Urban and Regional Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on housing market integration of immigrants, ethnic entrepreneurship and social coexistence in local urban contexts. Since 2015 he has done a lot of research among the refugee communities from Afghanistan in Austria in general and in Vienna in particular.

Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin

Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin is an architect and academic. She is director of the Digital Cultural Heritage Research Centre at Sulaimani Polytechnic University where she also teaches, in the City Planning Department. She is co‐director of the Nahrein Network and an honorary research fellow at University College London. She also serves as Vice-President of RASHID International. Rozhen has professional and scholarly activities in 22 countries and is a recipient of numerous national and international appreciations, scholarships, awards, and fellowships.

Kiomars Naimi

Kiomars Naimi is a researcher at the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Art University of Isfahan, Iran. His researches focus on socio-spatial aspect of sustainability in the local neighborhood and urban public space.