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Public spaces are often failing girls and women, with male dominance and a lack of representation being prevalent issues. The 2030 Agenda emphasises the need for safe and accessible public spaces for women, children and other disadvantaged or marginalised  groups. Nevertheless, women and girls tend to be neglected in the development of urban areas, and their specific needs and risks are not fully considered. Hence, there is a need for feminist urban planning.  Feminist planning aims to understand, challenge, and change power relations in public spaces, by involving the experiences, needs, and desires of marginalised groups in the planning process in order to create more equal cities. This approach recognises the individual and collective power that women and other disadvantaged groups already possess. Social innovation is an innovative practice for meeting social needs and shares a common goal with feminist planning of promoting social change and increasing power for disadvantaged groups. However, whereas feminist urban planning – and urban planning in general – tend to end when a project has been planned and executed, social innovation has a stronger and more explicit focus on results or impact of the process or project. This is an aspect where feminist planning can learn from social innovation. By addressing the specific needs of marginalised groups and focusing on results and actual change, feminist planning can contribute to positive social change and empower women and girls in urban development processes. This viewpoint argues that feminist planning can learn from the focus of social innovation on results (i.e. output, outcome and impact of the planning), which has the potential to change planning practices and challenge gendered social norms in order to create more equal, just and socially sustainable public spaces and cities.

A debate about emerging models of urban living labs (ULLs) 2.0 is taking place in the literature, highlighting the importance of social aspects. The aim of this paper is to examine feminist ULLs as a potential source of social sustainability. This is conducted through a case study of a feminist ULL in Sweden, where girls and young women, together with multiple professional stakeholders, used Minecraft to redesign a public square in their neighbourhood - a marginalised suburban area of Stockholm. Data was collected through participant observations of six experimental labs during 1 year, surveys of the ULL participants, and an analysis of the fnal Minecraft designs. The empirical fndings reveal a process of mutual learning between girls and professional stakeholders, where the girls were viewed as place experts. The fndings also reveal that the girls’ visions include a socially sustainable transition of the urban square: from patriarchal to inclusive, from grey to green, and from a transit area to a meeting-place. There were some diferences between girls and professional stakeholders. Whereas the professionals tended to emphasise security in their visions, the girls emphasised liveability. Although more research is needed, this paper concludes that feminist ULLs can be a possible source of social sustainability. However, the ULL process must both be inclusive, and at the same time unlock long-term transformation in the physical environment.

Covid-19 började som en hälsokris och växte snabbt till en omfattande samhällskris – i det privata och offentliga livet, nationellt och internationellt, lokalt och globalt. Syftet med denna artikel är att bidra med kunskap om människors oro under covid-19-pandemins första fas i Sverige. Oro studeras utifrån sociodemografiska faktorer, socialt kapital samt människors bedömningar av nationella åtgärder och potentiella hot. Studiens teoretiska ramverk utgår från begrepp och teorier om oro och socialt kapital. Data samlades in i Sverige under april–maj 2020 med hjälp av en webbaserad enkät om människors erfarenheter av covid-19-pandemin. Genom multipel regressionsanalys och multipel korrespondensanalys fann vi att graden av oro är nära kopplad till bedömningen av nationella åtgärder som felaktiga, samt till uppfattningen att själva viruset covid-19 är det största hotet (i jämförelse med ekonomiska eller sociala konsekvenser av pandemin). Dessa faktorer var även relaterade till högre ålder, kronisk sjukdom samt lågt socialt kapital. Artikeln pekar på ett behov av mer sociologisk forskning – både kvantitativ och kvalitativ – om pandemins olika konsekvenser i vardagslivet.