“Urban Safety”Urban Design From Women's Perspective Study Case: Nablus

This study is about Gender and its tight relation to the organization and planning of public spaces, and about redesigning these spaces according to women's perspective and physical and spiritual needs, and about the effect of ensuring these needs on their comfort and safety. The study also discusses women's urban life in Nablus city as a study case, in order to recognize local women's behavior within public spaces, and whether these spaces fit women’s different needs. The study aims basically at the importance of ensuring urban spaces that provide physical and spiritual safety for women, which can be achieved by ensuring women's different needs within urban planning polices, as a result, women become able to have a more direct experience with a place and the people within it, in other words, women will be able to have an active engagement with public spaces. The study finds that local women in Nablus city are absent totally from local urban policies, and women’s special needs are not available within city spaces. Also, women don’t feel safe and secure spiritually or physically, specially their suffer from the lack of social safety and their constant fear about their personal safety especially at night. About local urban policies, they are absent by heart and soul from taking women’s urban needs into consideration, but there is a gleam of hope thanks to the effort of Woman’s Issues Committee that relates to Nablus City Municipality, which is preparing now to spot lights on women’s urban needs supporting by UNFPA. Finally, the study presents a set of recommendations according to the research results, where these recommendations include proposals for both women and decision makers, that implied the necessary cooperation between all the involved groups to raise an urban policies that consider all society members needs, especially women’s needs.