Gendered analysis of familiar urban topics provides new insights for our understanding of urban studies, not only by counting women who had formerly been invisible but also by integrating their presence into our explanatory frameworks and normative insights. Gender in Urban Research provides an introduction to urbanists who have not considered the implications of gender in their research and contributes to the existing body of work on women and cities. This volume seeks to bridge feminist theories and theories of the state. The selections presented here serve as examples of how this may be done. Issues considered include violence against women, public housing, downtown development, child care, welfare, employment, and the political roles of women and minorities. This volume provides stimulating theoretical and empirical treatments in urban scholarship and is a must-read for students and scholars in urban studies, gender studies, and political science. "These short, most readable chapters illustrate some of the many ways in which women's--and Latinas', poor women's, and African American women's--lives differ from 'the norm'--that is from those of middle-class white male planners and policymakers." --Journal of the American Planning Association

High-level urban analysis is noticeably devoid of either gendered perspectives or attention to women's interests, relying instead on economics and sometimes race to explain various phenomenon. Gender in Urban Research applies gender as a category of analysis to urban institutions. Contributions cover gendered analysis in central city development policy, violence against women, affordable housing, political power and elections.

This volume challenges the imagery of cities by looking through a gendered lens at how women utilize urban space. Focusing on the conceptual and methodological manner of boundaries, the book reminds us that women are members of multiple and diverse groups and as such, they can be active, creative, and powerful agents. Multidisciplinary essays, contributed by urbanists, geographers, political scientists, and historians, explore the ways in which women confront, break down, resist, and form new boundaries and interconnections, both visible and invisible. Arguing for a change in the traditional agenda of cities, the authors investigate how aspects of urban life and space would look considerably different if the alternatives and options presented by women and other marginalized groups were taken into account. They urge us toward a better understanding of how diverse social groups interact, how urban space can enhance such interaction, and what role formal and informal laws, by-laws, policies, and other planning measures should play.