In 1999, officials in Vienna handed out a questionnaire about how people in the city used transportation. The men filled it out in five minutes: go to work in the morning, come home at night. The women couldn’t stop writing.

This story is the eighth in a series of 10 articles from Apolitical–an international platform for innovators in the public service and all those who care about effective government–about the best urban innovations around the world. The last one was about how to design a city for children. Stay tuned in two weeks for the next installment.

The things they wrote were about dropping the kids off at school on the way to work, or taking them to the doctor some mornings, or helping their own aging parents buy groceries, or picking the kids up from activities.

It was an extremely more varied pattern of use–with far more walking and public transport–and one that resulted in several changes to the city’s infrastructure: easier access to public transport, wider pavements, ramps for pushchairs and buggies. This thinking is part of a movement called gender mainstreaming–assessing how planning and policy decisions will specifically affect both women and men.

For instance, Toronto has made a “request stop system,” so women (and men, for that matter) can get off buses closer to their homes late at night. Several places, from Srinigar in Kashmir to Mexico City, have created women-only buses and subway cars. Västerås in Sweden, recognizing that women are less likely to take part in consultation on urban innovations, has started asking its questions in places dominated by women. And cities in El Salvador have started putting all women-focused public services, like childcare, violence protection, and sexual health clinics, together in centers called Ciudad Mujer.

And because women in general are more likely to combine work with family commitments, cities like Berlin are trying to break up the division between residential and commercial districts, between suburb and office. That means more mixed-use neighborhoods, with homes, shops, and workplaces all jumbled up–something with numerous other benefits as well, like neighborhood character or being able to walk rather than having to get in a car every time you leave the house.

It also means designing specific developments on those principles. Latin American cities, spurred on by a strong grassroots movement, have done a lot to remake public spaces for women. In Rosario, Argentina, the city has reclaimed its squares from young drug users by filling them with good lighting, playground equipment for children, benches, tables, and soccer goal posts.