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• The Atlantic Cities SEP 16, 2013 The decision to look at how men and women used public transit wasn't a shot in the dark. It was part of a project aimed at taking gender into account in public policy. In Vienna, this is called gender mainstreaming. Gender mainstreaming has been in place in the Austrian capital since the early 1990s. In practice, this means city administrators create laws, rules and regulations that benefit men and women equally. The goal is to provide equal access to city resources. And so far, officials say it's working. Vienna has adopted gender mainstreaming in a number of areas of city administration, including education and health care policy. But nowhere has it had more of an impact than on the field of urban planning. More than sixty pilot projects have been carried out to date. As the size and scale of these projects increase, gender mainstreaming has become a force that is literally reshaping the city. Urban planners have been melding mainstreaming and city design in Vienna for over two decades and they've gotten it down to something of a science. Before a project gets underway, data is collected to determine how different groups of people use public space. "There are so many questions that need to be asked," Eva Kail tells me. Kail has been instrumental in bringing gender mainstreaming to Vienna and currently works as a gender expert in the city's Urban Planning Group. "You need to know who is using the space, how many people, and what are their aims. Once you've analyzed the patterns of use of public space, you start to define the needs and interests of the people using it," she explains. "Then planning can be used to meet these needs." Mainstreaming got off the ground in Vienna in 1991 when Kail and a group of city planners organized a photography exhibit titled "Who Owns Public Space -- Women's Everyday Life in the City." It depicted the daily routines of a diverse group of women as they went about their lives in the Austrian capital. Each woman tracked a different route through the city. But the images made clear that safety and ease of movement were a priority for all of them. It sparked a media firestorm. "Newspapers, television and radio were all covering it and 4,000 people visited," Kail says. "At the time it was something completely new. But politicians quickly realized it was something people were interested in and they decided to support it." Soon after, the city green lit a series of mainstreaming pilot projects. One of the first to be carried out was an apartment complex designed for and by women in the city's 21st district. In 1993, the city held a design competition for the project, which was given the name Frauen - Werk -Stadt or Women - Work -City. The idea was to create housing that would make life easier for women. But what exactly did that mean? Time use surveys compiled by Statistik Austria, the Austrian national statistics office, showed that women spent more time per day on household chores and childcare than men. Women - Work -City was built with this in mind. It consists of a series of apartment buildings surrounded by