Gender, Space, and Urban Citizenship: An Intersectional analysis. A comparative study between Milan and Rotterdam

This work aims at delineating a new perspective through which analyse the gendered and spatialized power relations underlying urban life in contemporary cities. In doing this, it presents the results of a comparative research between Milan and Rotterdam, intended to unveil the intersectional processes behind the construction of different models of urban citizenship. The main argument here is, indeed, that women and men construct in different ways their own paths of urban citizenship depending on peculiar intersections of personal characteristics and spatial features of their urban environment. This statement brings three main points which will be discussed and analysed through a new interdisciplinary, gendered, and intersectional perspective: 1) what is urban citizenship? 2) how different is urban citizenship for women and men? 3) how do intersections create these different paths? From these broad questions, smaller issues will be derived and addressed along the work, through the analysis of the spatial practice, the representation of space, the spaces of representation (Lefebvre, 1974) of two groups of 30 interviewees, respectively identified in Milan and Rotterdam. The main results of the work allow highlighting the gendered and spatialised power relations which are at the basis of the different patterns of urban citizenship in the two cities, spreading light on the condition of marginality and exclusion experienced by some people standing at the crossroads of different forms of vulnerability. In particular, in both the case studies women have proved to be socially and politically confined in a grey zone which has been defined as an emotional space, which ranges from a restriction of advocacy power and scope of action, to a complete urban invisibility. The work provides some practical examples and connects them with their local and national policy context.