CHENNAI: Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) Mayor R Priya on Friday launched the city’s first gender-inclusive urban design manual. Prepared by the GCC’s gender and policy lab (GPL) with financial backing from the Nirbhaya Fund, the manual outlines detailed, gender-sensitive urban infrastructure design guidelines aimed at ensuring safety, accessibility and usability of public spaces for all — particularly women, trans persons and non-binary persons, children, persons with disabilities, elderly individuals, and others. The launch was made following the ‘Aval Idam’ event, a photo exhibition held at MRTS Park in Thiruvanmiyur curated to celebrate women in public spaces.
The manual was initiated in August 2023 and developed through a research process beginning March 2024. Twelve key types of public infrastructure — including parks and playgrounds, beaches, spaces under flyovers, bus shelters, transit stations, subways and foot overbridges, streets, open and closed markets, urban delivery centres, community halls, shelters for the urban homeless, and public toilets — were studied. The research combined spatial audits, observational studies, and in-depth discussions with over 80 users such as sanitation workers, migrant women, young girls, trans persons and persons with disabilities to understand barriers they face in navigating and accessing public infrastructure.
The manual identifies structural gaps in urban design that hinder inclusion -- such as dim lighting, broken footpaths, absence or inaccessible toilets, lack of signage, absence of seating, and unsafe or poor surveillance areas — and offers a set of actionable design guidelines and a practical checklist for engineers, architects, and civic planners.
For example, in parks and playgrounds, the study found that only 30% of users were women, many of whom cited inadequate toilets (24%), poor infrastructure (20%), and a lack of adult-friendly leisure elements such as swings and others. The guidelines recommend multiple entrances to make entry and exit accessibility to adjacent roads, low-height permeable boundary walls, edge seating using ledges or steps, pathway widths of at least 2.5m, play areas segmented for toddlers, children, and young adults, indoor play facilities, adult gym equipment, proper toilets, changing rooms, mother-feeding rooms, drinking water, universal accessibility, and lighting with a minimum 50 lux intensity.
Bus shelters — 470 of which were audited — revealed safety and accessibility gaps, with 94.4% of women walking to bus stops and 92.8% of men carrying two bags, suggesting the need for surrounding pedestrian infrastructure. Nearly 25% of respondents prioritised safety in choosing their transit routes, and concerns were raised about dim lighting, presence of Tasmac shops (11%), inadequate signage (43.4% lacked reserved seating signage), signage indicating presence of CCTV cameras (57.4%), and only less than 2% has drinking water facilities. The manual prescribes well-lit, slip-resistant pavements, raised landing platforms, prohibition of liquor stores within 1km of transit areas, active surveillance, to enforce police surveillance booths or commercial activity for safety, seating not higher than 450mm from pavement level, and amenities like real-time bus updates, dedicated space for wheelchair users, fold-up seating, arm- and backrests seating for elderly users, neighbourhood maps, phone charging points, and leaning rails.
Public toilets — based on an audit of 28 newly renovated units in Zone 5 — showed mixed outcomes: while 94.3% of users felt safe and 92.4% found them well-lit, women cited toilets lacked hooks for bags/dupattas, women avoid toilets requiring them to pass by men’s toilets, loitering by men near toilets, absence of wash basins, and steep or missing ramps as concerns. The manual recommends inclusive facilities like soap dispensers, sanitary napkin vending machines, coat hooks, diaper changing stations in both men's and women’s rest rooms, Indian and western toilet options, inclusive signage for trans persons, emergency call buttons, baby safety chairs, level flooring, mirrors, shelves, and charging points.
Each public infra in the manual ends with a comprehensive checklist and a scoring system to evaluate the inclusivity of infrastructure projects. Engineers have already undergone first-level training along with a three-minute instructional video. The manual will serve as a mandatory reference for future urban design, with follow-up training sessions planned to ensure sustained implementation. Upcoming tenders starting at the end of this month will include this checklist, said a GCC official. A total of 91 bus shelters have already been in the process of implementation with the new recommendations.