"At the same time, a concept known as the 'Defensible Space Theory,' coined by American scholar Oscar Newman, was steadily gaining ground in the UK. It maintained that crime and neighbourhood safety could be eliminated, or at least reduced, through design. The WDS rightly felt that the theory lacked a gendered approach, and that the causes of women's vulnerability in the city were still being overlooked.
"We saw well-meaning men once again deciding that their theories were best suited for meeting the needs of women," recalls Vron Ware, the group's co-founder and now a professor of criminology and sociology at Kingston University...
At the time, only one company—Magrini, founded by two middle-aged men—was in the business of providing diaper-changing facilities. These were still of the most rudimentary, plastic drop-down variety. Off the back of the publication, several London boroughs installed more, better equipped, and easy-to-use baby changing facilities across the city. Now they are a routine feature of most public toilets, and even the logo denoting baby-changing facilities—designed by Ware and Cavannagh— is a standard in many parts of Europe. Cavanagh also carried out a full appraisal of the toilet facilities designed for the then-new Jubilee Line in the London Underground network."
Just want to share how I got to this article: I was listening to this episode of This American Life on afrofuturism, which includes an incredible song based on the mythology developed by a band called Drexciya, who were apparently inspired by a book by the scholar Paul Gilroy and he has a wife with a really interesting name - Vron Ware - whose Wikipedia page included this article.
Anyway, thinking about afrofuturism beyond SciFi literature and how black people build a future for human survival.
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