by Coletivo TURBA (Paula Motta, Renata Saffer e Roberta de Alencastro)
The pandemic of COVID-19 has altered our relationship with public space, as it has imposed social isolation. Women – who already faced several challenges in their routine in the cities, such as insecurity, harassment, and rape – when returning to the streets, realize that these fears are intensified with the reduction of the number of people circulating in the public space. the walking becomes more unsafe.
We know that in the outskirts of the metropolises, the family heads are women, responsible for the providers for their homes. Isolation is advised by international organizations, but many of these women still need to get out to work and the majority of them was depending on public transportation. In São Paulo, according to the 2017 Origin and Destination survey, 80% of users are women, and according to Agência Brasil, in 2019, 97% of women have reported having experienced harassment on public transportation. We can observe that female public transportation users are pedestrians too, as they need to move to the bus stops.
The bus stops are places where women feel vulnerable, besides the hesitancy feeling on the way to their destination. They also become points of possible contagion, given the formation of small crowds of people waiting for transportation.
The Safe Bus Stop project is a project that arises from the female perspective through the application of tactical urbanism tools to solve urban problems. Through the engagement of the local community and citizen participation, the proposal aims to expand the women's waiting area at the bus stop, generating a safe, informative, and playful space to be.
We decided to act on three scales: macro, neighborhood, meso, block, and micro, bus stop. To contemplate the neighborhood scale, informative signs and drawings about safety in times of distance will be painted. At the block stop scale, women are guided by lines on the floor that inform safe distance to the bus queue, as well as to nearby equipment that is safe in case of discomfort in public space, and, for children, we thought of playful drawings painted on the sidewalk for them to interact.
In the location of the bus stop itself, we chose to widen the lane closest to the sidewalk by painting the floor AND we added a modular platform that allows access to the bus at the same height as the sidewalk. For a more active and safe environment, we designed a piece of modular mobile furniture made of wood. They are 50cm cubes that will have their measurements indicated to inform the distances between users. The use is multiple: to sit, to play, to distance, to inform and, to allow the layout to be adapted to different situations. We also imagine that some can be used to create a tiny community vegetable garden
For the management of “Safe Stop” we propose the engagement of women from the neighborhood who will be responsible for the place. We understand that by empowering them it will be possible to keep the stop always active and the support network between them. We believe that specific interventions that generate reflection and, at the same time, proposition are essential for this moment, being adaptable to different situations. Bus stops are different in each city, but the space around them can be activated in a similar way.
The use of modular platforms and furniture allows different amounts to be used for road and sidewalk space configurations. The floor is painted based on the location and is therefore 100% adaptable. In Porto Alegre, we chose the Sarandi neighborhood to test the idea. It is located on the northern edge of the city, in one of the most populous neighborhoods in the capital (32 inhabitants/ha). It is also considered one of the most dangerous and violent neighborhoods, according to pre-pandemic data. Regarding gender, 52.48% of the population of the neighborhood is female and 47.83% of the families are headed by women. Therefore, we understand that it would be a suitable place to test this proposal that directly involves women who need to leave their homes to work or go shopping in this post-pandemic moment.
The plan is to contact community leaders to define the place of intervention and form the intervention's management group. The idea is to invite them to take part from the beginning of the process. Therefore, they can validate the needs and become responsible for the project with the team. Hence, besides the location, they can choose which equipment and services will be indicated in the markings, in which places within a radius of 1312.34 feet they want to place information, and they can also help in the assembly and painting of the intervention
Project:
About the TURBA Collective:
Turba is a Brazilian women's collective that encourages gender equality in cities through collaborative actions in the urban space. Since 2018, we have been working on projects that place the female experience at the center of debates, thus making visible the agendas defended for the construction of a widely inclusive city. The projects are plural and cover different scales such as activist, educational, participatory and research actions. Through our work, we seek the collective construction of replicable projects, as we believe that the construction of a women's network is the best way for a collective exit.
Composed by Paula Motta, Renata Saffer and Roberta de Alencastro.
Team Information: Coletivo Turba, Porto Alegre, Brazil / Montevideo, Uruguay
Paula Motta - Architect and Urban Planner, Co-founder Turba
Renata Saffer - Architect and Urban Planner, Co-founder Turba
Roberta Gascue de Alencastro - Architect and Urban Planner, Co-founder Turba
Ana Clara Vera - Architect and Urban Planner, Co-founder Habitadas
Camila Bellaver Alberti - Architect and Urban Planner, Co-founder Versa
Contact: contato.turba@gmail.com
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