On Thursday, December 12th, I attended the first of two training workshops, “Accessible School,” part of the Iscol@ project, promoted by the Autonomous Region of Sardinia. The workshops aim to improve the environmental quality of buildings, universal accessibility, and inclusiveness.
Numerous professionals, representatives of educational institutions, and technicians involved in school building design participated in both in person and online.
It was an opportunity to present our FirstLife platform dedicated to gender-responsive urban planning, which is much more than a digital tool; it is a tool that triggers innovation, designed to foster a culture of school building design as the heart of the community, in a co-design process.
In this context, digital technology plays a key role both as an amplifier of physical reality and as an active contributor to processes and projects that place equality, accessibility, and sustainability as key to development.
Specifically, gender-responsive urban planning can mean addressing toponymy, lighting, pedestrian spaces, social hubs, accessibility, and proximity in urban centers, including around school buildings, involving women citizens, who are often left on the sidelines of planning.
This involves addressing the issue of safety, but not only that, as was the case in the experiment conducted in Castenaso, in the province of Bologna, where co-design with women citizens reimagined municipal spaces from a gender perspective, formulating proposals to improve the provision of services and the quality of life for all.
