How to Cite: Larraín Salinas, María Soledad. "Their City: Feminist Urban Experiences as a Process of Learning and Co-Creation in Viña del Mar". Dearq no. 41 (2025): 94-103. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq41.2025.02
How to Cite: Larraín Salinas, María Soledad. "Their City: Feminist Urban Experiences as a Process of Learning and Co-Creation in Viña del Mar". Dearq no. 41 (2025): 94-103. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq41.2025.02
María Soledad Larraín Salinas
Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile
Received: November 30, 2023 | Accepted: June 14, 2024
This article1 draws on research conducted during teaching experiences at the School of Architecture at Universidad Andrés Bello in Viña del Mar from 2022 to 2023. It explores the integration of the gender perspective into urban planning and architectural education. Divided into three stages, it highlights the importance of studying and applying feminist theories, co-creating knowledge as a learning methodology, and exploring the street as a teaching space, emphasizing the need to break away from androcentric viewpoints to highlight the everyday experiences of women and diverse communities within urban contexts. The collective nature of knowledge is underscored, and the article emphasizes the role of education in fostering urban transformation through a gender-sensitive and feminist lens.
Keywords: Gender, feminisms, teaching, city, co-creation, urban space.
Since its inception, academia has provided society with a space for reflection and critical thinking, given the opportunity it offers to create educational experiences that challenge the formal paradigms of society itself. Thus, from an architectural standpoint, disputing the idea of "neutral" urbanism seeks to expose the intersectional discrimination that is manifested in public space through the idea of reconsidering the power dynamics rooted in the streets. To achieve this, it is vital to identify the social and cultural factors in urban development processes, emphasizing the women's role and spaces in this context. By examining the contemporary city as a reflection of today's opportunities and challenges, this perspective shifts from the domestic sphere to a shared urban experience, highlighting the insights derived from women´s lived realities.
The research focuses on the application of feminist and gender theories to the learning experience in the Chilean reality, with special attention to the context of Viña del Mar, where the students reside. The questions formulated from the classroom guide a reflection on the ground intended to question the power dynamics hidden in everyday public space and reveal them, both to the students themselves and to citizens, through on-site dialogue activities.
The work is presented in three blocks: The talks and conferences that provide the theoretical-conceptual framework and referential support; territorial tours with a gender perspective that bring personal experience closer to urban diversity; and workshop practices where these experiences, reflections and concepts are discussed to achieve common knowledge.
This approach is presented as a disciplinary instrument that encompasses registration, analysis, valorization, and dissemination, to reconstruct the urban public scenario from the perspective of everyday experiences. Collaboration is then generated with the idea of the collective construction of knowledge through joint work as the cornerstone of this experience.
Our cities are experiencing a multisystem crisis that faces various immediate challenges, from the climate crisis to significant social inequality and urban violence. This crisis mostly affects vulnerable groups, and women are the first to suffer the consequences in terms, for example, of domestic violence or the fear they feel occurs in public spaces (Falú 2009). In order to engage in critical reflection, feminist movements throughout recent history have provided theoretical, practical, and political inputs that allow us to question the social, economic, and urban structures that have shaped the current scenario, and it is through these contributions that a reinterpretation of what is known is sought, especially in the Latin American context.
Feminist movements have provided valuable tools to analyze and question the patriarchal structures that have shaped the current scenario. Feminist theories have revealed that the city is not a neutral entity, but has been historically conceived, constructed, and legitimized from an exclusive androcentric perspective that intensifies gender, ethnic, and class inequalities (Kern 2020). The sexual division of labor, which reinforces the public/private dualism, has generated segregation and the invisibility of non-productive activities, especially those related to the domestic sphere and care responsibilities (Col•lectiu Punt 6 2019).
The city, conceived through this dualism, has imposed significant repercussions on the lives and freedom of women, relegating them to limited spaces of power and erasing their contributions to society. We must break away from these binary spaces and reconsider the city from the diversity of experiences and appreciation of everyday life. When analyzing our own urban environments, dynamics, and experiences, a feminist approach becomes a fundamental tool with which to explore theories, methodologies, and operations that can reflect, question, and reverse the phenomena of urban inequality, thereby guaranteeing that all social groups have access, impact, and representation in the configuration of the city (Col•lectiu Punt 6 2019). As a feminist geographer, Jane Darke asserts, "Any settlement is an inscription in space of the social relations in the society that built it. Our cities are patriarchy written in stone, brick, glass and concrete" (1996, 88)2, to highlight the need to understand that the city is a tangible manifestation of social relations and that, therefore, any attempt to unravel its inequalities must address its structural foundations. Tamara Adasme (2020) emphasizes how sexism manifests itself in various ways and at different times in women's lives, both in public and private social spheres.
Although urban experiences have been shaped by logics based on power and the exaltation of the public, women have participated in them in various ways, challenging established norms. Cities, despite their challenges and dangers, have offered women a space of anonymity that has allowed them to free themselves from the most rigid rural structures (Kern 2020). The female urban experience is intrinsically tied to the courage to forge a path in an adverse environment, highlighting the significance of opportunities that are often underestimated or overlooked. As Carrasco and Serrano put it, "Life cannot be compartmentalized; it is a continuous displacement between times and spaces that affects various dimensions of their lives" (2006, 18). This perspective highlights the need for a comprehensive approach that considers the multiplicity of aspects that make up people's life experience, especially women´s, and that makes it possible to overcome the limitations posed by fragmented visions.
One of the most significant gaps has been the almost exclusive burden of care tasks and the symbolic assignment to the domestic sphere, a topic widely addressed by collectives and study groups such as Col•lectiu Punt 6 and Equal Saree in Spain, LINA Plataforma and La Ciudad que Resiste in Argentina, Red de Mujeres por la Ciudad and Mujer ArquitectA in Chile, among many others. It is crucial to revisit what has remained invisible, those aspects that support our lives and the functioning of the city. Thus, the vindication of everyday life becomes a central concept based on which to analyze and project our cities, promoting a critical view of existing social structures.
The city must learn to see itself for what it is, 'chaos', and must learn how to deal with it. Not to design everything again but to work with the same opportunities that are seen on the streets every day. Ask questions like: for whom does the city move? Is there urban life? How do we see ourselves in the city? Understanding that enjoyment and entertainment are equally important, if not more, than the production sought. The city is a patriarchal entity that omits many perspectives at its convenience, does not give it a voice and even treats the gender as a minority. (Student Claudio Gonzales)3.
This testimony highlights the need to reconsider our vision of the city as a dynamic organism, where gender participation and representation must be considered equitably. The challenge then lies in revisiting what is known, reclaiming the importance of daily life as a central concept to analyze and project our cities. The city, according to this perspective, must learn to see itself as it is, a dynamic chaos that it must learn to address with the same opportunities that are manifested in the streets every day. The city, in its current form, is a patriarchal entity that omits perspectives at its convenience, denies voices, and renders invisible other spheres of life: reproduction, community life, and personal development (Montaner and Muxí 2020).
Figure 1_ Teaching Material 2022-2023. Source: the author.
In 2018, a movement led by female students emerged in the Chilean university environment that articulates demands from colleagues mobilized throughout the country. These university students place their daily experiences at the center of the discussion to make problematic situations evident within educational spaces (Adasme 2020). Despite these testimonies and struggles, reality is still not reflected in a consolidated manner in the curricular frameworks of national architecture careers. In these, structures, authors, and urban/project concepts that render invisible and exclude the experiences and contributions of other outside groups to the patriarchal binary system persist.
As gender issues gain prominence on the international agenda and women increasingly engage in diverse areas of urban action, a context emerges that challenges and disputes traditional ways of approaching teaching-learning processes in architecture. It is essential to propose teaching spaces that challenge the predominantly masculine discourse (Niculae 2012) and encourage reflection, opening spaces for dialogue and even catharsis for students immersed in a vertical educational system (Barrientos and Nieto 2022). As Adasme (2020) points out, sexism in educational spaces can manifest through the explicit curriculum and the hidden curriculum, which permeates the teaching-learning process and generates implicit discourses that reinforce inequalities in school coexistence as well as in teaching practices. From theoretical and planning contributions to learning experiences, it becomes imperative to propose teaching and student situations / experiences that actively challenge these spaces and question the practices rooted in the system.
This is viewed as both a responsibility and an educational opportunity aimed at fostering discussion about the potential for integrating diverse perspectives into urban planning and territorial analysis. To achieve this, an initial phase involves a combination of critical readings, conferences by relevant actors, and conceptualization exercises in the classroom. The goal is to facilitate a theoretical and project-based dialogue that shapes how we build our cities, promoting a critical, multidimensional, and interdisciplinary urban approach for future generations.
In the search to overcome the gap between the public and the private, the street and public space emerge as key elements, not only in territorial terms, but also conceptually. The new appropriation of these spaces, both physical and symbolic, challenges pre-existing categories and allows for a deeper understanding of women's experiences as social beings. Traditional social theory has rooted the "domestic" sphere in the materialization of the house, considering it the central place where women carry out their most relevant activities (Montón Subías, 2000). Thus, venturing into the streets to understand other experiences and reveal women as the social beings that we are, we can move beyond this conception, challenging binary logic.
In recent years, the relationship between women, their experiences, and urban space has gained prominence in feminist debates. However, deep-rooted perceptions persist that see women as "out of place" in public spaces, especially at night, when they are blamed even in cases of assault (Col•lectiu Punt 6 2019). Transferring these and one's own experiences to the street, sharing them among a diversity of students, enables their recategorization, proposes public space not only as a supporting factor for the urban experience, serving as a facilitator of the educational experience by connecting various spheres and scales of urban life through registration, surveying, and mapping work.
However, uncovering routines, tasks, and experiences was not instantaneous; it demanded a considerable effort in personal awareness. As José Ortega y Gasset points out, "each life is a point of view on the universe" (1981, 185). Therefore, reviewing our own steps using mobility sheets implies identifying actions carried out with no awareness or to which we do not attach importance, and yet they make up the daily story of our perception of reality. Working from everyday life implies "including all the activities that take place on a daily basis and how these different tasks, times and spaces relate to each other, in the same way that people interact in different spheres of life" (Col •lectiu Punt 6 2019, 141).
This approach urges us to value and prioritize not only our individual experiences, but also the space that contains them. Joint reflection on these experiences expands the possibilities of understanding, leading us to go out into the streets to reinterpret the urban experience on both personal and collective levels. As Eraña and Barceló state, "knowledge is something valuable that is in continuous production in everyday life" (2016, 28), thereby integrating the dynamic dimension of knowledge into the learning process.
For this reason, the sidewalk emerges as a fundamental element of study—an often-overlooked component that underpins our perception of the city. In a similar vein, Jane Jacobs highlights the importance of streets and their sidewalks as "the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs" (2011, 55). This perspective aims to enhance the traditional observation approach used in architecture schools with an experiential and personal analysis in a specific space. The dynamism of this space reveals elements of temporality, use, and transformation, providing valuable insights for students.
The proposal aims to foster a sense of ownership over the study area, encouraging visits and utilization at various times, under different circumstances, and for diverse reasons. Additionally, it seeks to create opportunities for engagement and evaluation on site. Thus, students have the opportunity to collect new information, recognizing themselves as observers and users who share a space with other actors in a constant social agreement, often implicit and rarely noticed. This encourages interaction with those who share the city, its meeting points, and divergences in terms of identity, its uses, and dynamics. This exercise, which goes beyond traditional observation, invites students to become active and conscious participants in the urban life that surrounds them through interviews and results presentation in public space.
The goal is not to restrict anyone from experiencing the city in their own way, but rather to create spaces designed for all inhabitants where they feel comfortable and safe, ensuring that the right to the city is upheld for everyone equally (Student María José Rojas)4.
Figure 2_ Teaching material 2022-2023. Source: the author.
In the educational field, the design of teaching methodologies plays an essential role in the students' comprehensive training. This teaching proposal with a feminist approach to learning architecture focuses its attention on analysis methodologies that involve both theory and practice. Different topics are addressed through diverse dynamics; topics related to the urban experience, feminism, intersectionality, and the right to the city. These provide students with a solid conceptual framework and opportunities for active reflection and co-creation of knowledge.
The program was based on a series of personal exercises in combination with pair activities designed to foster a reflective dialogue that contrasted personal experiences and those of the rest of the students, to understand that "all knowledge is from a certain point of view." [...] The abstract point of view only provides abstractions" (Ortega y Gasset 1981, 185), warning of the limitations of a "single story," as proposed by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2018). Thus, the learning process is consolidated by the understanding that to truly grasp reality, one must explore the experiential quality that underpins it. This exploration enables the consolidation of a complex reality under study. With this perspective, we advance toward building a collective body of knowledge that offers a fresh viewpoint—one that is both shared and uniquely individual.
The methodology adopted emphasizes the importance of personal experiences as a basis for the construction of collective knowledge. It proposes that we start from the idea of dance put forward by Jane Jacobs, which consists of understanding that, although we all compose a harmonious group where we give each other vigor and density, it is not a precise or uniform situation, but rather a "representation [that] is full of improvisations" (Jacobs 2011, 55).
Based on Jacobs' book, a series of exercises are implemented, the first of which, The Dance of the City, uses a personal photographic record to identify various situations of urban experience from the standpoint of women. This exercise is designed to raise students' awareness about the diversity of experiences and ways of living in the city. In addition, a mobility record is drawn up to highlight the daily life and urban experience of each student in order to raise awareness about the differences and gaps they face in their daily journey.
Once they recognize the discrimination present within the city, students are provided with theoretical content ranging from feminism to intersectionality and the right to the city. This is done in internal discussion groups and the participation of a guest architect/activist. The objective is to start a new conversation about the role of students as agents of change in the transformation of reality, which utilizes knowledge in process, feminist contributions, and critical reflection on urban rights.
The sidewalk as a support for everyday life (Jacobs 2011) dynamic emerges under this new prism. Students engage with a specific block around the university to carry out a shared urban analysis that involves both the students themselves, and everyone else who shares the space. This approach includes a socio-spatial analysis, emphasizing temporal, repetition, and intersectional variables. The experience is enriched with The faces of my neighborhood assignment, which involves interviewing regular actors in the space so that different experiences are revealed, and a previously invisible sense of community is cultivated.
The street, conceptualized as a classroom, is revealed as an invaluable space for experimentation. The methodology that transfers the urban experience to the street, sharing it among diverse students, not only challenges ingrained perceptions about the use of public space, but also reconfigures students' relationship with their environment. This experience amplifies the importance of considering intersectionality and diversity in urban design, as it reveals the diversity of experiences and challenges they face in their daily journey.
This social and collective approach not only transforms the way we learn, but also the way we teach. By recognizing that teachers are motivating agents in the learning process, a journey of personal searches that enrich the collective space begins. This course is an inspiring example of how the co-creation of knowledge can serve as a driving force to shed light on and transform the urban and social reality.
Figure 3_ Teaching material 2022-2023. Source: the author.
Finally, we sought to share what was learned through the systematization of the material worked on during the semester to reinforce the idea that knowledge is not static, but is constructed, and also shared. To do so, each student puts together an exhibition, which is presented as an activity open to the academic community and the general public. The aim is to promote the meeting and discussion of that possible city, not only from the discipline but also from the citizenship. These shared reflections, and in agreement with the students, are consolidated in a final document compiling everything learned during the process, not as a conclusion but rather to call for greater reflection with the rest of the actors. Consequently, the space for collective construction of knowledge—the teaching body— serves as a motivating agent within the learning process. It is seen as the starting point for various personal explorations that should be acknowledged and embraced within the collective space.
In conclusion, it is essential to emphasize the importance and urgency of incorporating a feminist perspective into architectural education, particularly given its impact on the shaping of the built environment. This experience has demonstrated how introducing this approach challenges the traditional neutrality of urban planning and established teaching methodologies, thereby exposing inequalities embedded within the city. Furthermore, it provides critical tools for transforming urban realities. This shift is reflected in the students' analytical perspectives, manifested in the texts of their fanzines.
One of the most notable achievements of feminist theories in architectural education has been to dismantle the perception of the city as a neutral and objectively planned space. Since the second wave of feminism, it has been argued that personal life is political, and this principle has gained considerable traction when applied to the urban environment. The city, as we have explored, is not simply the result of technical and objective decisions, but rather reflects and reproduces power relations rooted in patriarchal history. By questioning the public/private dichotomy and highlighting the segregation of women to the domestic sphere, feminist theories demystify cities' supposed neutrality and demand a profound rethinking of its design and operation.
From a critical approach, it should be highlighted that the incorporation of feminist theories in architectural education not only implies the inclusion of female authors and concepts in the curriculum, but also a thorough review of the power dynamics present in the educational field. The fight against sexism in education, whether through the explicit or hidden curriculum, is presented as an essential challenge. The impact of these theories becomes evident in architectural theory and practice, and filters into the ways in which students and professionals understand their own roles in the construction of urban reality. In this sense, educational experiences emerge as fields of dispute and transformation that allow us to reflect on how "knowledge is a collective process (or a set of processes) made up of a series of practices and activities of different types that are woven in complex ways and lead to a full understanding of reality" (Eraña and Barceló 2016, 11).
Figure 4_ Methodological approach of the course. Source: the author.
1 Unless otherwise specified, all citations in this article have been translated from Spanish to English by the article's translator. Citations marked '(original English)' indicate texts originally written in English.
2 Jane Darke, Changing places: Women's lives in the city (original English).
3 Teaching material for the course "La Ciudad de Ellas," UNAB 2022-2023.
4 Teaching material for the course "La Ciudad de Ellas," UNAB 2022-2023.