City of Women (London)

A feminist reclamation of London’s hidden history, through a reimagining of the city’s iconic Tube map.

Londoners Reni Eddo-Lodge and Emma Watson have reimagined the iconic Tube map, in collaboration with Rebecca Solnit, to celebrate the lives of women and non-binary people who have left a lasting impact on the city. The new map, unveiled on International Women’s Day in partnership with Transport for London, re-names each stop after a woman, non-binary person or a group who have shaped London.

Instead of Bond Street, Notting Hill Gate, Warren Street, Paddington, Euston Square, Waterloo, Bank or Lancaster Gate, the City of Women London Tube map invites us to mind the gap at Audrey Hepburn, Claudia Jones, Virginia Woolf, Mary Seacole, Noor Inayat Khan, Agnes Beckwith, Boudica or Jung Chang.

This map has been produced and packaged as a large poster. An interactive, digital version developed by UCL allows people to learn more about each person and their inspiring lives.

The women and non-binary people assigned to each station were identified through a multi-layered research process, beginning with an open call for suggestions. Some of these figures are household names while others are unsung heroes from London’s hidden histories, yet each has indelibly shaped the city. The names for the map were selected by the authors of the project, with input from an advisory group made up of academics, writers, activists and historians. Where possible, names have been placed at a station with a personal or symbolic connection to their lives. The inclusion of several non-binary people on the map recognises the resonance between their lives and undertakings and the anti-patriarchal spirit of the City of Women project (in all cases, they are in full agreement about their inclusion).

The City of Women map is the result of a collaboration launched in 2020 between Reni Eddo-Lodge, Rebecca Solnit, Emma Watson, cartographer Molly Roy, designer Lia Tjandra and Haymarket Books, in partnership with Transport for London, the WOW Foundation and University College London.

Reni Eddo-Lodge is an award winning journalist, author, and podcaster. Her debut non-fiction book, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, was published in June 2017 to critical acclaim, becoming a Sunday Times bestseller, winning the 2018 Jhalak Prize, the 2018 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing, and a 2018 British Book Award for Narrative Non Fiction, as well as multiple other awards and shortlistings.

Her podcast, About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge, was chosen as one of the best podcasts of 2018 by Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Harper’s Bazaar UK, The Guardian, British GQ and Wired UK.

In 2019, Reni’s work earned her a place on Forbes’ European 30 Under 30 list. In January 2018, British Vogue highlighted named her a ’new suffragette’. She has also been listed in Elle Magazine’s 100 Inspirational Women list, and The Root’s 30 black viral voices under 30.

Emma Watson is an English actress, model, and activist. Her most recent film is Little Women, with her previous work including The Circle, Beauty and the Beast, Regression, and of course the iconic Harry Potter series.

Her high-profile activism on women’s rights has included a role as an United Nations Women’s Goodwill Ambassador, through which she launched the HeForShe campaign, which calls on men to advocate gender equality. In 2014, the Ms. Foundation for Women name Watson as its Feminist Celebrity of the year, and she has been named in the Time 100 list of influential people. She has since launched a feminist Goodreads bookclub called Our Shared Shelf and, in 2019, a legal advice line for people suffering sexual harassment at work.

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including Call Them By Their True Names (Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction), Cinderella Liberator, Men Explain Things to Me, The Mother of All Questions, and Hope in the Dark, and co-creator of the City of Women map, all published by Haymarket Books; a trilogy of atlases of American cities, The Faraway Nearby, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). Her forthcoming memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence, is scheduled to release in March, 2020. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at the Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub.