In Women, urban space and public services: the south São Paulo case, Mariel Deak offers a compelling critique of urban planning paradigms that assume a “neutral” user, often modelled on the white, cisgender, heterosexual, economically active male. Deak's qualitative study in the peripheral regions of southern São Paulo reveals how this universalist bias in public policy exacerbates the vulnerability of women, particularly those navigating caregiving responsibilities within disjointed urban infrastructures. Drawing on feminist urban theory and grounded in three months of fieldwork, including interviews with six women, the article uncovers a stark disconnectivity between key public services—health, education, transportation—and the daily routes of women tasked with maintaining household welfare. These discontinuities are not merely logistical failures but structural injustices embedded in spatial governance. The notion of everyday mobility is central: it refers not to exceptional movement but to routine, repetitive, often invisible trajectories that shape women's lives and expose them to heightened risks, such as long commutes, unsafe passages, and inaccessible services. Deak frames these issues through a post-constructivist ontology, where policy is understood as enacted in material practices, not merely in official documents. Concepts like “lived territory” and “multiple ontologies” challenge the dominance of technical rationality and underscore the value of local knowledge and embodied spatiality. The article calls for a radical reorientation of urban governance, one that listens to and plans from the experiences of marginalised groups, particularly women, whose mobility patterns reflect broader gendered geographies of care. In doing so, it pushes for a city that is not only functionally efficient but ethically responsive.
Deak, M. (2019) ‘Women, urban space and public services: the south São Paulo case’, URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 9(1), pp. 33–44.