A Female Practice
Re-designing opportunity structures for young professional women in Almere
A.C. van 't Schip (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
B. Hausleitner – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
L.G.A.J. Reinders – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
This thesis explores how the urban form can be reconfigured to create more equal
opportunities for women in Almere, one of the largest NewTowns in the Netherlands.
Developed from the ambitious planning paradigms of the 1970s onwards, it priori
tised efficiency, functional separation and normative household models. Almere’s
urban structure shapes everyday life in ways that limit or enable access to social,
economic and spatial opportunities unevenly. In this context, this thesis addresses
the following research question:
How can dominant urban design paradigms in Almere be transformed
through the implementation of opportunity structures for young profes
sional women in order to support a more just city?
This project takes a feminist approach while focusing on young professional wom
en, combining critical urban theory with qualitative and spatial methods. First, it
explores how opportunity structures are defined for women. Secondly, it situates
Almere within the broader historical context of NewTown development and feminist
critiques of urban form. Based on this theoretical foundation, the project examines
women’s lived experiences through a literature review, site visits, interviews and
ethnographic go-along mapping. These methods reveal how urban design influenc
es daily routines, mobility patterns, caregiving practices and perceptions of safety,
highlighting the tensions between women’s everyday realities and the city’s domi
nant spatial design.
In the final phase, the identified socio-spatial constraints are reconfigured into a set
of opportunity structures to better support young professional women’s daily lives.
Through research-by-design and spatial patterns, these structures connect theo
ry, lived experience and spatial strategy. The resulting multi-scalar design demon
strates that feminist urban design is not a symbolic gesture, but a structural reor
ganisation of how the city distributes opportunity.