The Extremadura Sustainable Urban and Territorial Planning Law of 2019 (LOTUS) is one of the pioneering Spanish planning laws in gender mainstreaming. Gender mainstreaming appears explicitly mentioned already from the opening section of the LOTUS as one of the approaches that enables a more sustainable territorial and urban development. The law has among its objectives that of correcting the main gender inequalities related to human settlements and cities. The main innovation of the LOTUS is an Annex including Technical Norms for gender mainstreaming in the territorial and urban planning of Extremadura. These are the first technical norms on gender in urban planning developed in Spain and possibly also internationally. These regulations include specific, precise, and detailed indications, aimed at all scales and all the documentation of the different plans and programs contemplated in the LOTUS: Guidelines for Spatial Planning, Territorial Plans, Rural Plans, General Structural Plans, General Detailed Plans, Catalogs, Special Plans for Territorial Planning, Special Plans, Partial Development Plans, Detailed Studies and Municipal Ordinances. The Technical Standards furthermore are complemented by the toolkit Gender Mainstreaming in Urban Planning: Guidelines for Designing Smart and Sustainable Cities and Towns, of 2021, which presents the most relevant aspects to take into account to guarantee that planning integrates gender issues, in the different substantive topics and at different scales, as well as the differentiated needs of women and other social groups in need of care, such as children, adolescents, the elderly or people with special needs. The manual is a tool to facilitate the implementation of the LOTUS, raise awareness, and train the different agents involved in the territorial and urban development of Extremadura on the implications that habitat planning has on people’s lives, particularly in the diversity and complexity of daily activities that are mostly women perform.
Projects → Gender in the Land-Use Planning Law of Extremadura (LOTUS)
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