The project

A new 'feminist urbanism' for women's cities

From Cosenza to Bologna to Milan, fairer, safer and more accessible urban spaces in the name of gender equality and sustainability

by Donata Marrazzo

27 May 2026

Sex & the City, progettazione Atlante di genere

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

Free Territories
More gender equality in urban policies
The relevance of the Beijing Declaration
15 minutes city and global ecological transition
The Bologna Atlas and the Plan for Equality
In Rome Her Walks, Parma the city of girls
Night walk in Cosenza

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

There is nothing Fellini-like about the new cities of women, but rather an innovative, radical urbanism that considers public spaces from a gender perspective. And it deconstructs the patriarchal model by transforming urban plots into inclusive and safe places.

Free Territories

After Bologna and Milan - the first to request, a few years ago, a research project on the gender perspective and urban design -, Cosenza too is starting to experiment with fairer and more accessible spaces: "Territori Liberi" is a project by Cosmo, a spin-off of the international collective of architects, nomads and creatives "La Rivoluzione delle Seppie" in collaboration with "Cheap", a Bologna-based association dedicated to public art. Special guest the urban planner Azzurra Muzzonigro, founder with Florencia Andreola of the social promotion association Sex & the City, to learn how to look at the city from a feminist and transfeminist perspective. "Because public space is never neutral," Azzurra Muzzonigro explains, "even if until now urban planning standards have referred to a neutral subject that always implied, however, a male identity, universe and body.

More gender equality in urban policies

A change of perspective is spreading so that women's perspectives penetrate urban policies. Asvis, the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development, is also rethinking urban planning and services from a gender perspective. A new vision that 'combines different values that are part of the 2030 Agenda and Goal 5, the one on "gender equality", and that represents a transversal value,' according to president Pierluigi Stefanini.

The relevance of the Beijing Declaration

And it brings back to the present day that policy document that was the 1995 Beijing Declaration on the occasion of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women. A global policy for the inclusion of a gender perspective in policy choices, in all planning, in all government action started from there.

15 minutes city and global ecological transition

"The very concept of smart cities and participatory urban planning," says architect Teresa Gualteri, an urban planner working with Clubs for UNESCO and Asvis on the Sustainable Development Goal dedicated to "Sustainable Cities and Communities", "must involve more women, who are particularly capable of leading a global ecological transition.

It is necessary to move care to the centre of urban planning: new spaces are needed for inclusive models of reception and relations, perhaps even invoking the model of the '15 minutes city', that of the Colombian urban planner Carlos Moreno, professor at the Sorbonne. Which means connecting home and green spaces, work and school, services and public transport by favouring proximity.

The Bologna Atlas and the Plan for Equality

In the Bologna Gender Atlas, curated by Period Think Tank and Sex & the City (soon to be digitally available also that of Parma Ferrara and Verona), data - both local and national - have been scrupulously collected and good practices mapped on the territory, then communicated through narrative. The guidelines for the reduction of the gender gap developed by the European Investment Bank, the cooperation pact for the protection of LGBTQIA+ rights, are just a few examples of the increasing attention paid to women in the city's public policies. Above all, the Metropolitan Equality Plan, involving 55 municipalities and 7 districts, focused on the inequality between paid and unpaid work.

In Rome, Her Walks, Parma the city of girls

In Rome's 8th municipality, Ostiense-San Paolo quadrant, Sex & the City has curated Her Walks, a map of places that represent a resource for women's daily lives and queer subjectivities in the neighbourhood, the result of several exploratory walks "that have enabled a gender perspective to be incorporated into the design of urban space," notes architect Muzzonigro. And in the capital, a miniatlas will soon be available, starting from the 8th municipality and touching on the 7th, 5th and 3rd. While in Parma, for the first time, girls will participate with the architects of Sex & the City in the design of public spaces. In Gallarate, instead, places and emotions have been mapped.

Night walk in Cosenza

Which is a bit what will happen in Cosenza, starting with Bocs Art, an artistic production centre with residences on the city's decaying riverfront. The initiative was pushed by councillor Francesco Alimena, who has earmarked the Urban Agenda programme for the development of the historic centre. The event will continue with a 'night walk', a collective walk designed to question urban spaces. Also present will be architect Rita Adamo, active, after graduating from London University, in many urban regeneration projects: "As a woman and as an architect, I can say that the city at night is never just space," concludes Adamo, one of the founders of the La Rivoluzione delle Seppie collective, "it is perception, attention, speed of step, trajectories chosen or avoided. Bodies crossing the streets. A way of reading the city closely and imagining spaces that are more attentive, accessible and alive'.