Abstract
This article examines the role that physical design plays in shaping women’s everyday experiences in public space by studying gender differences in the use of a 1.3-acre urban park in a specific cultural enclave. Through direct observation, behavior mapping, and quantitative analysis, the project reveals an obvious gender separation of space usage in Portsmouth Square in the Chinatown district of San Francisco, California. In-depth interviews exposed a range of reasons for this separation and revealed how some Chinese immigrants construct and negotiate their social dynamics and territoriality on the urban square. The findings reaffirm that men and women often have different preferences in open spaces as well as different concepts of optimum public space experiences. Results also indicate that observed segregation by gender is not all voluntary. In this case, besides the known factors such as cultural and social norms, physical space design is important in shaping women’s use of public space, perpetuating and even intensifying gender separation and inequity. This study addresses and highlights some spatial elements that can be easily overlooked by landscape architects and environmental planners. It argues that to create a gender-inclusive—or, at a minimum, genderaware—public space, designers must consider not only the differences of ability, movement, and designated spots but also barriers, interruptions, and spaces avoided or inaccessible by specific populations.
INTRODUCTION
Gender differences are revealed in many realms of society, from early childhood to late adulthood, but research suggests that most of those differences are benign. For example, Lindon (2001) found that children begin to exhibit preference in playing with those of their own gender as early as nursery school, and in primary schools, girls played in smaller groups than boys and spent less time in competitive team games. Regarding cognitive differences between genders, Fennema et al. (1998) conducted a longitudinal study of gender differences in young children’s mathematical thinking. They concluded that although girls and boys adopt different strategies, there are no gender differences in the ability to solve mathematical problems. Finally, Zelezny, Chua, and Aldrich (2000) reviewed a decade of research on gender differences in environmental attitudes and behaviors. They discovered that women report stronger environmental attitudes than men do and might play a more active and positive role in environmental improvements. They suggest this is because women have higher levels of socialization and tend to be other-oriented and more socially responsible. In 2014, psychologist Janet Hyde reviewed the major theories on gender differences and suggested that much evidence is in support of the gender similarities hypothesis, which holds that men and women more alike than different on most psychological variables. Nonetheless, she concluded that there is value in studying gender differences and suggested two directions for further research: an intersectional approach and a contextual approach. These approaches imply that gender should not be understood in isolation and must be studied contextually and with other social identities (Hyde, 2014).
Gender differences exist in how people use urban open spaces, and the suggested reasons are mostly related to preferences, cultural norms, and individual choices. For example, Abbott-Chapman and Robertson surveyed young people’s favorite places and associated activities and found a more local and home-centered focus in girls and active and outdoor focus for boys (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2001). These differences are not necessarily innate. Bernard discovered that gender differences in leisure activities may result from the societal norms regarding the “appropriate” behaviors for men and women (Bernard, 1981). Hutchison (1994) observed 13 public parks in Chicago and found women are more likely to make use of these parks during afternoon and evening hours. In addition, women were more often observed in small family groups, their activities reflecting traditional gender and family roles.
This article challenges the traditional thinking and argues that gender differences in space occupation are not always a result of normative preferences, “equal” or “just separate,” but may result from the way that space is designed and culturally constructed, which implies an inequity of space access. Inspired by feminist geography research, this study looks beyond gendered behavior and examines women’s daily experiences, their lives, and the structure of social relationships that contribute to their oppression (McDowell, 1983). Echoing Hyde’s (2014) proposal, the gender differences observed in this work are context-specific and lie in the intersection of gender and ethnicity. However, the reasons behind these gender differences are directly related to environmental design elements. Although the specific relationship between culture, gender, and public space use studied here cannot be generalized to other contexts, the broader understanding of how these factors interact to produce a gendered use of public space could inform future research and design approaches.
BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Gender as a Critical Lens on Public Spaces
Women’s efforts to gain access to the public realm in Western cities has a long history. During the 19th century’s industrialization, in the West and concurrent with the scientific and religious debates sparked by Darwinian thought, a concept emerged that greatly affected middle-class families: the separation of spheres (Jensen & Rothstein, 2000). Separation of spheres divides human communities into public and private spheres and presumes that men and women are profoundly different sorts of creatures—biologically, morally, intellectually, and spiritually. This ideology established the norm that men pursue paid labor in the public sphere and women remain in the private sphere to manage homemaking and childcare (Cowan, 1983). The lived reality of women in the 19th century was not such a simple binary. Women at that time were present in public space, such as shopping landscapes, restaurants, post offices and banks (Sewell, 2011). However, many landscapes were clearly imagined as gender-segregated spaces. For example, in the early 1900s, men occupied offices and the surrounding civic or downtown landscapes, while women led domestic lives at home and at shopping centers (Sewell, 2011). Today, intentional segregation of gender is no longer practiced in public spaces, but many scholars argue that the imbalanced power relations are maintained and reproduced in spaces, which still leads to “gendered” and “sexualized” city spaces (Scraton & Watson, 1998). The work of geographer Susan Hanson revealed that the segregation of men and women at work in different occupations and their exposure to various experiences are grounded and constituted in and through space, place, and situated social networks (Hanson & Pratt, 2003). The effect of this segregation often includes inequitable distribution of resources and infrastructure. All people involved in creating spaces—environmental designers as well as clients—are complicit in creating gendered notions of space, which contribute to these inequities.
Although it is well acknowledged that design as a cultural and social practice contributes to the construction and representation of gendered or gender-equal spatial practices (Berry et al., 2020), historically women have not been well represented and are often invisible in many professions related to space design and planning. Currently, a lack of women in decision-making and leadership roles remains. Decades ago, Zelinsky (1973) and Momsen (1980) criticized the absence of women in academic fields in general. More specifically, Torre (1977) highlighted the underrepresentation of women in the architectural profession. In 2004, female faculty members in accredited architectural schools still only accounted for 20.6% of all faculty members (Brown, 2011). In landscape architecture, 48% of graduates of accredited landscape architecture programs are women (according to the 2015 LAAB data); however, only 19.5% of the ASLA Fellows are women (O’Mahoney, 2016).
The small number of women designers affects the design of urban parks (Cranz, 1982). Although urban planning is not gender-neutral (Sassen, 2005), planning approaches that claim to be neutral or universal actually ignore diversity based on gender, origin, ethnicity, and other differences (Casanovas et al., 2013). In the domain of research, McDowell (1983) argues that most studies on women and the urban environment are unsatisfactory because they only study behavior, ignoring the long-existing gender divisions in labor and society. She suggests that when studying women in urban landscapes, one should focus on the wider social structure that contributes to women’s oppression and how that structure contributes to the organization, use, and conception of urban spaces (McDowell, 1983).
Today, although the simplistic division of femaleprivate and male-public no longer stands, traditional gender expectations are still inscribed in most U.S. postwar city landscapes. Zoning, public housing, changing transportation modes, and land use patterns still limit women’s opportunities outside the home (Spain, 2014). Lefebvre (1996) raised the concept of the “right to the city” and argued that the mapped, civic areas are associated with structures of power and control. Based on this idea, Beebeejaun (2016) further suggested that the unmapped and everyday space should receive greater attention. Designers and planners are in positions of power by creating designs. They should use their power productively to examine the multiple rights to the city from different populations, especially the underrepresented and vulnerable, and the contested publics that coexist in the city and their spatial tactics (de Certeau, 1984).
Women’s Experience in Using Urban Public Spaces
The discussion of differences between men’s and women’s experiences of urban public spaces emerged at the beginning of the 20th century but didn’t become widely published and discussed until the 1980s. Since then, gender-oriented research has gained ground. In particular, gender differences in public space are often related to the topic of safety. Gendered notions of safety are the result of various conditions. Scholars such as Stanko (1993) and Hale (1996) found that women are more fearful of crime than men are and thus are more likely than men to have concerns occupying certain public spaces. In most cultures, women are more likely to be the victim of violence; as a result, even if women are provided access to a particular public space, they may not feel safe using it (Valentine, 1990; Wekerle & Whitzman, 1995).
In other cases, women’s experience of public space is shaped by factors related to the overall gendered societal structures of power and access (Pain, 2000; Koskela & Pain, 2000). Other examples of research on gender and public space includes Ilahi’s (2009) work in Cairo, addressing the issue of street harassment and its implications for women’s access to public spaces, and Viswanath and Mehrotra’s (2007) study, which explores the nature of violence and women’s perception of safe and unsafe places in Delhi. These scholars integrate the connection between culture, gender, and class in their work, a critical perspective for a thorough understanding of fear (Day, 1999). Although these studies help users and designers understand the experiences of being a woman in public spaces, they do not provide much guidance for designers and planners of public space to construct gender-inclusive spaces.
Gender Equity and Space Design Guidelines
In the practice of landscape architecture and public space design, the topic of gender differences in the usage of spaces appears in the late 1980s, slightly later than the aforementioned literature in other fields. William Whyte (1980) highlighted the concept of “street theater,” the practice of men watching women occupying street corners. In 1989, Franck and Paxson summarized the previous literature in environmental psychology, planning, geography, and sociology to explain how and why women in public spaces are not free (Franck & Paxon, 1989; Griffin, 1986). In 1989, Louise Mozingo used behavior observation to study gender differences in urban public spaces, concluding that women and men have different preferences in downtown open spaces. She also suggests that women and men hold different concepts of optimum open space experiences—for example, what they would like to encounter, and what they expect the environment to offer (Mozingo, 1989). Since then, more gender-related articles have been published, but most of the literature on gender and public space features theoretical elaborations on understanding women and their needs and less about the physical design or design strategies of public spaces (see Bondi, 1998; Garcia-Romon, Ortiz, & Prats, 2004; Tuncer, 2018).
In recent years, movements toward gender equity have emerged in landscape architecture and urban design practice. In 2016 and 2017, four prominent women landscape architects and planners left their leading roles in well-known, award-winning firms and started their own practices. They subsequently published a joint statement called “Women’s Landscape Equality (re)Solution” (Landscape Architecture Magazine, 2019). In 2019, the Barcelona city council published a guideline document named “Urban Planning Manual for Everyday Life: Urban Planning with a Gender Perspective” (d’Ecologia et al., 2019). In 2011, Mozingo and Jewell published their coedited volume Women in Landscape Architecture: Essays on History and Practice, addressing the various ways gender has influenced the evolution of landscape architecture as a field. However, much more is still needed, as most mainstream landscape architecture and urban design guidelines and texts do not acknowledge or refer to gender differences in public space use.
Women’s experience of space is related to the design of the space. Therefore, gender-inclusive design strategies require a more comprehensive understanding of gendered differences in the experience of space in specific contexts. In places where women’s territoriality is limited, neglecting these relationships and conditions will only intensify preexisting gender inequities, including barriers to access public space. Thus, this article aims to uncover some specific design elements that affect women’s use of public space in a specific cultural enclave, San Francisco’s Chinatown district. On Portsmouth Square, the intersection of gender and culture affect the segregation of genders in the space. The study aimed to go beyond the observation of behaviors and differences to link these usage patterns with the daily geography of women who use the park. The objectives of this work are to discover the design elements that function as barriers to women and examine their implications for accessibility. We hope this research leads to design guidelines that can address gender differences in ways that go beyond safety-related policies and separate-but-equal approaches to design.
CASE STUDY: PORTSMOUTH SQUARE IN SAN FRANCISCO’S CHINATOWN
This article documents and analyzes gender-based behavioral patterns in Portsmouth Square, in the Chinatown district in San Francisco, California. Portsmouth Square is a one-block park and is referred to as the heart of Chinatown. It serves as a well-used public open space for Chinese immigrants, other neighborhood residents, and visitors. The site was selected because of the severe gender separation in its usage, as observed directly by the authors of this article. The park is completely open to the public, and park users include local residents, tourists, workers from surrounding businesses, and houseless people. Despite the diversity of users in this 1.3-acre area, people appear to unconsciously segregate into areas formally or informally designated for certain programs, making it an interesting site in which to study gender differences in public space use.
This research is unique in several ways, and it aims to fill several research gaps. First, it focuses on gender differences and separation on a much smaller scale than previous research (Hutchison, 1994)—an urban square. Second, this work looks for a direct link between gender preference and elements of the built environment, hopefully offering more feasible design guidance for future gender-inclusive open space design. Third, to bridge the gap between interactive and qualitative research, this study uses intensive interviews to understand the reasons behind observed gender separation.
San Francisco’s Chinatown district is one of the oldest and most established Chinatowns in the United States. Since its founding in 1848, it has had a significant influence on the history and culture of Chinese immigrants in North America. It still functions as an ethnic enclave that continues to retain its customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity. It serves as a tourist destination and as temporary and long-term homes for new immigrants. San Francisco’s Chinatown has a relatively high crime rate and low median household income but provides abundant employment and housing opportunities (Table 1). Gender inequities in Chinatown can be observed in the fact that median women’s earnings are much lower than that of men in Chinatown compared with San Francisco and California as a whole (Table 1).
Statistics of San Francisco Chinatown Compared to City of San Francisco and State of California
Portsmouth Square, established in 1848, was the first public square in the city of San Francisco. It underwent two major renovations in 1971 and in 1987. The first renovation included adding a bridge to connect the park to the Chinese Culture Center across the street. In the second renovation, an underground parking structure was placed beneath the park and elevators were added for access. Chess tables, play structures, benches, a new community room, and landscaping were integrated during this second renovation, with programmatic and symbolic references to Chinese culture integrated with the design (Figures 1 and 2). The park was reopened to the public in 2001. There are several historical landmarks and statues in the plaza design, such as the Liberty Pole, a central fountain, and three landmarks related to California history.
Existing site photo of Portsmouth Square (Photo by author).
Base plan of Portsmouth Square.
METHODS
The methodology used in this research included quantitative and qualitative approaches, occurring in three distinct phases: direct observation, behavior mapping, and interviews (Figure 3). The overall fieldwork process went from autumn 2016 to spring 2019. In the first phase, direct observation was used to generate preliminary findings on the basic patterns of the urban square usage. This process began in autumn 2016, with a visit frequency of approximately once every two months. The observations happened at different times of day, and every observation lasted about half an hour. At this phase, the researcher was observing general trace usage patterns in the plaza to develop a corresponding methodical recording procedure for the later phases (Zeisel, 2006). The observations also generated primary findings that became a valuable source for ideas and insights later.
Methodology flow.
In June 2018, the project moved to the second phase, which included detailed observation, behavior mapping, and quantitative GIS analysis of the behavior mapping results. Behavior mapping is “an unobtrusive, direct observational method for recording the location of subjects and measuring their activity levels simultaneously” (Cosco, Moore, & Islam, 2010: 514). As Cosco, Moore, and Islam (2010) suggest, behavior mapping is not a tool for creating generalizable results but a method for collecting information. To better understand the relationships between where people were located and their surrounding physical environment, we began a routine five-hour investigation on varying days of the week to understand detailed mobility and occupation patterns in this urban square (Table 2). Eight visits were made, recording a total of 40 hours of detailed observations.
Phase Two Observation Schedule
Observation notes and behavior sketches were recorded during each visit. In addition, behavior maps were created when the population movement in the park was relatively low, and people’s behaviors were stable. During phase two of the research, a total of 2,565 points were hand-recorded on 10 separate analog maps during the on-site behavior mapping, reflecting the usage on different times of the day and different days of the week (see Figure 4 for an example). When the field research was finished, the points of four maps were digitized in ArcGIS for further quantitative analysis. The other six maps were not digitized because the pattern of the points were repetitive of the ones that were selected. In each map, the Moran’s I value was calculated to indicate the spatial autocorrelation pattern for gender attributes. Moran’s I is a correlation coefficient that measures the overall spatial autocorrelation of the data set, meaning, how one object is similar to the others surrounding it. In our case, it revealed how likely a female park occupant is to gather with another woman, thus objectively illustrating gendered clustering. For the behavior mapping process, we acknowledge that the generated maps does not imply the possible behaviors in all seasons or under all weather conditions. We also want to acknowledge that observer’s determination of “Chinese” and “women” might not be how the individual self-identifies.
Example of behavior mapping notes from fieldwork. Each point represents one human occupant of the plaza.
In early 2019, the research moved to the third phase, which included semi-structured interviews aimed at interpreting the gender clustering patterns uncovered in phase two. During the interview process, two Cantonese speakers and one native Mandarin speaker conducted the interviews. The interviewers were Asian women between the ages of 21 and 30. To make the interviewees more comfortable with the process, no audio recorder was used. To take notes, one interviewer used a laptop to type down the words during the interview. The interviewees were approached randomly in the park. Almost all the people approached agreed to be interviewed, although some were more willing to share than others. For the interview questions, participants were asked why they prefer to use the space they were occupying and why they believe people use differing spaces in the plaza (see Table 3 for specific prompts). Each interview lasted about 15 to 30 minutes. Because the interview was semistructured, the direction of the conversation was guided by the interviewee. Some questions were skipped if the interviewee expressed concerns about their privacy.
Sample Interview Questions
Thirty-five people, including men and women between the ages of 20 and 90, were interviewed (Table 4). After the interviews were digitized, the researchers used deductive coding to classify the answers based on keywords that appeared in previous literature (e.g., “fear,” “on-display”). However, we found that several answers did not fit into those predetermined keywords. In the end, an inductive coding process approach was used, in which the codes and themes were generated from raw data. In total, two rounds of coding were performed, with the first round being more preliminary, using codes such as “tree shade,” “airflow,” or “noise levels,” and the second round more generalized, summarizing the codes from the first round, such as “environmental preferences.” This grounded theory approach resulted in two large categories that encompassed all answers, with multiple small categories in those two larger categories.
Interviewee Summary
RESULTS
The research generated results including notes on park usage pattern, hand-drawn behavior maps, and interview responses. For this article, we focus on the two that are most related to gender issues and design guidelines: (1) the quantitative analysis of the behavior mapping, which supports the preliminary finding of “gender separation” from the direct observation phase (Figure 5a and 5b), and (2) the reasons behind this phenomenon—developed from the interviews and coding analysis.
Female-dominated entrance space on the northwest corner (Photo by author).
Male-dominated lower deck space (Photo by author).
Geospatial Data Analysis
The spatial autocorrelation reports generated by four analyzed behavior maps (Table 5) indicated a less than 1% likelihood that the clustered patterns observed at different times of the day could be the result of random chance. This result revealed that points identifying female occupants and points identifying male occupants were each spatially clustered. The analysis supports the preliminary observations that female occupants mostly gathered in single-gender clusters, and a similar clustering occurred among male occupants. Thus, there is clear gender separation occurring between the occupants in Portsmouth Square. In addition, in all the maps analyzed, female park occupants were rarely shown to use the space in the lower deck (Figure 6).
Spatial clustering of park occupants by gender.
Spatial Autocorrelation Report Results
In addition to evidence of gendered clustering, four other findings emerged from the behavior mapping and analysis process:
In three of the four observations, men’s territoriality covers a larger area than that of women.
In most of the observation times, men outnumbered women in the square about two to one.
Women rarely use the lower deck layer of Portsmouth Square. During observations, there were only a few times when a woman stepped down to the lower deck. This was either to exercise on the soft surface of the playground, to sit on the bench for chat, or to walk through to get somewhere else.
Although some activities can be shared for both genders, some activities are dominated by one group or the other. For example, chess is viewed as a men’s game in Chinese culture, and square or street dancing is mostly practiced by women.
Interview Results and Analysis
Among the interviewees, three were categorized as tourists who did not know much about Chinatown and were just there on that day. Ten were visitors who live in nearby neighborhoods or reside in a nearby city but hang out in the square to meet friends, participate in regular events, or watch cultural activities. The other 22 were residents in Chinatown. The amount of time that they lived in the neighborhood varied, from 1 year to more than 60 years. For the interviewees who are Chinatown residents, they usually know the people they sit in a cluster with but do not know the people who sit nearby but outside their cluster.
The interview results revealed some of the reasons behind the gender segregation patterns observed in earlier phases. Four key findings emerged from the inductive coding of the interviews.
Women more consciously choose their sites as compared with men.
Women’s site selections in the park are more constrained than those of men.
The rationale given for gender separation differs between men and women.
Voluntary and involuntary rationales for gender separation exist.
Women more consciously choose their sites as compared with men
One discovery from this study is that compared with men, women were able to articulate more specific reasons for why they chose their location in the park. This suggests that they consciously and deliberately chose their location. All interviewed women had a clear response when asked why they chose to occupy their specific location instead of others. Some specific answers included: “I came here with kids, and kids like to play in this playground”; “This is close to the bathroom”; and “The ventilation is better on this side.” In contrast, when the same question was posed to men, their responses included: “I don’t know”; “I saw people playing chess here”; and “I am walking everywhere.” This demonstrates less of an awareness of the site and social conditions that influence men’s choice of park occupation or even the recognition of a choice being made.
Women’s site selections in the park are more constrained than those of men
The analysis of the interviews revealed that women in this small open space are subject to more constraints when choosing their spots to occupy, whether they are sitting, standing, or engaging in other programs. Among the 21 female interviewees, 4 indicated that they came to the square with children, which limited them to certain programmatic areas, such as the playground. Three women claimed that their occupation of the park was merely a break from grocery shopping or other household duties. In comparison, none of the 14 men interviewed expressed any effects to their site selection or park occupation as a result of household or familial duties. On the contrary, many indicated that they came to the park to “just kill the boredom.”
This finding also relates to the aforementioned discovery of men’s versus women’s scale of territoriality in the park. In addition, the research revealed significant temporal discrepancies between men’s and women’s occupation of the park. Our behavior mapping suggested that women spent less time overall in the square. This was later supported by the occupant interviews in which women indicated a need to leave the plaza typically by 4:00 p.m. to either cook, attend to child care, or other domestic duties. Men tended to continue occupying the park until sunset (typically 5:00 or 6:00 p.m.). When asked how long they tend to stay at the park, the majority of women interviewed indicated roughly 30 minutes to a few hours, while many of the men interviewed indicated an occupation of the park for over 3 hours.
The rationale given for gender separation differs between men and women
Both male and female park occupants claimed that they noticed gender separation at Portsmouth Square when interviewed; however, the rationale for this separation differed between men and women. In general, responses from the interviewed men suggested that women’s preferences result in the separation, as demonstrated with the following examples: “they don’t like us smoking,” “we played different kinds of cards, you know, they like to play ‘Zhajinhua’ and we like to play ‘Doudizhu’”. In contrast, the women shared more complicated reasons behind the separation. Some referred to individual preferences, like air, shade, and enclosure levels, but other responses suggest obstacles, duties, and barriers.
Voluntary and involuntary rationales for gender separation exist
Analysis of interview responses revealed two rationales for separation: involuntary and voluntary (Table 6). “Involuntary separation” refers to an unintentional separation of plaza users by differing genders and appears to occur as the result of the accessibility or inaccessibility of specific spaces. “Voluntary separation” refers to same-gender clustering that occurs as the result of individual choices.
Observed Gender Separation Typologies
The interviews revealed that voluntary gender separation relates to preferences for specific activities or programming, environmental factors created by designed features (such as air flow, tree shade, noise level, and distance to entrances), and cultural or personal judgments (such as individuals wishing to distance themselves from behaviors such as smoking, yelling, and gambling).
Unlike voluntary separation caused mostly because of individual needs and preferences, involuntary separation is caused primarily by the park’s physical space design. For example, two interviewed women indicated that they typically use the park for half an hour, in between household duties and often while carrying a significant amount of grocery bags. As a result, the staircases prevent their access to some locations in the park. This inaccessibility experienced by many women occupants is best illustrated by the specific interview response: “It is impossible for me to get to the lower deck. Did you see all the stuff I carried with me? Many other women are the same. You did your grocery shopping, and you have a couple of kids. You dropped off your stuff to take a rest while asking the children to use the restroom.” In addition, three women articulated that their childcare responsibilities and a need to watch children playing in the west end of the park limited their ability to approach other features, such as the gathering center or performance area on the east end.
CONCLUSIONS
The research generally reaffirms earlier findings by Louis Mozingo (1989) that men and women have different preferences in open spaces and have different concepts of optimum public space experiences. In Mozingo’s downtown San Francisco study, women were looking for relief from environmental stress, whereas men were seeking environments that provide intense and unpredictable social interactions. In this Portsmouth Square study, women were seeking a place to take a break from their duties or meet with friends for socialization, while men were looking for activities to “kill time,” to engage with other people, or as a routine in their everyday life. Similar to Franck and Paxon’s (1989) conclusion that women are not free in urban spaces, this study found out women’s choices or selections were not all because of individual preferences but were a result of childcare duty, time constraints, the burden of personal belongings and grocery shopping bags, and fear of getting into trouble.
This research demonstrates how the gender-segregated use of an urban plaza directly reflects the social dynamics of the cultural enclave. For example, the gendered cultural association of certain activities is directly reflected in the separation of men and women in Portsmouth Square. The chess tables are only surrounded by men because it is viewed as a maledominant activity, while group chatting is mostly practiced by women. Although both men and women play poker, they tend to play different games due to culture. In addition, the cause of this gender and social separation is not just related to programmatic differences but is also a reflection of social structures, the embodiment of cultural philosophy, and the plaza users’ personal values.
Of most use to professional designers are the insights into the role design plays in shaping women’s daily experience of public space. There were four cases of gender separation uncovered by interviews in our brief observation time (three involuntary and one voluntary) that were directly affected by the design of the built environment. First, despite the inclusion of ramps, elevation changes in the park still functioned as physical barriers for women burdened with shopping bags. Second, the restroom location was mentioned multiple times in the interviews, especially for women who come to the square with children. Third, designed separation of programmatic functions in the park contributes to involuntary separation. Finally, we observed that the playground’s location in Portsmouth Square was far from the performance stage, preventing women with childcare responsibilities from engaging with Chinese operas or other live shows happening on the west side of the park (see Figure 7).
Four design-related features that cause gender separation.
The gender separation in Portsmouth Square also reflects gender inequity with regard to imbalanced domestic work, especially in Chinese culture. In the interviews, most Chinese women described multiple household responsibilities, including food preparation, childcare, and buying groceries, even when they held one or more jobs. Those additional household duties can be significant constraints, preventing women from using the public space to the same degree as their male counterparts. This restriction of use is both territorial and temporal, as described in the results. This suggests an important responsibility when designing public spaces: designers need to consider park occupants’ lives beyond their observed use patterns, taking into account societal roles, daily experiences, and other cultural effects on their daily behaviors.
This research sheds light on occupant usage of one particular plaza in an urban cultural enclave and the effect of environmental design and sociocultural structures on gendered use of public space. Because this study only examines one plaza in an ethnic enclave, the results do not imply similar findings elsewhere. In fact, this might be a distinct case in gender-related behaviors in public spaces. However, we believe it helps us understand how culture and gender can intersect and the coexistence of negotiation and conflicts when discussing the right to city spaces.
The spatial pattern discovered from this research may be unique, but the methods and findings of this work can be transferred to other public space studies in a number of important ways. We found that gender separations in public spaces are not always voluntary and based on individual preferences. Gender separation can be attributable to a combination of physical features and life context. Therefore, physical space design can exacerbate gender separation, resulting in inequitable experiences of public space. Design elements that may reinforce gender separation include stairs, elevation changes, program distances, and proximity to facilities. In this case, the combination of these physical elements with the everyday tasks that women undertook, such as child care and grocery shopping, created differential site use within the park. When we learn about environmental psychology, one cannot leave aside the social and geographical environment. On the contrary, behaviors in a small plaza can reflect the cultural construction of society as a whole.
Through a combination of behavior mapping and interviews, this research considered cultural and gendered identities of occupants and exposed a more nuanced use of public space and its potential implications for urban design professions. We hope this article encourages ongoing explorations of the inter-sectionality of identities in future environment and behavior studies to ensure equitable design of parks for all users in cities.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Yiwei Huang developed the theoretical formalism, conducted the fieldwork, and collected and analyzed the research data. Yiwei Huang and N. Claire Napawan verified the analytical methods and consolidated the result summaries. Both authors contributed to the literature review and the final version of the manuscript. An earlier version of this article appeared as a chapter in Yiwei Huang’s PhD dissertation.
PEER REVIEW STATEMENT
This submission was peer-reviewed by three reviewers. Their contributions are gratefully acknowledged and appreciated.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research process includes human subjects. An IRB approval was granted (#1289779-1 University of California, Davis) before the research was conducted. This research is funded by a Henry Jastro Research Award from UC Davis.
We thank two undergraduate students, Cheuk-Kwan Lau and Joyce Tse, for being the Cantonese translators. We thank Yuhan Huang for technical help on the quantitative analysis stage. We express our gratitude to all the reviewers and Landscape Journal editors who have critiqued and commented on this research.
