Leslie Kern - Feminist City

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Feminist City is a damning stab at the subtle and overt manipulation of women in urban spaces. Kerns interwoven references to her personal experience through childhood, adulthood, and motherhood make her deeply researched and whip-smart work infinitely readable. Kern shows that the ability of all women to exploit the city fully is a valuable, necessary gauge for city worth.

Lezlie Lowe, author of No Place To Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs

How do we begin to reckon with and ultimately reimagine our public realm in the #MeToo era? We can start by lifting up a greater diversity of experiences and voices that influence our thinking about what makes a place equitable, fun, accessible, safe, and dynamic for all. Kerns exploration is honest, timely, and intentional in acknowledging the work of womenfellow urbanists and othersin advancing the feminist city.

Lynn M. Ross, AICP, urban planner and feminist

Feminist City is the next-generation urbanism book Ive been waiting for! Leslie lays out a comprehensive guide to feminist world-building that our cities so desperately need. A must-read for all city officials and budding urbanists alike as we move into the female future of our urban environments.

Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, MUS, urban
anthropologist and adjunct professor, Lindy Institute
for Urban Innovation, Drexel University; co-founder
of The Women Led Cities Initiative

Leslie Kern provides a refreshingly clear analysis of contemporary urban life. Feminist City seamlessly weaves together theory and lived experience, revealing again and again just how essential feminist geographic thought is to understanding urban space. Feminist City is a book to be shared and discussed by anyone who loves cities.

Lauren Hudson, SolidarityNYC

This volume definitively establishes Kern as a leading and impassioned voice in the second generation of North American feminist urban geography. Kern deftly and refreshingly interweaves her personal biographical narrative and a synthesis of feminist urban scholarship to capture the tensions between city-as-barrier and city-as-possibility that continue to infuse so many womens daily urban experiences.

Damaris Rose, honorary professor of social geography and urban studies, Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Montreal, Quebec

I wish I could have read this book years ago. The experiences Kern reflects upon are ubiquitous, if not universal. Kern blends the best of academic literature with popular culture references to explore the ways in which urban space is gendered. Reading the book is a pleasure, like a deep conversation with a wise friend.

Winifred Curran, professor of geography, DePaul University

This eBook is licensed to tristan cleofe, cleofe.tristan@gmail.com on 08/15/2020

This eBook is licensed to tristan cleofe, cleofe.tristan@gmail.com on 08/15/2020

This edition published by Verso 2020
First published in Canada in 2019 by Between
the Lines, Toronto, Canada
www.btlbooks.com

Leslie Kern 2019, 2020

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Verso

UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
versobooks.com

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-981-8

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-983-2 (UK EBK)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-984-9 (US EBK)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available
from the Library of Congress

Design by Ingrid Paulson
Author photograph by Mitchel Raphael
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

This eBook is licensed to tristan cleofe, cleofe.tristan@gmail.com on 08/15/2020

For Maddy

This eBook is licensed to tristan cleofe, cleofe.tristan@gmail.com on 08/15/2020

CONTENTS

This eBook is licensed to tristan cleofe, cleofe.tristan@gmail.com on 08/15/2020

Id like to thank everyone at Between the Lines Books and in particular my editor Amanda Crocker, for enthusiastically saying yes to this book and supporting me throughout the publication process. The team included Chelene Knight, Rene Knapp, David Molenhuis, and Devin Clancy.

I tend to keep my projects pretty close to my chest until theyre nearly done (its a Scorpio thing), but I want to thank those folks who gave me early encouragement and advice as I let the news trickle out: Erin Wunker, Dave Thomas, James McNevin, Caroline Kovesi, and Pamela Moss.

The fierce, creative, rigorous, and engaged community of feminist geographers has been my intellectual home for many years now and I could never do this work without their work. Our gatherings, conferences, and book parties are so meaningful to me. Ive been especially lucky to have Heather McLean, Winifred Curran, Brenda Parker, Roberta Hawkins, Oona Morrow, Karen Falconer Al Hindi, Tiffany Muller Myrdahl, Vannina Sztainbok, and Beverley Mullings as friends, co-authors, and collaborators.

My mentors and advisors from graduate school continue to inspire me and Im grateful for everything theyve done to help me succeed: Sherene Razack, Helen Lenskyj, Gerda Wekerle, and Linda Peake.

My colleagues and students at Mount Allison University have fostered a warm and invigorating environment for my work over the last ten years. Special shout out to everyone whos ever taken Gender, Culture, and the City: this book is a pure distillation of what a particularly-engaged cohort once called Kernography. Our conversations helped frame the goals for this book.

My urban and not-so-urban adventures have been filled with fun and sisterhood and travel and tattoos and cheese and impractical footwear because of my two girl gangs, the Pink Ladies of Toronto and the Sackville Lady Posse. In order of appearance in my life: Jennifer Kelly, Kris Weinkauf, Katherine Krupicz, Sarah Gray, Cristina Izquierdo, Michelle Mendes, Katie Haslett, Jane Dryden, Shelly Colette, and Lisa Dawn Hamilton.

Ive always had the unfailing support of my family, including my parents, Dale and Ralph, and my brother Josh, as well as a big network of extended familybiological and otherwise. My partner Peter makes the coffee every morning, which basically allowed me to write every word of this book. My daughter Maddy is an absolute light. I love you all and deeply appreciate everything you do for me.

This eBook is licensed to tristan cleofe, cleofe.tristan@gmail.com on 08/15/2020

I have an old picture of my little brother and I surrounded by dozens of pigeons in Londons Trafalgar Square. Im guessing from our matching bowl cuts and bell-bottom corduroys that its 1980 or 1981. Were happily tossing out seeds that our parents purchased from a little vending machine in the square. You wont find those machines anymore because feeding the pigeons is strictly frowned upon, but back then it was one of the best parts of our trip to visit my dads family. We were in the centre of everything, our excitement palpable. In our glowing faces I see the beginning of our mutual lifelong love of London and city life.