Making Budapest More Inclusive: A Movement for Women-Centered Urban Planning
Budapest is witnessing a groundbreaking shift in urban planning as two districts launch Hungary’s first community assemblies focused on women’s perspectives on city spaces. This initiative represents a significant step toward creating more livable, safe, and accessible urban environments for everyone.
The Community Assembly Initiative
In September and October 2025, the 2nd and 6th districts of Budapest brought together 51 randomly selected women residents in each district to discuss how their neighborhoods function and how public spaces could better serve their needs. These five-day deliberative sessions mark Hungary’s first systematic attempt to incorporate women’s experiences and perspectives into urban planning decisions.
District mayors Gergely Őrsi (District 2) and Tamás Soproni (District 6) emphasized that while men and women live together in these neighborhoods, they experience the urban environment differently. The assemblies aim to ensure both genders find their districts equally livable and comfortable.
Why Women’s Perspectives Matter in Urban Planning
Women comprise more than half of Budapest’s population, yet their voices have historically been underrepresented in urban planning and political decision-making. This gap has real consequences: many city features and services reach families through women, who typically manage daily interactions with institutions and coordinate family life. Women’s needs often reflect the broader community’s needs, making their feedback invaluable for creating truly functional urban spaces.
The assemblies brought in leading experts Éva Perpék and Noémi Soltész to guide discussions on topics that genuinely reflect women’s life situations and dilemmas. Participants explored questions about public space safety, healthcare access, caregiving responsibilities, and how self-governance can increase opportunities for women when structural inequalities persist in health, education, and employment.
How Budapest’s Transportation Reveals Gender Gaps
A comprehensive 2021 study by the Budapest Transport Center (BKK) revealed significant differences in how men and women navigate the city. Surveying over 5,000 people about their travel patterns, researcher Diána Kimmer discovered patterns that mirror international trends:
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Women use public transportation 9 percentage points more than men by trip count and walk more frequently. They make 57% more trips for childcare purposes and nearly twice as many shopping trips. Meanwhile, men drive cars 13 percentage points more often and cycle more frequently, covering longer distances for each trip.
These differences aren’t just about preference—they reflect broader social patterns. Women make shorter, more fragmented journeys throughout the day, often chaining together multiple stops for caregiving and household tasks. Men typically make longer, direct commutes between home and work. The study noted that women travel an average of 7 kilometers to work, while men travel 9.2 kilometers, suggesting women face more constraints in accessing job opportunities across the city.
Crucially, researchers found that gender plays a larger role in car usage than either distance or trip purpose, indicating that automobile use stems more from ingrained social patterns than convenience factors.
Learning from International Examples
Vienna has been pioneering gender-responsive urban planning since 1991, when a photo exhibition titled “Who Owns Public Space? Women’s Daily Lives in the City” sparked conversations about how differently men and women experience urban environments. By the early 2000s, Vienna established a dedicated gender office to ensure city services serve diverse groups more equitably.
One practical outcome: Vienna’s public transit features handrails placed at lower heights, acknowledging the 10-centimeter average height difference between men and women. Cities like Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Los Angeles have also begun examining gender differences in transportation patterns and incorporating these insights into infrastructure planning.
Specific Concerns Women Raised
During the Budapest assemblies and related roundtable discussions, women highlighted several recurring issues:
Safety and lighting: Inadequate street lighting emerged as a frequent concern. Women noted feeling vulnerable in poorly lit areas, particularly when traveling alone at night. The fear isn’t necessarily about actual crime statistics but about the psychological comfort of being visible and having others around.
Accessibility challenges: Navigating Budapest with strollers proved frustratingly difficult for mothers. Uneven sidewalks, missing curb cuts, and transit stations without elevators create unnecessary obstacles. One participant only recognized these barriers after having children and attempting to use public spaces with a baby carriage.
Public facilities: The shortage of clean, accessible public restrooms disproportionately affects women, who also often accompany young children requiring bathroom facilities during outings.
Public transit experience: Since women use public transportation more frequently than men, improvements to safety, cleanliness, and accessibility on buses, trams, and metros particularly benefit them. Discussions included proposals for enhanced transit security to improve actual safety and the perception of safety.
The Psychology of Safe Spaces
Environmental psychologist Andrea Dúll emphasized at a roundtable discussion that people feel safest in spaces with “natural surveillance”—where other people are present and visible. Interestingly, multiple studies show that both men and women perceive spaces as safest when many women are present, especially women with children who appear relaxed and smiling.
However, Dúll cautioned that environmental use isn’t always conscious. People can’t always articulate what makes them feel comfortable or secure in a space, which means participation processes must be carefully designed to capture these subtle preferences.
Beyond “Women’s Issues”
Several experts at the October 2024 roundtable discussion hosted by DemNet and KultúrAktív Association pushed back against framing these concerns as exclusively “women’s issues.” Urbanist Julianna Szabó noted that longer crossing times at pedestrian signals benefit not just women with strollers but anyone with mobility challenges—elderly people, someone on crutches, or parents with children.
This perspective aligns with the concept of “gender mainstreaming,” defined by the Council of Europe in 1998 as reorganizing and improving policy processes to incorporate gender equality perspectives at every level and stage. Rather than creating separate women-only initiatives, the goal is ensuring that policies and projects consider how they affect different groups.
Moving Toward Action
The community assemblies will conclude in November 2025, when participants present their recommendations package to district leadership. These proposals will address everything from street lighting improvements to public space design, transit accessibility, and healthcare service availability.
Meanwhile, Budapest’s Mobility Plan—which runs through 2030—is under revision. Transport researcher Diána Kimmer emphasized that while the current plan barely addresses gender differences in mobility patterns, the updated version should incorporate these insights. This doesn’t mean creating women-only measures but ensuring that various interventions consider how they affect people with different travel patterns and constraints.
What This Means for Visitors
For foreign tourists exploring Budapest, these urban planning initiatives signal a city becoming increasingly accessible and comfortable for everyone. Improvements designed to help women navigate the city with children, elderly relatives, or shopping bags also benefit tourists managing luggage, visitors with disabilities, and anyone seeking a more welcoming urban environment.
The focus on safety, lighting, accessible transit, and comfortable public spaces enhances the experience for all travelers, particularly solo female visitors who already find Budapest one of Europe’s safest capitals. As these community-driven recommendations take shape, Budapest is positioning itself not just as a beautiful destination but as a thoughtfully designed city that actively seeks to understand and serve everyone who uses its streets and spaces.
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