Urban public spaces are never neutral—they are shaped by histories of power, exclusion, and daily acts of negotiation. In South African cities, and especially in the downtown area, public space remains a deeply contested terrain, haunted by the spatial legacies of apartheid, urban transformation, and sustained inequalities. Yet, it is also a place of quiet defiance, resilience, and adaptation, through various practices of encounters, movements, waiting, and caring. For women, navigating the city is an ongoing act of both necessity and risk; to move through urban spaces is also to engage in acts of care—both for oneself and for others.

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This workshop centers women’s everyday journeys and their intersections with downtown. Their routes, routines, and detours are a vital form of urban knowledge. We ask how observing, narrating, and mapping women’s movements could expose latent hierarchies and how the lens of care could reconfigure the urban map. Women’s labor underpins urban life: the networks of solidarity they build, the way they read and anticipate risk, and the strategies they employ to foster safety and connection. These are forms of embodied knowledge that could transform how cities are designed for safety, inclusion, and belonging.

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Through participatory mapping, we invite participants to collectively trace these embodied experiences in Pretoria, turning everyone’s stories into collective spatial critique. This is not just an exercise in documentation—it is a form of reimagining and reclaiming. What if a “map” (in various forms like songs, paintings, performances, etc.) prioritized experiences and emotions over street names and numbers? What if it highlighted not just cartographic coordinates or urban landmarks, but the everyday places and practices of joy, solidarity, and care?

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