Pauses in spatiality
You are walking down the street, passing down the building on your side with every step. Feel your body in relation to the trees, grounded yet light.
See your body's reflection flickering on the shop windows, a brief moment where the bodies interact with each other, merging into the glass.
Can you hear the bodies stomping their feet in the pools of water, the taps of water droplets falling from remnants of ice on the roofs complementing the pulse of the traffic lights?
Can you hear the splashing of the water fountain? As your fingers touch the water, a cool sensation spreads across your skin. Take a few minutes to breathe, to reflect on your body, how your body belongs to the space, how it feels in relation to the space, how it interconnects to every body around the space.
Do you see the moss weaving into the dark alleyways, reshaping the stiffness of the city with lush greenish softness? Reclaiming the spatiality as it moves.
Cities are growing and changing, reflecting a shifting balance between preservation of the old and embracing the progress of the new. Geography is changing. Spatiality is changing. Yet this alteration is not simply a matter of urban planning, it is about forces that control access to space, resources and power. Usually following a patriarchal pattern, these changes prioritize wealth and exclusivity at the expense of those who have long called these spaces home. These changes are in no way neutral; they reflect the power dynamics apparent in our societies․ From aggressive gentrification, environmental degradation affecting green and blue zones to water exploitation, these alterations erode the right of inhabitants to live and belong to their spaces. Yet this tendency is not ascribed to one town, city or country; it’s a global phenomenon. As populations continue to migrate to urban areas, cities are expected to grow extensively, making it a crucial necessity to have a mindful and holistic approach to urban planning for the future. An approach that prioritizes inclusivity and sustainability.
Our cities are patriarchy written in stone, brick, glass and concrete.
-Jane Darke
What would it mean to live in a city that reflects this inclusivity and interconnectedness, a city where identity, memories, movement, and bodies are seen as integral parts of the whole, not as separate or commodified?
This is where feminist urbanism and hydrofeminism come together and challenge traditional urban development and environmental management, examining the intersections of space, gender, mobility, and sustainability. By revealing how urban spaces and nature, especially bodies of water, are shaped by systems of power and inequality, these frameworks prompt us to question who truly has access to the city, whose interests dominate urban planning, and how the exploitation of the environment mirrors social hierarchies. Ultimately, these perspectives advocate for a more inclusive, equitable approach to urban design and environmental care, one that recognizes the interconnectedness of all bodies, spaces, and ecosystems while working to dismantle the structures of control governing both urban environments and the water resources upon which they depend.
Feminist urbanism challenges the systems that have created inequality and exclusion in cities, calling for a city that listens to the needs of its people, a city that ensures safety and accessibility for all. Hydrofeminism, on the other hand, builds on feminist theories to explore how water, much like our bodies, is entangled with power, gender, and social structures. Connecting water, bodies, and environmental matters, it seeks to view water as more than just a resource but as a site of resistance, a metaphor for fluidity and transformation in the fight for justice and sustainability and climate change. This topic also encourages us to rethink the role of water in the city and apply an aqueous lens - a form of imagination to fuel hope and desire for transformative action.
We, too, are bodies of water - porous, interconnected with narratives and ecosystems beyond ourselves.
The concept of body in hydrofeminism has a vast and fluid understanding - one that shares deep parallels and intersections between women’s bodies and water bodies; both are nourishing entities yet are also frequently subjected to violence. In this process of control and dispossession, bodies of water and women’s bodies have become sites of control and exploitation. Water is canalized, privatized, and stripped from its natural course, just as bodies are subjected to force, coerced into change, and denied autonomy. The mechanisms that control water mirror the systems that seek to dominate and suppress human bodies. Yet, water does more than flood, it sustains. It carries within it the capacity to nurture, to heal, to embody compassion and solidarity. It reminds us of coexistence, understanding, and mutual care.
A crucial aspect of this reimagining is viewing the city as a site of care, an idea that can be framed through the four stages of care outlined by Tronto and Fisher: caring about, caring for, care giving, and care-receiving. These stages serve as a helpful framework for thinking about how urban spaces can evolve to embrace justice, equality, and sustainability. They are guided by the moral values of attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness, principles that call on us to design cities that support, sustain, and nurture all bodies within them. When applied to the urban context, these stages help us rethink the city as a compassionate, responsive space where care for people and the environment is integral to how the city functions.
Cities are not neutral. Risen from histories of power, they’re built for some bodies and not others. To break this pattern of inequality, we must listen to the needs of the bodies that are often excluded, bringing us to the first stage of care: caring about - identifying the needs of marginalized bodies within the urban space. The urban space is filled with needs of women bodies, needs of bodies with disabilities, needs of queer bodies, yet these needs are silenced, ignored and unaccounted for. Feminist urbanism in this context calls for a city that demands safety beyond surveillance, that makes itself accessible beyond just compliance, and is inclusive to all beyond just symbolic gestures. A feminist city recognizes the disparities ascribed to space, of which bodies can move freely and which bodies are shadowed.
But recognition alone is not enough. Care must move from awareness to action. This brings us to the second stage: caring for - the responsibility to respond to these needs by shaping a city where everyone, regardless of gender, identity, or ability, can move freely and exist with dignity. Caring for the city means designing spaces that center on people rather than control them. It means ensuring that streets, transportation, and public spaces actively support safety, rest, and accessibility. Yet, this does not necessarily refer to a top-down approach. Cities are not shaped only by policy and planning, they are constantly rewritten through the everyday movements of those who live in them. Everyday acts of movement and resistance reshape urban life, just as urban theorist Michel de Certeau describes this as spatial practices - the ways people rewrite the city through their daily lives. A feminist city acknowledges these acts, recognizing that urban space is not static but constantly redefined and reshaped by us, its inhabitants.
In the context of care, water holds a central place, not only as a life-sustaining force but also as a body that is often controlled, commodified, and reshaped by systems of power. Thus, when we speak of care, we must pay particular attention to water bodies and their vulnerabilities.
Water does not yield to boundaries; it slips through, over and under, reshaping its body and the bodies around it as it moves through. Much like cities, bodies of water are constantly shifting and transforming. Hydrofeminism offers a perspective calling for a more sustainable and inclusive vision that sees water not as a resource to be controlled but as a vital, life-sustaining force. Both frameworks reveal the interconnectedness of spatial justice and water justice, demonstrating how bodies, cities, and ecosystems are shaped by power, resistance, and change.
Which bodies are becoming more dangerously parched due to what I pump out of the watery earth?
- Astrida Neimanis
As we navigate through these interconnected systems, we are led to the third stage of care - care giving - the actual work, reflected in the action of preserving and sustaining water, not as a resource to be controlled but as a body that sustains and remembers. A care(full) space actively tends to water systems, ensuring equitable access and working to rectify historical injustices, violation of water rights, displacement of communities and the contamination of water sources. To better understand this, we can look at the rematriation of rivers - a concept rooted in Indigenous feminist principles, which involves restoring and protecting rivers to re-establish ecological and cultural balance. Rematriation is an act of care that seeks to rebuild our relationship with water. It asks: Whose memories and stories are submerged when rivers are dammed, redirected or stolen? Leading us to reinstate not just ecological balance but justice. The act of restoring water to its rightful place is not just about ecological sustainability but also about healing the wounds of historical exploitation and creating spaces where communities can thrive.
This concept of rematriation leads directly to the final stage of care. Care-receiving is about the responsiveness of the caring, to address how communities affect and are affected by the action. In the context of cities, the communities most vulnerable to ecological damage, such as those displaced by pollution or water rights violations, respond to these efforts of care, and through these actions, they experience a form of healing and restoration. The city, through policy and collective action, becomes a space where care is received, where the environment’s restoration directly benefits the people who have long been marginalized and oppressed by environmental harm․ Care-receiving in this context involves a city’s response to the healing and repair of water systems, actively tending to rivers and other bodies of water. It’s not just about environmental sustainability but about creating spaces where all bodies, human and non-human alike, can thrive. Through this process, cities can move towards a more just, sustainable, and compassionate future, where care is reciprocal and restorative.
To imagine a city through a feminist and aqueous lens is to dissolve its rigidities. It is to build with adaptation in mind, to recognize interdependence and value care more than production leading to exploitation. It is to ask: Who decides which bodies are visible or which needs are prioritized? Which waters run free? And who holds the right to the city? Lefebvre’s call for the “right to the city” resonates here, not just as access but as a collective reimagining of urban life that centers on care, sustainability, and justice. The four stages of care - attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness are interwoven into the very fabric of these questions, guiding us toward a vision of urban life where every body is given the space and care they need to thrive. Centering around women, migrants, disabled communities, and those too often pushed to the margins, this vision of the care(full) space acknowledges that water archives, resists, and shapes the futures we are yet to build.
A city that cares does not build walls, it restores rivers and feminist urbanism interwoven with hydrofeminism offers not just critique but creation: an invitation to reimagine urban spaces as fluid, just, and alive. The four stages of care provide a lens through which we can understand and enact these transformations, reminding us that the city is not only a place we inhabit but something we shape with every step, every drop, every act of resistance and every act of care.
This series of articles will aim to remind us about the times when the city was shaped and transformed by its inhabitants through protests, interventions, and acts of resistance. It calls for a more conscious exploration of the city through our everyday movements and an active reimagining of a more equitable, care(full) space for the future.
