S5E4: Exploring the gendered city... Nourhan Bassam, Founding Director, The Gendered City
Guest
Nourhan Bassam
In conversation with
Stephanie Fortunato
Our host, Stephanie Fortunato, talks to Nourhan Bassam, Founding Director of The Gendered City. They discuss the necessity to rethink how cities can be more socially inclusive, the role Cultural Districts can play in promoting that inclusivity, and the many inspiring initiatives Nourhan is championing to push feminist urbanism forward.
Date of Recording
13 March 2025
Date of Publication
10 April 2025
[00:00:00]
Nourhan Bassam: As women, we are perceived as women first, before we are professionals or before being a human in the spatial sphere.
[00:00:09]
THEME MUSIC
[00:00:14]
Stephanie Fortunato: Hello and welcome to The Three Bells. This podcast is one of a series brought to you by AEA Consulting for the Global Cultural Districts Network, in which we explore what's happening around the world on those busy, and sometimes congested intersections of cultural and urban life. I'm your host, Stephanie Fortunato, Director of Special Projects for GCDN.
And today I'm thrilled to welcome Nourhan Bassam, an architect, urban designer, professor, social entrepreneur, and feminist urbanist at the forefront of a movement asking cities to do better.
Nourhan uses a mix of historical evidence, personal experience, and interviews in her advocacy for a woman's right to the city. The Gendered City, her 2023 book which has grown into an organisation, focuses on stories that reverberate across cultures, many which, I have to say, really resonated with me personally.
While my experience of cities is largely grounded in a gender-centric understanding, Nourhan consistently takes an intersectional feminist approach to urbanism that seeks to address the vestiges of traditional power dynamics within cities which have perpetuated the segregation of public and private spaces for many marginalised groups, including women and girls.
Between these firsthand experiences and the data that supports them, Nourhan’s work exposes how cities around the world have been physically organised around the dominant culture's needs and biases, and how this excludes and marginalises huge percentages of the population, limiting full participation in civic and community life and cultural expression.
Just as real people's stories humanise her research and scholarship, Nourhan’s organising work blends models from grassroots movements in which she has participated, including second-wave feminism, placemaking, and social entrepreneurship.
[00:02:03]
Stephanie Fortunato: Each of these growing collaborative efforts aimed at empowering individuals through the strength of networks for systems change.
She's a bit of a serial entrepreneur, and the list of projects and organisations that she has helped to found is long, as you'll hear today. I think this speaks to her longstanding desire for cities to be better, to be more just, equitable, and sustainable for all. A challenge that in itself first requires a cultural shift, which is why I'm so pleased to welcome her to The Three Bells.
Hello, Nourhan!
[00:02:34]
Nourhan Bassam: Hey. Hey, Stephanie. Wow. Thank you for this introduction.
…
About our Guest
Nourhan Bassam, a feminist urbanist and architect with a Ph.D. in Urban Design and Placemaking, is the visionary behind "The Gendered City" which started as a book and grew into an organization. The Gendered City works on diverse feminist urban projects and research fields all centered on creating just and gender-equal cities through feminist placemaking and active citizen participation. +
