Question 1: We still calculate the provision of playing fields for towns based upon the "scientific" ratios of raw space to gross population. This leads to the setting aside of huge swathes of public green space for sports and mechanistic planning based upon areas required for specific organized team games and the requirements of lawn mowing equipment. Ken Worpole quotes the geographer Doreen Massey on the vast acreage of playing fields in 1960's Manchester, "And I remember, too, it striking me very clearly....that all this huge stretch of the Mersey floodplain had been entirely given over to boys."If you could devise a set of statutory requirements for the provision of public green space for girls, in what would they consist?
Well not being very clear on what the statutory requirements are in general for public green space I'm not sure how I would make the requirements emphasize girls further. I feel like the question implies that the public green space that is laid out in towns and cities is done so with the idea in mind that boys will likely be dominating the space and will be used for the male sports teams while girls are an afterthought if thought of at all. I think when it comes to public space, today however, there is no real gender component to the allocation, or one that I see or understand. If I had to dream up some statutory requirements i would put provisions in for equal amount of time and space for women's/girls organized sports teams meaning that no one gender has preference for time or location. I think when it comes to something gender specific we have to think about equality. If there are preferences given in space or location of a public place to one sex or the other the requirements should focus on giving equal allowances to all that desire to use the space.
This quote was taken from the 1960's which we all know was a time when there was great disparity among the two sexes however, it now being 2010 we have seen great improvements in gender equality and especially in sports. That being said women are still disadvantaged in many ways and having played sports my whole life I know what its like to be marginalized as an athlete and to get the crappy, hole ridden practice field while the boys play on a fresh smooth carpet of mown lawn. My requirements for open space would be that there would be no discrimination and that public space is just that- for the public, regardless of race, religion or sex. I could stick in a few Martin Luther King Jr. quotes or Gloria Steinem but I'll spare you all.
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