How to Cite: Pérez Castaño, Laura. "Urban Infrastructure and the Right to Care and Time". Dearq no. 40 (2024): 10-17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq40.2024.02
How to Cite: Pérez Castaño, Laura. "Urban Infrastructure and the Right to Care and Time". Dearq no. 40 (2024): 10-17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq40.2024.02
Laura Pérez Castaño
Master's in Women's Studies, Gender, and Citizenship
Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
The incorporation of a gender perspective in urban design has gained importance since the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on how city layouts can ease caregiving responsibilities and promote gender equality. Feminist urbanism advocates for redesigning cities to prioritize life and social reproduction, emphasizing the need for infrastructure that recognizes the essential role of caregiving and supports the well-being of both caregivers and recipients. This approach highlights the importance of urban policies aimed at reducing the time and effort required for caregiving task.
Keywords: Infrastructure, care, city, gender, time.
The shift in the urban paradigm focuses on the concept of the caring city, with cities that care for us, [...] that allow us to care for ourselves and enable us to care for others.1
Col·lectiu Punt 6, Urbanismo feminista
The integration of a gender perspective in urban design has seen significant global progress since the 1960s and 70s, when gender studies in fields like architecture, urban planning, and geography began to challenge the traditional urban focus on productive work. This approach shaped cities around the home-work commute, historically centered on a masculine, productive figure that follows an economic and market-driven logic dating back to the early 20th century (Czytajlo 2022).
The dominant urban planning model, shaped by a patriarchal framework "in terms of density, urban layouts, infrastructure, and the location of services" (Col·lectiu Punt 6 2019, 97-98), has been built around the concept of the nuclear family and centered on a citizen who is male, white, middle-aged, middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied, and based on the dichotomy between productive and reproductive work. This division prioritizes the productive system over the essential tasks of social reproduction (Carrasco, Borderías, and Torns 2011). As a result, urban planning has focused on public sphere activities, overlooking the needs related to caregiving and the organization of daily life.
Argentine architect Zaida Muxí, co-founder of Barcelona's feminist cooperative Col·lectiu Punt 6, describes feminist urbanism as "a fundamental shift in values," highlighting the importance of "placing life at the center" (Muxí 2018, 14). She emphasizes the need to recognize the diverse populations that shape urban spaces and to incorporate their perspectives in the process of city-building and decision-making. Feminist urbanism aims to prioritize life in urban planning decisions, actively working to eliminate gender inequalities (Col·lectiu Punt 6 2019), by valuing the sphere of social reproduction and acknowledging the centrality of caregiving and reproductive work in public spaces (Rico and Segovia 2017; Montaner 2011).
The way cities expand, urban density patterns, and land use, among other factors, influence how people move through the city (Prado and Kiss 2017). Moreover, the location and distribution of services and infrastructure greatly affect the time needed for daily tasks and the ability to balance work, caregiving, and household responsibilities. Urban sprawl is a global challenge with serious environmental and social consequences, especially due to the increase in vehicular traffic. Integrating ecofeminist principles into urban planning—by promoting compact urban models and equitably redistributing caregiving responsibilities—can help mitigate these negative effects. This approach reduces dependence on motorized transport and encourages a lifestyle aligned with the sustainability of life (Litman 2015).
The spatial organization of caregiving is therefore highly relevant to space-oriented disciplines such as architecture, geography, urban and territorial planning, and transportation design, as well as fields directly related to caregiving. This approach, with Argentine architect Ana Falú as one of its leading figures, highlights the essential link between spatial dimensions and caregiving dynamics. It emphasizes the need to consider both the physical environment and caregiving practices in the design of urban and territorial policies. Falú (2023a) highlights the critical contributions of feminist urbanism to city planning, such as integrating inequality and social inclusion into the core agenda, prioritizing location from neighborhood to metropolitan scales, promoting the proximity of services and facilities at the local level, ensuring accessible transportation and mobility, fostering a sense of safety, making caregiving visible, and actively addressing women's priorities.
Care is a form of work and a responsibility that places a heavy burden on women. Beyond the confines of the domestic sphere, this perspective suggests that domestic tasks and caregiving should not be viewed as solely private household matters but as issues of social and collective responsibility. The International Labour Organization (ILO 2019) acknowledges caregiving as work and categorizes it into two types: direct, personal, and relational care—such as feeding a baby or managing the hygiene of a dependent person—and indirect care activities, like cooking and cleaning. These activities are further classified as either paid or unpaid. According to Pérez Orozco,
Care encompasses activities that sustain and regenerate the physical and emotional well-being of individuals, both daily and across generations. These activities can occur in the realms of the state, the market, the household, or the community. They include direct caregiving (person-to-person interactions), the establishment of preconditions for care (material tasks often linked to domestic work), mental management (organization, supervision, and planning), and availability (being present and ready to assist) (2014, 62).
Gender relations are the organizing principle of caregiving work, leading to an unequal distribution of tasks between men and women (Batthyány 2020). However, this distribution is not uniform and is largely shaped by other factors of inequality, such as social class or origin. This reflects a social organization of caregiving work that is "the result of a long historical process that began to take shape during the transition to liberal capitalism (Carrasco, Borderías and Torns 2011, 159). Thus, Pérez Alonso and Rodríguez (2019) highlight that women with lower socioeconomic status bear the greatest burden, while women in better economic positions have greater access to support resources for caregiving. This chain of care means that some women are able to outsource caregiving responsibilities, typically to other women from impoverished social classes, many of whom are migrants and in precarious situations.
Women's time management, centered around daily caregiving tasks, directly impacts their mobility and presence in public spaces. The need to choose jobs close to home in order to juggle caregiving responsibilities limits their employment opportunities and undermines their economic autonomy. This dynamic has given rise to terms like "double shift" or "triple shift" (Batthyány, 2020), emphasizing the unequal distribution of time between domestic work, paid employment, and leisure, as well as the limited time women have for other aspects of social life.
Pérez Orozco and López Gil (2011) identify three core dimensions of the right to care: the right to receive care, the right to choose whether or not to provide care, and the right to fair and dignified working conditions in care-related jobs. Guitérrez Valdivia (2021) further adds the right to refuse care if it is inappropriate, along with the recognition that care must be acknowledged as a universal right (Batthyány 2020).
In defining care infrastructure, Latin American scholars such as Mazzola and Perotta (2023) emphasize the importance of reducing women's time and workload by transferring caregiving responsibilities to institutions and minimizing commuting times. Segovia (2016) stresses the role of services and infrastructure in women's daily lives, linking it to their economic autonomy and available time. She advocates for territorial planning that harmonizes caregivers' domestic and work schedules (Rico and Segovia 2017). These perspectives highlight the urgent need to reduce the time spent on caregiving and promote women's autonomy through urban planning focused on proximity and access to essential services.
Falú (2023b) defines care infrastructures as the tangible solutions that provide, support, guarantee, or improve care conditions. This holistic approach includes "all infrastructures aimed at ensuring the well-being and the effective exercise of the rights of those receiving direct care (children, adolescents, the elderly, people with disabilities, etc.), as well as those providing care (primarily women, often unpaid or in precarious employment)" (Falú 2023b, 23). This definition also underscores the importance of green spaces—such as parks and recreational areas—in improving mobility and enhancing quality of life for both caregivers and those they care for.
A key aspect of this perspective is the integration of factors such as territorial vulnerability and sociodemographic data into the analysis of care center distribution. The use of care cartographies as a tool for territorial analysis allows for the identification of care infrastructures, service coverage, and the location of related facilities, including complementary public spaces. Mazzola (2022) expands on this classification by focusing on various types of facilities offering direct services, such as healthcare infrastructure, childcare, eldercare, comprehensive protection services for women, gender-diverse individuals, youth centers, and other projects aimed at strengthening the care infrastructure.
While the previous definition focuses on facilities, Jirón Martínez et al. (2022) broaden the concept of care spatialities through a relational lens, emphasizing the need for dedicated care spaces in urban settings. They propose six key dimensions: care recipients, practices, locations, materialities and objects, temporalities, and emotions. By examining these dimensions from a relational spatial perspective, the authors add complexity to the understanding of caregiving and stress the need for specialized urban spaces that extend beyond homes and care facilities. A feminist approach to infrastructure calls for rethinking the hierarchy of activities within urban planning—prioritizing people over material goods, life processes over market interests, and well-being over purely economic considerations (Pérez Orozco 2014).
In her book Feminist City, Canadian author Leslie Kern suggests that local governments should promote public policies and create spaces that make care work and social reproduction "More collective, less exhausting, and more egalitarian" (Kern 2021, 63). Kern also emphasizes how the lack of adequate infrastructure deepens gender inequalities, driving women into poorly paid care work and thus perpetuating cycles of inequality and labor exploitation.
My own enrichment—completing my postgraduate education—depended in part on the availability of poorly paid work by others (in daycare centers, making deliveries), which made me clearly see how the lack of public infrastructure for care work deepens inequality among women, leading us to participate in multiple layers of exploitation just to stay afloat (Kern 2021, 53).
Kern (2021) also highlights that the absence of accessible, comprehensive infrastructure does not affect everyone equally, but instead creates a chain of exploitation within the paid care sector.
The concept of "care mobility" (Sánchez de Madariaga 2009) broadens the traditional understanding of urban mobility by incorporating care-related activities that have often been overlooked in transportation and planning studies. The central role of transportation systems as urban infrastructure, combined with the proximity of service delivery models, is essential to making care work more collective and less burdensome (Kern 2021).
Care-related tasks significantly influence how people navigate the city. For example, a mother might take her children to school, go to work, run errands during lunch (such as shopping or visiting the pharmacy), pick up her children from school, take them to extracurricular activities, visit the library or sports center, and then return home to help with homework and prepare dinner (Sánchez de Madariaga 2009). To design mobility with care in mind, the aim is to create a public transportation network that is both physically and financially accessible, linking essential spaces like work, home, leisure, and sports, without forcing people to spend long hours commuting in overcrowded systems (Col·lectiu Punt 6 2016). Moreover, this type of mobility is more complex due to the overlap of paid and unpaid responsibilities, leading to more unexpected trips—many of them on foot—that are often ignored in traditional statistics. This complexity means women need multifunctional urban spaces that allow them to "navigate and balance their multitasking daily lives" (Zucchini 2016, 72).
Urban distance affects our social relationships. In cities with long distances and difficult commutes, we tend to limit interactions to those geographically close to us, which can fragment communities and reduce diversity within our social networks—particularly affecting caregivers. Additionally, long commutes lead to stress and fatigue, impacting our mood and willingness to socialize, which ultimately deteriorates the quality of our social relationships (Montgomery 2015).
Jirón Martínez et al. (2022) highlight the importance of applying an intersectional lens when analyzing people's daily mobility experiences. This approach takes into account not only social class, race, and gender but also territorial factors such as location, available resources, travel patterns, and schedules. These factors are interconnected and shape how individuals navigate their environments and commute each day. Recognizing the systems of oppression and inequality that create uneven mobility policies across different regions is crucial. In disadvantaged areas, mobility infrastructure is often more limited and precarious, significantly impacting how mobility is experienced.
The concept of a "caring city" refers to an urban environment designed to facilitate caregiving in all its dimensions, providing physical support while promoting the autonomy of dependent individuals and the balance of daily life (Col·lectiu Punt 6 2016; Chinchilla 2020; Gutiérrez Valdivia 2023). This involves equipping urban spaces with physical infrastructure that supports caregiving activities, ensuring that public areas are safe and accessible for people of all ages. Such spaces may include parks with adapted playgrounds, comfortable seating for older adults, drinking fountains, clean restrooms, green spaces, and shaded areas (Messina 2013). "A ramp or a bench with armrests or backrests can make all the difference for someone with a chronic or temporary condition to fully enjoy public spaces" (Col lectiu Punt 6 2019, 169).
A key element of this perspective is the link between caregiving and public spaces that promote community life. Jane Jacobs (2011) argued that the interaction between diverse activities and lifestyles is vital for a city's vibrancy. It's equally important to address territorial inequalities, such as disparities in the quality of public spaces and access to basic infrastructure, which are often unevenly distributed according to income and other socioeconomic factors (Rodríguez 2023).
In contrast, a public space designed with caregiving in mind incorporates criteria such as proximity, vitality, diversity, autonomy, accessibility, and representativeness (Col·lectiu Punt 6, 2019). Muxí emphasizes the importance of proximity in women's daily lives and how the city's layout, described as "the necessary extension of the home," affects its residents based on gender roles, age, social class, sex, and origin (2018, 40). Another key issue has to do with women's safety, or lack thereof, highlighting the need to redesign streets, plazas, and public transportation systems to ensure their safe use (Córdoba et al. 2020).
Izaskun Chinchilla (2020) examines the impact of urban insecurity related to cars as hazards, noting that expanding pedestrian spaces improves comfort for caregiving activities. The design of children's play areas often emphasizes control and safety, which can limit their sense of freedom and adventure. Jacobs argues that these "destructive effects of automobiles" highlight our failure to create cities that truly meet the needs of their residents (Jacobs 2011).
The factors of time and caregiving are critical in the provision of basic services like water, sanitation, electricity, and household technologies2. Households lacking access to clean water, sanitation, and electricity face additional burdens, such as higher costs from purchasing water via tanker trucks, health risks, and lost opportunities due to time spent fetching water or sourcing alternative energy (e.g., firewood). These challenges disproportionately affect women and girls. Furthermore, access to clean water and electricity significantly reduces the time required for caregiving tasks, such as preparing water for drinking or creating homemade therapies and medicines.
The difficulty and burden of caregiving are heavily influenced by access to basic infrastructure (such as electricity, sanitation systems, and clean water) and the availability of material resources (such as a washing machine or a wheelchair). It's vastly different to clean a home with parquet floors compared to a house with a dirt floor and no windows, especially in rural areas. These disparities define the conditions under which caregiving work is carried out in different countries and among various social groups (Coello 2013, 14).
Policies that expand water, sanitation, electricity, and potable water networks are crucial for improving access to basic services and "easing the burden of domestic work by significantly reducing the time women spend on these tasks" (Scuro and Vaca-Trigo 2017, 133). This is especially important in informal settlements, which are typically located far from major urban centers. Due to their peripheral location and the lack of efficient transportation infrastructure, residents in these areas spend more time accessing basic services, job opportunities, education, and fostering community connections that could improve their economic and social standing. This has significant consequences for time management, as it requires more time commuting to work and increases the load of unpaid domestic and caregiving tasks to compensate for the lack of quality public services (Scuro and Vaca Trigo 2017).
Caregivers, particularly women, require public policy frameworks that, from the outset, ensure care services are strategically located and easily accessible, close to their homes. Everyday service facilities are vital components that enhance quality of life at all stages. Col·lectiu Punt 6 outlines the key facilities and services that should be part of a neighborhood's daily infrastructure, including:
[…] Administrative service centers, primary healthcare facilities, elderly care centers (such as day care centers), childcare services for children aged 0 to 3, early education for ages 3 to 5, primary schools for ages 6 to 11, secondary schools for ages 12 to 16, social centers for various age groups, cultural hubs (like civic centers and libraries), and spaces for physical activities, among others" (2019, 173).
Proximity significantly reduces the time required for activities such as work, education, or medical care. Accessible infrastructure nearby not only saves time and money but also minimizes environmental impact. As a result, space and time become two key factors in shaping the living conditions of caregivers (Falú 2023a).
Chinchilla expands on the idea of "caring architecture," aligning with Muxí's (2017) principles, highlighting the importance of incorporating diverse uses, addressing the experiences of individuals with varying needs, and continuously considering time in design. She also emphasizes the need to extend care beyond the physical structure, recognizing that the user experience begins long before entering the building (Chinchilla 2020, 38).
In conclusion, urban infrastructure designed from an intersectional feminist care perspective should focus on accessibility, proximity, and quality to make life easier for both caregivers and those they care for, while freeing up their time. It also needs to consider the different experiences of caregiving and address territorial inequalities. When urban planning takes these factors into account, it not only improves the well-being of caregivers and dependents but also promotes gender equality and strengthens social bonds.
1 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations in this article were provided by a third-party translator.
2 Housing instability plays a crucial role in the analysis of public care policies and the right to both care and time. While this topic is not explored in depth here due to space constraints, the impact of housing conditions on caregiving is significant, as thoroughly examined by authors such as Zaida Muxí (2018).