Contribution to the special issue "Urban and regional spaces".@en

This chapter offers a critical reflection on the implementation of gender-aware urbanism in European cities and regions. Building on the evaluations of local projects (such as, for example, Schröder and Zibell, 2004), we look into the frictions in urbanism’s response to gender mainstreaming and identify controversies and ambiguities that arise. In doing so, we aim to overcome the difficulties these controversies produce and to advance thinking about the structural embedding of GM and long-term effective spatial strategies. In this chapter we first introduce the background for our analyses and different perspectives on the production of space; then we present the types of controversies our research has found, and finally we discuss key elements to overcome possible deadlocks and move towards innovating planning practice based on feminist principles.@en