‘The City Will be Ours: We Have So Decided’: Circulating Knowledges in a Feminist Register

Abstract

This article juxtaposes insights from recent urban policy mobilities scholarship on circulating knowledges with an in-depth examination of a long-standing (1976-2013) amalgam of groups and individuals whose focus is safer cities for women. The article addresses three gaps. One, it is an empirical study that draws on in-depth knowledge of its authors to shed light on gender informed efforts to shift circulating knowledges relevant to urban policies to advance gender equality goals. Two, it examines this terrain with a focus on a variety of actors who are not typically acknowledged as policy-makers’. Three, it provides new insights about the “connective tissue” of policy-making and in particular, the potential power of a methodological approach that recognizes the benefits of linking together women as ‘experts in their own lives’ with professionals who have ‘a taste for justice’. The paper does so by highlighting five distinct ways in which such knowledge mobilization occurs, including i) the take-up and enhancement of an already mobilized methodology; ii) the circulation of people experts; iii) organizational support for mobilities; iv) adaptations and extensions of the methodology; and, v) the mobilization of local expertise.