Abstract
Women’s triple role in the third world countries in under recognized. The traditional planning methods does not acknowledge the gender needs and varied gender roles while planning. Apart from playing the reproductive role, women perform productive roles, they are often secondary bread earners, which requires them to travel. In addition to this, women play a major role in community managing work. There have been several evidences where is was found that community initiatives taken by woman have given successful results. Historically, culturally, religiously women were confined to private places most of the times and men occupied public places, the planning norms thus considered the male needs while the preparation of plans. This study is an attempt to study in depth the roles and needs of gender specific(woman) and its relationship with planning approaches. The transformation in the society with fast pace of urbanization needs to be attended by filling the gaps (with respect to women) which are being missed while planning. Woman are representative of 50% of the human, cultural and social capital but the same weightage is not given to their needs in terms of space requirement, safety, security, mode of transport availability etc. while planning. The gap is evident and it needs to be addressed. As women are core for a family, neighborhood planning is a basic unit of planning in cities. Perry’s concept of neighborhood planning has highlighted importance of walk ability, hierarchy of roads, accessibility to local shopping area and the need of open spaces. Every determinant of neighborhood concept has woman in the backstage or fore front which has direct relationship with the activities being performed under each concept. These concepts have direct relationship with the aspects of livability. Livability is a broad system with physical and social environment. The physical and social environment is similarly interrelated. This paper identifies the determinants of the gender aspect in planning and establishes its relation with the determinants of neighborhood planning. The results are used to perform correlation with the various factors of livability. Thus, it comes up with a conceptual spatial framework which integrates the various aspects of gender sensitive planning and neighborhood planning. The correlated factors are used as a tool to achieve livability. This study is useful to establish that while addressing the concept of livability, there is a strong need to consider the gender aspects while establishing its association with neighborhood concepts.
