P+HS Architects: Does the City See Her? Mothers’ Experiences in Housing, Public Realm and Care

It is 11am on a typical Tuesday in Newcastle city centre. A mother with a four-month-old is trying to find somewhere to feed her baby. Not anywhere specialist, just somewhere away from foot traffic, with space for a buggy, that does not require her to buy a £4.50 coffee first. If she knows where to look, she may find one of Newcastle’s only dedicated spaces on the top floor of a department store. If she does not, the city offers very little guidance. This is not an exceptional story; it is what happens when places are designed around a default user, rather than the realities of everyday care.

This is the starting point for new interdisciplinary research undertaken by a team across P+HS Architects and Northumbria University, exploring what we are calling the maternal infrastructure gap: the absence of public facilities that enable mothers and caregivers to feed, rest, move through and participate in the city with dignity.

The built environment is often presented as neutral, but the evidence used to shape it rarely is. Decisions about public realm, housing, communal space and neighbourhood investment are often made using data that tells us what is present, but not who can use it, who avoids it, or who has to adapt to make it work. This data gap becomes a design gap: what is not measured is not prioritised, and what is not prioritised is not funded, built or maintained.

This is where WISH’s See Her campaign feels particularly significant. Applying a gendered lens to data is not only about who is represented in leadership, as important as that is, it is also about the information collected before decisions are made about the places women live, work, care and move through every day. For housing providers, local authorities, planners and designers, the question is not simply whether women are consulted, but whether engagement is designed to ask the right questions, reach the right people, and generate meaningful insight.

The research works across three Newcastle city centre sites, asking mothers and caregivers to map where the city works, where it fails, and what they have to do to navigate the gaps. Through surveys, interviews, focus groups and mapping workshops, lived experience can be translated into spatial evidence and practical recommendations for planners, designers, housing providers and policymakers.

Newcastle provides a specific and timely context. Its designation as a Marmot City last year introduced a commitment to reducing health inequalities through place-based intervention, yet the city currently lacks public toilets and has no planning policy acknowledging gender or maternal care. This research positions these gaps as key components in shaping healthier, more equitable places.

What gendered spatial data reveals is that exclusion is often ordinary, practical and easy to overlook. It can be the absence of a seat in the right place, a toilet that no longer exists, or a route that technically works until you try it with a buggy, a crying baby and no spare hands.

Our preliminary survey of North East mothers and caregivers makes this visible. Two thirds had avoided areas of Newcastle city centre because they felt it was unwelcoming or difficult to navigate with children. Two thirds said there was inadequate seating when they needed to rest or care for their child. Almost half could not easily find a clean toilet or well-maintained baby-changing facilities.

These are not abstract concerns; they shape behaviour. A mother who cannot find somewhere to feed her child may cut a trip short. A caregiver who knows there are no clean toilets may avoid the city altogether. A parent who has to buy something to sit down, change a baby or feel welcome is being asked to pay for access to essential care. Over time, these small adaptations become patterns of exclusion: shorter journeys, fewer visits, reduced social connection and less access to civic life.

The existing provision is often only visible to those who already know where to look. The local facilities that do exist, such as the feeding and changing rooms in John Lewis and Fenwick, have become part of a hidden geography of care, with many respondents reporting they only come into town knowing those spaces exist. One woman told us she now goes to the Metrocentre instead, because the facilities there are more accessible and predictable. When care is displaced into department stores and shopping centres, access depends on money, opening hours, social confidence and local knowledge. For those with a disability, on low incomes, or already experiencing isolation, that can be the difference between participating and staying at home.

This matters directly to the housing sector. A gendered lens does not add a special interest group onto an otherwise complete brief; it exposes what the brief was missing in the first place. Housing is shaped by a broad community of professionals working across policy, design, development, management and maintenance. The experience of housing does not stop at the front door: it extends into the stairwell where a buggy has to be stored, the route to nursery, the bench near the play space, the poorly lit cut-through, and the wider public realm between home, school, healthcare and work. These are all spatial decisions that can either support acts of care or quietly compound the challenges of carrying them out.

Applied to housing data collection, a gendered lens could be transformative: resident surveys that capture caring responsibility and household type; post-occupancy evaluation asking whether residents can feed, rest and move safely; estate regeneration briefs that treat care journeys as core evidence rather than afterthought. Many of the barriers identified in our city centre research are not unique to Newcastle’s city centre; the same questions apply to housing estates and neighbourhood sites: who can stop, who can stay, who feels welcome, and who has to adapt?

We welcome conversations with WISH members, housing providers and built environment professionals interested in contributing to the research or exploring how a gendered lens could inform their work. The city does not fail to See Her by accident; it fails when we do not collect the evidence that would make her needs impossible to ignore.

Alanis Burgess, Architectural Designer, P+HS Architects