In February 2020, the Direcció General d'Urbanisme de la Conselleria de Política Territorial, Obres Públiques i Mobilitat de la Generalitat Valenciana commissioned the Guide to incorporate the gender perspective in urban actions to architects Eva Álvarez and Carlos Gómez. The Guide is aimed in several directions. Firstly, to those who have to design urban actions, and secondly, to those who have to supervise them. And finally to those who are in charge of promoting them.

The guide is in itself a set of recommendations that should incorporate the gender perspective at all scales of urban action and in all circumstances of the territory. To this end, a set of information, checklists, recommendations, and bibliographies are provided. The project is a finalist in the CSCAE 2022 awards.

In February 2020, the Direcció General d'Urbanisme de la Conselleria de Política Territorial, Obres Públiques i Mobilitat de la Generalitat Valenciana commissioned the architects and professors Universitat Politècnica de València, Eva Álvarez and Carlos Gómez, to draft a "Guía para incorporar la perspectiva de género en actuaciones urbanas en la Comunidad Valenciana" (Guide to incorporate the gender perspective in urban actions in the Valencian Community). This task is carried out with the collaboration of José Luis Calabuig, Victoria Aguilar and Victoria Calabuig, the graphic design of Isabel Giner Marco and the contribution of an extensive Advisory Team.

The Guide seeks to accompany those who have to project urban actions or plan the territory; those who have to supervise these actions and those who have to promote them, in the task of producing every day, caring, and close environment for everyone. To ground the theory of the gender perspective in the reality that surrounds us, the Guide is understood as a set of recommendations that should facilitate the incorporation of this gender perspective at all scales of urban action and in all territorial circumstances, which is why it is proposed as a set of information, recommendations, checklists and bibliography to help those who have to carry out this task.

This documentation is organized in a 137-page book format, downloadable from the Conselleria website, in Spanish, Valencian, and English versions, with a careful graphic presentation that makes it easy to go back and forth through the Guide without getting disorientated. After the introduction and indications of how the Guide works, the document offers the reader four parts. The first part explains what is understood by gender perspective, in an informative and pedagogical tone; the second part sets out the contents on which each team can reflect and debate, which are structured in four lines of work with indicators that will allow reflection on the development of the process and will make it possible to evaluate the level of inclusion of these contents in the planning figure or the urban action in question. The third part deals with recommendations on how to transfer the contents decided and studied to the documentation of each type of action, always by the provisions of the revised text of the LOTUP, with some suggestions in each particular case; this third part ends with an explanation and checklist on how to approach the drafting of the mandatory Gender Impact (Assessment) Report. The fourth part insists on the enormous importance of the work process over time so that the gender perspective is effectively incorporated into the action being worked on. Finally, the Guide provides a great and updated bibliography for those who wish to explore the subject.

The Guide can be read sequentially or by going directly to a particular section; the description of that section will refer to the contents that may be of interest to you. This to and fro through the Guide is accompanied by graphic references or icons, associated with the lines of work, and with a colored chart that makes it easier for the reader to know where in the Guide they are. The underlying idea is that the Guide offers a process of reflection that allows each drafting team, aware of the specific circumstances in which the task to be carried out unfolds, to propose its list of variables, checklists, and indicators so that the process adjusts to the needs of the place where the gender perspective must be deployed, in a coherent manner. In other words, the gender perspective has been applied to the drafting of the Guide itself.

The Guide was first presented online to the public in March 2021, chaired by the Honourable Minister Arcadi España and the Director-General of Urban Planning, Vicente García Nebot, a presentation that gave way to a participatory process of the contribution of improvements and suggestions until the end of May 2021. Subsequently, the Guide was presented in November 2021, in an event linked to Town Planning Week, in the presence of the Dean of the COACV, Lluis Sendra, the Director-General of Town Planning Vicente García Nebot, and the Deputy Director-General of Town Planning, Anna Piñeiro. The publication of the Guide now opens a process of dissemination, divulgation, and feedback that allows for a deeper understanding of the concepts and priorities in the reality of the territory to accompany people in increasing their economic, physical and political autonomy, within a broader concept of interdependence and eco-dependence, which focuses on the tasks of caring for everyone, whatever the condition of each person may be.
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Architects
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Design team
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José Luis Calabuig, Victoria Aguilar y Victoria Calabuig.

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Collaborators
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General Manager.- Vicente García Nebot.
Deputy General Manager.- Anna Piñeiro.
Graphic design.- Isabel Giner Marco.

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Dates
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Online submission - March 2021.
Improvements and suggestions - May 2021.
Final submission - November 2021.

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Location
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Community of Valencia.

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Photography
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Carlos Gómez y Eva Álvarez.

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Carlos Gómez and Eva Álvarez are architects and professors at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, where they have taught for many years. Since 1991, they have also run their office, “Gómez+álvarez Arquitectes,” while simultaneously caring for their family unit as a married couple with three children. From the very beginning, they understood that their academic work should be centred on students’ learning, their professional activity should rely on positive action, and their personal lives should nurture their families. Over the years, they have managed to address these three spheres of work and life simultaneously.

Although this was not originally planned, their personal stance has consistently guided their activity, shaping what they now consider their strongest value: their commitment to a different way of understanding architecture, urban planning, and academia. Today, this position is widely recognised as the gender approach to architecture and urbanism, a perspective they fully embrace. They are also interested in photography as a tool for analysis and writing (and reading) as a way to understand reality. From this standpoint, they conceive of their time as a continuum in which both paid and unpaid work intertwine, producing unexpected connections that enrich their professional approach—what they call their “work timeline.”

As a professional activity in gómez+álvarez arquitectes, they have developed the construction of several buildings that incorporate the gender perspective, such as the Town Hall and Auditorium of Massanassa (Valencia). In addition, as assessors for gender mainstreaming, they have provided advice for effectively incorporating the gender perspective in the General Structural Plan of Castelló and prepared the Gender Impact Assessment Report commissioned by the City Council of Castelló (2017). They were also commissioned to produce the Urban Quality Guidelines of Valencia by the City Council of Valencia (2018), as well as to participate in the DUSI Strategy of Castelló (2018). More recently, they elaborated the “Guide to Incorporate the Gender Perspective in Urban Planning in the Valencian Community,” commissioned by the Directorate General of Urban Planning of the Generalitat Valenciana (2020). This Guide was a finalist for the CSCAE awards in 2022. They have also advised on gender mainstreaming in AUMSA’s Housing Plan 2022, commissioned by the European Investment Bank, and developed the “Reference Guide for Gender Mainstreaming in Social Housing” (2023) for the same institution.

In addition to their professional work, they have also developed an extensive cultural and research activity. In 2010, they organised the exhibition On Stage! Women in Architecture in Hannover (2011) and Valencia (2012), and contributed to its presentation in Vienna (2014). Since 2014, they have organised several edit-a-thon sessions on Women in Architecture in collaboration with Un día | Una arquitecta, a blog to which they are contributors. They organised the international seminar Women in Architecture in 2015, the international survey Women in Architecture in 2016, and the Women Now lecture series in 2018. They led a workshop at the Venice Biennale in 2018 and actively participated in the activities of AULAhna (2014–2018), where they invited prominent architects such as Anne Lacaton, Momoyo Kaijima, Yui Tezuka, Anupama Kundoo, and Yasmin Shariff, among others.

They have also contributed to the work of IVAM (Institut Valencià d’Art Modern) with research on Women Architects in Valencia (1929–1980) and were awarded the IAWA Milka Bliznakov Research Prize in 2019 at Virginia Tech (USA) for their proposal to study Spanish-speaking women architects in the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA). They were partners in the research project YesWePlan! Promoting Women in Architecture and Civil Engineering (2019–2021), funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, and are currently partners in the European project ARCH-E. European Platform for Architectural Design Competitions (2022–2024) and NAIX-EM, a project for inclusive birthing houses in the Valencian Community (2023–2025). They are also coordinators at the UPV of the ARTICULACIONES certificate, organised by IVAM, the University of Valencia, and the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Both of them direct the CUG Càtedra de Urbanisme i Gènere, which began its activities in September 2022 and supported the ICAG2023 congress held at UPV in October 2023.

 

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Published on: July 12, 2022
Cite:
metalocus, CARLOS RUBIO
"A guide to incorporating a gender perspective in urban actions by Eva Álvarez and Carlos Gómez" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/a-guide-incorporating-a-gender-perspective-urban-actions-eva-alvarez-and-carlos-gomez> ISSN 1139-6415
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