Girl Walk: Identity, Crowd-mapping and Safety in the City for Women and Girls

Swanston Street: Happy and Sad Spaces. Analysis and synthesis of Plan's "Free to Be" crowd-map. Image: Monash University XYX Lab.

Creating a culturally vibrant city that is inclusive for women and girls.

Investigators

XYX Lab have collaborated with Plan International Australia to synthesise the data from their ‘Free to Be’ map. By allowing women and girls the authority to articulate their experiences, we learn how to develop better, safer and more inclusive cities for everyone.

Nicole Kalms

In 2016, Plan International Australia published ‘Free to Be’, a website and app that enables women to report on their perception of safety within Melbourne. These anonymous reports are displayed on a map, enabling others to view the places where women felt safe and where they didn’t.

XYX Lab is involved with the second phase of the project: analysing the tendencies, tensions and trends of these reports. A key element of a sustainable and resilient city is the ability of all who live within its realm to partake and contribute to it and the extent to which that occurs within Melbourne is becoming visible via ‘Free to Be’.

View the ‘Free to Be’ map here:
www.plan.org.au/free-to-be