Looking for a "feminine" city design

[atpollard]

I suspect that the culture that created 'women in charge' would be dramatically different from a culture where men and women are viewed as equals and both would be different from a culture where women are chattel. Those innate cultural differences would be reflected in different cultural norms which in turn drive the forms of the built environment.

It is all speculation since we have few matriarchal dominated societies from which to draw data, and those that do exist tend to be pre-industrial ... following tribal and rural dominated building patterns.


... but let me present one very specific speculation:
Let's assume for discussion that the average man is more 'independent minded' and the average woman is more 'social minded'. By which I mean nothing more than the man would, left to his own, gather his wife and family to himself, clear his 40 acres with his mule, and settle down into his home on his land with his family. The woman, by contrast, if left to her own, would gather at her mother's house with her sisters and talk about whatever it is that women talk about; she is more innately relational than a man.

So a city in a male dominated culture would be built around small individual dwellings optimized for the traditional nuclear family, and a female dominated culture might be built around an extended family living in a multi-generational and multi-family setting.

Would a city made of single family homes look different from a city composed of multi-generational kabutz'?
Maybe.

I think that it is an idea worth exploring.