Mapping Women NYC
New York City
By Jacqueline Castañeda Nuñez
women in urban space, feminist mapping, spatial justice, public infrastructures
This project aims to visualize how NYC women are served or underserved by public infrastructures, such as transportation and public spaces.
Human settlements around the world are experienced by an infinite number of realities. Nevertheless, there is a tremendous gap between who is conceiving (producing) public spaces and infrastructures and who is living (experiencing) them. Public infrastructures generally reproduce existing power structures in gendered societies; additionally, their design does not support activities and mobilities of everyday life. Women’s bodies are one of the most impacted by this situation; nevertheless, these struggles materialize in different ways, responding to their time, social context, and systems. The objective of this research is to visualize how women’s bodies are served or underserved by public infrastructures, such as transportation and public spaces in New York City to understand their experience in navigating the city.
I started by mapping demographic data of women: population and changes through time, ages, race, type of labor (industry), number of households supported by women, violence rates, and other data sets that will help in further research.
One of the first observations was that almost all data is binary (male/female), which limits and reduces a comprehensive analysis of the situation of all women identified in the city.
Acknowledging this limit (binary data), the first step was to identify where women are situated and the density of women in space.
As a second step, I mapped infrastructure of public use, that suppose to support activities and mobilities of everyday life, such as open public spaces (parks and others), sidewalks, subway lines and stations, bus lines, bike lanes, public seating, bus shelters among others. At this stage, it was very evident how different parts of the city have a lack of presence of public infrastructure.
As a third step, I intersected the density of women’s population with the infrastructure of public use to visualize where and what is the density of women being served or unserved of these infrastructures.
As further steps on this project, I will continue analyzing what types of women’s bodies have or have not accessed to public infrastructures and if these public infrastructures support activities and mobilities of everyday life.
Finally, the aim of the Carto map (work in progress) is to create a platform where women would find organizations, community centers, and women-led community groups within the city that support community capacities, women’s necessities, and development. I visualize that this platform would be transformed into an organizing tool for women in New York City.
Sources: American FactFinder, NYC Fact Finder, NYC Open Data, Data2go