Opportunities for Change : The impact of putting marginalized user groups first in urban redesign

Abstract: This thesis aims at discovering how the city of Oslo can use an opportunity in rebuilding its city centre and begin to include the voices and opinions of marginalised communities that were otherwise previously ignored in planning processes. The theory and approach utilised throughout this thesis is feminist urban planning and gender mainstreaming because the two call for the equality and intersectionality so to appropriately rebuild cities with the needs of many in mind. As such, my hypotheses are that the car free centre will not improve the quality of life for marginalised user groups and the lack of gender mainstreaming policy has negatively impacted the five pilot project areas. Three methodologies have been employed: observations of the five pilot projects, interviews or questionnaires to stakeholders, and secondary analysis of literature. The results from the observations were varied, with some examples of gender mainstreaming practices implemented while others fell short and safety of users was questioned. Some practitioners had knowledge on feminist urban planning theory, whilst others had vague ideas of what it meant and how it was implementable in practice. To conclude, implementing gender mainstreaming policies would have gravely assisted the five pilot projects.