Author: Erin Sharp Newton

​This year's 2025 World Mental Health Day theme, "Mental Health in Humanitarian Emergencies," underscores the urgent need to support the mental health and psychosocial well-being of people affected by crises. Natural disasters, conflict, and public health emergencies leave deep emotional + neurological + psychological imprints.
 
At the Centre for Urban Design & Mental Health, we focus on how environments profoundly shape mental health outcomes, particularly in contexts of recovery and resilience. Just as cities can negatively impact mental health and well-being, they can also be intentionally designed to restore safety, foster connection, and nurture psychological resilience.

​The Centre's Journal for Urban Design and Mental Health and Sanity + Urbanity Forum are curated to provide valuable insights into urban design and mental health. The work of our large network of people invested in this space reflects a growing recognition that the physical and social fabric of cities plays a central role not only in fostering mental well-being but also in enabling recovery after disruption.
 
The following examples are just some examples that illustrate how researchers, practioners, and stakeholders have approached this challenge.  These examples offer evidence, precedent, and reflection on how the built environment can become both a site of vulnerability and a source of healing:

​As we observe World Mental Health Day 2025, let us reflect on the role of urban environments in shaping mental health outcomes during humanitarian emergencies. It is essential for everyone (including architects, planners, scientists, developers, government officials, health and social care providers, school staff, and community groups) to come together. Through collective, collaborative, compassionate, pro-active and pro-social work, we can ensure the most vulnerable have access to the support they need while protecting the well-being of everyone.

If you are looking to contribute to this ongoing dialogue, consider submitting your work to our platforms:

• Journal of Urban Design & Mental Health (JUDMH): We have an Open Call for Submissions for the peer-reviewed, indexed, open-access journal, inviting research, essays, and reflections exploring how design supports mental health in contexts of crisis, displacement, and recovery.​
• Sanity & Urbanity Forum: We also welcome contributions to our Sanity & Urbanity Forum, for practice-based pieces that capture the intersection of mental health, place, and lived experience.
  ​

Consider your part in developing cities that not only withstand crises but also heal and empower their inhabitants.

Global Resources & History: World Mental Health Day
 
World Mental Health Day has been observed on 10 October since 1992, launched by the World Federation for Mental Health in partnership with the WHO, to advance awareness, reduce stigma, and galvanize advocacy for mental health globally.

• The WHO’s official campaign page gives key facts, past themes, and toolkits for global action.  We have used those themes and hope you will as well:​   
  • World Health Organization
  • WHO – World Mental Health Day (Campaign page & toolkits)

• The United Nations also frames 2025’s theme: “Access to services: mental health in catastrophes and emergencies” emphasizes safeguarding mental health amid crises and ensuring service continuity.  At the United Nations, events and activities are organized each year during the month of October to promote the importance of mental health and well-being. For more information about how to get involved please see: 
  • United Nations
  • UN – World Mental Health Day 2025 “Access to Services”

References
 
Burkly, H. (2019). Washington, D.C., USA: An urban design and mental health case study. Journal of Urban Design & Mental Health, 6(13). Centre for Urban Design & Mental Health.
 
King, J. (2018). Air pollution, mental health, and implications for urban design: A review. Journal of Urban Design & Mental Health, 4(6). Centre for Urban Design & Mental Health. https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/journal-4---air-pollution-and-mental-health.html 
 
McCay, L., Suzuki, E., & Chang, A. (2017). Urban design and mental health in Tokyo: A city case study. Journal of Urban Design & Mental Health, 3(4). Centre for Urban Design & Mental Health. https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/journal-3---tokyo-case-study.html
 
Palti, I. (Ed.). (2016). Conscious cities. Journal of Urban Design & Mental Health, 1. Centre for Urban Design & Mental Health.
 
Shafique, T. (2017). Lonelitopia: How urbanism of mass destruction is crushing the American dream. Journal of Urban Design & Mental Health, 2. Centre for Urban Design & Mental Health. https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/edition-2.html 
 
Ward, K., & Sharp Newton, E. (2018). Applying the concept of Root Shock to urban renewal plans for Charlotte’s Marshall Park. Journal of Urban Design & Mental Health, 5. Centre for Urban Design & Mental Health. https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/edition-5.html
 
Gleizes, S. (2016). The digitalization of traumascapes. Journal of Urban Design & Mental Health*1(6). Centre for Urban Design & Mental Health. https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/journal1-digitaltraumascapes.html 

by Nourhan Bassam PhD (the Feminist Urbanist, and CEO + Co-founder of The Gendered City)

​We are living through an era of layered crises from climate emergencies, housing insecurity, rising authoritarianism, and a deepening mental health epidemic. Cities, instead of being places of refuge and possibility, have become battlegrounds for survival. These crises disproportionately affect women, gender-diverse communities, racialized people, and migrants. Yet the prevailing responses to these challenges often rely on top-down, technocratic fixes that maintain the very systems causing harm.
​
At the same time, we’re witnessing the widespread co-optation of feminist and participatory language. Words like “inclusive,” “safe,” and “resilient” are plastered on urban development agendas, stripped of their radical roots and repurposed to fit status quo planning logics. This calls for a re-grounding in feminist urbanism  -  a practice rooted in care, justice, and community power.

1. Feminist urbanism as counter-system beyond “Add Women and Stir”
​​​
Understanding what it means to be gender-sensitive in life begins with recognizing how gender structures everyday experiences, not as a personal attribute, but as a powerful social force. Over time, theoretical frameworks have increasingly revealed gender not simply as a binary or identity, but as a key organizing principle of society. Gender has been conceptualized as an axis of oppression (Lorde, 1984; King, 1988; Crenshaw, 1989; Collins, 1990), a system of stratification (Connell, 1987; Lorber, 1994; Risman, 1998; Martin, 2004), and more recently, as a deeply embedded social structure (Lorber, 1994; Risman, 1998; Martin, 2004; Risman, 2004).

Barbara Risman, in her foundational work with Davis (2013), frames gender as a multi-level structure operating across three domains: the individual, the interactional, and the institutional. Individually, gender is shaped through lifelong processes of socialization, shaping behavior and self-perception. At the interactional level, societal expectations about gender roles produce cognitive and cultural biases that routinely advantage men and marginalize those outside dominant gender norms. Institutionally, this translates into policy frameworks, urban planning, resource allocations, and legal norms that are often organized around male-centric models of productivity, mobility, and safety - typically excluding the needs and experiences of those engaged in unpaid care work, domestic responsibilities, or vulnerable forms of labor.

It is this persistent neglect and asymmetry that gave rise to feminist urbanism. As cities became the epicenters of inequality, the need to apply gender-sensitive lenses to urban life became critical. Feminist urbanism emerges not just from a critique of patriarchal structures, but from the urgent necessity to reimagine cities as spaces that champion care, equity, and embodied lived experiences. It challenges dominant urban paradigms that privilege infrastructure over intimacy, efficiency over empathy, and profit over people. 

As such, gender is a complex, socially embedded system that shapes lived experiences far beyond binary classifications. This study analyzes textbook definitions of gender to assess whether they conflate gender with sex and to evaluate the scope and depth of their treatment of gender as a multifaceted construct.

At its core, feminist theory constitutes a critical framework for examining gender-based asymmetries and power dynamics. As Kolmar and Bartkowski (2010) describe, feminist theories aim to explain the conditions of women, interrogate gender inequality, and analyze the systemic distribution of privilege and power through the lens of gender. Chafetz (1988) emphasizes the normative dimension of feminist theory, positioning it as a tool to challenge and transform societal structures that marginalize or devalue women.

Charlotte Bunch (1979) proposed a foundational model for feminist theorizing, outlining four essential stages: describing women’s oppression, analyzing its root causes, envisioning alternative realities, and identifying strategies for achieving transformative change. Chafetz (1988) further delineates three defining criteria of feminist theory: gender must be central to the theoretical inquiry; gender relations must be recognized as problematic; and these relations should not be seen as natural or unchangeable.

However, feminist theory has undergone significant evolution, particularly in response to critiques of essentialism. The unifying category of "woman" came under scrutiny during the second and third waves of feminism, as scholars increasingly questioned its universal applicability (Alcoff 1988; Riley 1988; Butler [1990] 2006). This critique led to the diversification of feminist thought, prompting calls for more inclusive and intersectional approaches that account for differences across race, class, sexuality, and gender identity (Lugones & Spelman 1983; hooks 1989; Butler [1990] 2006).

The emergence of intersectionality, as articulated by Crenshaw (1991), marked a pivotal shift in feminist scholarship. Rather than focusing solely on patriarchy, contemporary feminist theory analyzes how multiple axes of identity and power - such as race, class, gender, and sexuality - interact to shape experiences of oppression. In line with this broadened scope, Chafetz’s (1997) updated conceptualization of feminist theory reflects its dual commitment to explaining gender-based disparities and engaging with broader systems of inequality through a sociological lens.

Feminist urbanism is not about adding women to existing structures. It’s about reshaping the very systems of urban governance, planning, and design. It calls for:

• Redistribution of power in decision-making and space allocation
• Recognition of care as foundational to urban life
• Resistance to extractive economies that devalue life and labor

It redefines what counts as infrastructure  -  placing care centers, safe public spaces, accessible transport, and green community hubs alongside traditional “hard” infrastructure like roads and housing.
Examples include:
​

• Bogotá’s Care Blocks, integrating health, childcare, and support services
• Barcelona’s Climate Shelters, gender-aware green spaces for health and heat resilience
• The Gendered City's “Women After Dark” project (and soon-to-be-released book), confronting urban safety as a multidimensional issue-moving beyond surveillance to address the psychological, physical, and embodied toll of nighttime urban environments on women.

2. Co-optation and the hollowing of participation
​
​Too often, “participatory” urbanism becomes a checklist: one public consultation, one token appointment, one report. Feminist urbanism critiques how participation without power reinforces exclusion. The current systems:

• Tokenize gender inclusion without redistributing resources
• Frame women's safety as a matter of individual behavior, not urban form
• Celebrate smart city tech while ignoring lived knowledge
  ​

Feminist urbanism insists on deep engagement, redistribution of resources, and collective authorship of cities.

3. Health, crisis, and the urban body
​
Urban health extends far beyond access to medical infrastructure and sanitation services; it encompasses the embodied experiences of individuals within the urban environment - how they move, interact, breathe, and navigate daily life. Feminist urbanism draws critical attention to how systemic spatial inequalities are deeply intertwined with public health outcomes, particularly for women and other marginalized groups.
​

• Mental Health: Urban environments that are perceived as unsafe, over-policed, or socially alienating contribute to chronic stress, anxiety, and social isolation. The lack of psychological safety in public space disproportionately affects women, gender-diverse people, and youth, influencing both their mobility and sense of urban belonging.
• Physical Health: Gendered mobility patterns - such as trip chaining for unpaid care work - expose women to cumulative physical stressors, including air pollution, inadequate pedestrian infrastructure, and poorly lit or unsafe transport routes. These patterns contribute to fatigue, physical burnout, and elevated health risks over time.
• Social Health: Structural disconnection from social infrastructure - such as accessible public spaces, community networks, and care institutions - impairs social cohesion and access to healing environments. Marginalized groups are frequently excluded from urban areas that foster emotional and cultural well-being, resulting in a form of infrastructural marginalization.
  
  

Feminist urban design promotes:

• Safe, inclusive green spaces for recovery and play
• Collective housing that reduces isolation
• Community-run clinics and support centers
• Urban forms that champion healing, not efficiency

4. A feminist future for cities is not a Utopia   
​
A feminist future for cities is not a utopia  -  it’s a radical necessity. It centers the voices and knowledge of those most excluded. It challenges financial models that prioritize profit over survival. It demands that disaster risk, climate adaptation, and health resilience reflect the priorities of those most affected.
​
Key priorities:

• Institutionalizing gender-responsive planning and budgeting
• Funding grassroots, women-led resilience projects
• Recognizing Indigenous, feminist, and community knowledge
• Creating governance structures with shared power

5. Cities as collective care systems 
​
Transforming Urban Systems  
In response to the co-optation of feminist and participatory discourses in contemporary urban policy, a critical intervention is needed to reassert feminist urbanism not merely as a design ethos, but as a transformative framework for urban governance and infrastructural planning. This approach reframes the city as a collective care system - a spatial and political construct oriented toward equity, interdependence, and wellbeing:

A. Reconceptualizing Infrastructure Through a Care Lens
Traditional urban infrastructure prioritizes mobility, commerce, and growth, often sidelining the essential infrastructures of social reproduction. A feminist approach demands a systemic shift that redefines infrastructure to include health systems, caregiving networks, communal spaces, and emotional safety as core components of the urban fabric. This includes:
​

• Distributed care hubs that integrate childcare, eldercare, health services, and psychosocial support within accessible distances.
• Green, healing-oriented public spaces are designed through inclusive participatory processes and gender-responsive safety audits.
• Infrastructure for relationality - such as collective housing models, co-living arrangements, and public kitchens - to address social isolation and labor imbalances.
  
  

B. Embedding Gender-Responsive Planning in Governance Structures
Urban systems must institutionalize gender equity through gender-responsive planning, budgeting, and impact assessment tools. This includes:

• Systematic gender-disaggregated data collection to inform planning.
• Participatory mechanisms that give decision-making power to marginalized groups, particularly women, LGBTQ+ individuals, racialized communities, and informal sector workers.
• Inclusive metrics of urban success, such as wellbeing indices, caregiving equity, and safety perception surveys, in contrast to GDP-centric growth metrics.
  
  

C. Decentralizing Power and Investing in Grassroots Resilience
Urban governance should devolve planning authority and resources to community-based organizations, particularly those led by women and marginalized groups. This enables locally embedded solutions that are contextually responsive, culturally grounded, and democratically accountable. Priority actions include:

• Long-term, flexible funding mechanisms for grassroots resilience projects, including those addressing climate adaptation, health, food security, and care infrastructure.
• Recognition and integration of indigenous, feminist, and informal knowledges into city planning processes.
• Co-production models in which communities and municipalities share ownership of planning, implementation, and monitoring.
  ​

E. Centering Interdependence and Ecological Justice
A feminist urban care system recognizes the interconnectedness of human and ecological health. This entails moving beyond extractive and technocratic models of urban development toward regenerative approaches that:

• Support climate-adaptive urban ecosystems (e.g., cooling corridors, decentralized water harvesting, community gardens).
• Mitigate environmental burdens disproportionately borne by marginalized communities.
• Frame the urban as an ecological system where care for people is inseparable from care for the planet.

Conclusion

To conclude, cities are not merely physical spaces; they are living, contested contexts where power, identity, and survival intersect. In the face of compounding crises - ecological, political, economic, and psychological - the urgency to reimagine urban life is not aspirational but existential. Feminist urbanism offers not just a critique of the failures of conventional planning but a transformative vision rooted in care, equity, and collective power.

This is not about making cities “better” in abstract terms - it is about fundamentally shifting whose lives are valued, whose knowledge is centered, and whose needs are built into the very fabric of urban space. It calls us to confront how normalized systems of exclusion, extraction, and surveillance shape our built environments - and to dismantle them.

Reclaiming the radical roots of participation, care, and justice, feminist urbanism reframes the city as a collective care system where interdependence is infrastructure, and resilience is grounded in community, not control. It centers those who have been historically pushed to the margins and insists on a redistribution of power, resources, and voice.

To imagine feminist cities is to ask: What if safety meant thriving, not just surviving? What if infrastructure nurtured relationships rather than restricted movement? What if planning were a practice of healing rather than harm?
​
These are not utopian questions. They are practical, necessary, and urgent. Feminist urbanism does not offer a blueprint - it offers a compass. And in a world increasingly shaped by crisis, it points us toward justice, toward dignity, and toward a city that belongs to all of us.

​References
Alcoff, L. (1988). Cultural feminism versus post-structuralism: The identity crisis in feminist theory. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 13(3), 405–436. https://doi.org/10.1086/494426

Bartkowski, F., & Kolmar, W. (2010). Feminist theory: A reader (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.

Bunch, C. (1979). Feminism and education: Not by degrees. Quest: A Feminist Quarterly, 5(2), 27–32.

Butler, J. (2006). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity (Routledge Classics ed.). Routledge. (Original work published 1990)

Chafetz, J. S. (1988). Feminist theory and sociology: Underutilized contributions for mainstream theory. Annual Review of Sociology, 14, 97–120. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.14.080188.000525

Chafetz, J. S. (1997). Feminist theory and sociology: Towards a better dialogue. In R. Adams & N. T. Roscigno (Eds.), Social problems: Readings with four questions (pp. 24–33). Wadsworth Publishing.

Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge.

Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and power: Society, the person and sexual politics. Stanford University Press.

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.

Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039
hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black. South End Press.

King, D. K. (1988). Multiple jeopardy, multiple consciousness: The context of a Black feminist ideology. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 14(1), 42–72.

Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press.

Lorber, J. (1994). Paradoxes of gender. Yale University Press.

Lugones, M., & Spelman, E. V. (1983). Have we got a theory for you! Feminist theory, cultural imperialism and the demand for “the woman’s voice”. Women’s Studies International Forum, 6(6), 573–581.

Martin, P. Y. (2004). Gender as social institution. Social Forces, 82(4), 1249–1273. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2004.0081

Riley, D. (1988). Am I that name? Feminism and the category of "women" in history. Macmillan.

Risman, B. J. (1998). Gender vertigo: American families in transition. Yale University Press.

Risman, B. J. (2004). Gender as a social structure: Theory wrestling with activism. Gender & Society, 18(4), 429–450. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243204265349
​
Risman, B. J., & Davis, G. (2013). From sex roles to gender structure. Current Sociology, 61(5-6), 733–755. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392113479315