Leslie Kern traces an analysis of the gendered city that starts from her own urban experience yet goes beyond her individuality to take into account the different identity aspects of urban marginalization and violence. Constantly dancing between personal experience and critical research, the book’s situated research is deeply grounded into reality by the author’s awareness of her own position. Leslie Kern is a firm believer that visions to make things better already exist—practices that are or have been already at play in our cities for decades but that we fail to recognize as possible alternatives to the neoliberal urban model. Particularly eye-opening, the chapter “A city of friends” explores the world-making potential of female and queer friendship as a way of life. Kern weaves together examples from different stages of her life, representations of friendship in literature, movies and TV shows, and academic accounts from different researchers, to draw a very rich picture of the revolutionary potential of alternative forms of kinship. Decentering the nuclear family and offering spaces for other relationships, the feminist city can counter the norms imposed by the logics of the capitalist city.
— Chiara Dorbolò, Curator of the Architecture Book Fair 2021
