Welcome. I'm Paul MacLennan, MSP for East Lodian, and I'm a member of the local government, housing and planning committee, and I'd like to welcome the edition of the Festival of Politics 2021 partnership with the Parliament's Think Tank Scotland's Futures Forum. This afternoon's panel is titled, Safe City, Faces for Everyone, and it's held in partnership with the Scottish Youth Parliament. We are delighted that so many people are here able to join us online today, and I look forward to hearing comments and questions from you as we get into our discussions. So, how do we make our cities safe and inclusive for everyone? How do we banish the fear of leaving the house, especially after dark, and how do we address the fact that male dominators of urban planning and transport are not as diverse as the communities they serve? To ban more thoughtful and inclusive urban design, create well-lit, multi-gender and multi-generational open-guarding spaces where everyone feels visible and welcome. This panel aims to address all of these questions in the next 60 minutes or so, so please stay with us. I am delighted that you are able to join the event to take us apart, and I would encourage you all to use the event chat function, stating your name and geographical location and pose any questions that you would like the panel to respond to. I am very pleased to be invited by our three panellists. First, we have Sophie Reid, member of the Scottish Youth Parliament, Alex Botterall, programme lead on livable cities and towns from Sustrans, and Dr Ellie Cosgrave. Sheep Professor of Urban Innovation at University College London. Welcome all. There will be an opportunity for our online audience to put questions and views to the panel throughout the event. If you would like to make a contribution, please enter them into the question and answer box that you see. Make sure to state your first name and where you are from this afternoon and we will get through as many as possible. However, I would like to begin by asking each of our panellists how safe do you feel walking about your respective cities at different times of the day and night? I would like first to come to Alex Botterall, then Sophie, then Dr Ellie Cosgrave. Alex. Thank you, Paul. How safe do I feel walking around at different times of the day? I do feel safe walking around my city at all hours of the day. I am now based in Bristol but moved down here back from Edinburgh about four years ago and I lived there for about six years. I did feel very much safe in Edinburgh as well. It is one of those places with lots of windows looking onto the street that make you feel very welcome in the older city.  Therefore, I suppose in a moment of honesty that is because there is a slight underlying fear about that, especially if I see a boisterous group of men perhaps. I am aware that while I do feel safe, I am not entirely able to be truly myself all of the time. However, it is such a subtle thing for me, and it is very much in the background. However, for some people, that is perhaps more of a concern than it is for me. Alex, thank you very much for that. In the case that we have just seen in the last few months, it is very relevant. I am going to now come across to Sophie. Hi, everyone. Personally, as a teenage girl in Glasgow, in Scotland, I do not always feel safe walking around my city. During the day, I do feel more safe, but I have been a victim of sexual harassment during the day as well as at night. It is not always a safe environment. I do feel more unsafe at night times, especially when it is dark and coming into winter months. That is more of a concern. That has been heightened off the back of the Sarah Everard cases that you are mentioning. I think that that is a shared experience among teenage girls. Girls in Scotland's 2020 Girls in Scotland report showed that 56 per cent of girls feel worried when outside and it is dark, and 53 per cent said more should be done so that girls and young women feel safe in their local area. It is such a prominent issue in the media, but more needs to be done to tackle it. Sophie, thank you for that. It is an important issue in the Parliament just now as well. It is about men having to change their attitudes as well, and that is one of the most important things. From a young teenage girl I am putting her views across, and from Alex as well, it becomes very important. Ellie, I am going to come across to yourself just now. Thank you so much. Thank you both for sharing personal aspects of your lives. I think that that is really important to show that this is a really human issue. I know that it takes courage to talk about those things, so I am really grateful to both of you for sharing. I study violence against women in public space as my job. In many ways, I am mentally preoccupied with violence against women in my everyday life. For me, that contributes to my lack of feeling of safety in public space. I am aware of the stories and the truth of violence against women that happens all the time. What I think is important about that is that women, especially marginalized groups, all have stories or experiences of sexual violence and harassment. We bring those stories to anywhere we are, whether or not the place is safe in terms of the crime statistics in any given area. It is important that we understand women's experience of public space as being situated or entwined with our histories and the stories that we see in the media, that we see fetishized in TV programs and films, that affect our sense of do we belong in that space. That is something that I feel makes me feel more precarious in public space, whether or not the crime statistics bear those feelings of safety out. During the pandemic, I have become a cyclist and that has been actually a wonderful experience for me in terms of my personal sense of safety. The fact that I can get from door to door under my own physical steam, which gives me a sense of power. It gives me a sense that I am less vulnerable. Walking down the street, I feel much less vulnerable with a bike knowing that I can powerfully cycle away. Sometimes, Google Maps takes me on dodgy routes, or routes that I feel are dodgy. Just yesterday I was passing through, I was directed, it was a cycle route but it was a very small alleyway for quite long. It was just getting dark and I thought, no, I can't really turn around. I think the overlaying of digital technologies and making sure that we understand what safety means for cyclists and pedestrians beyond simply not being next to cars, but making sure that we have activated spaces as well. On the note of cycling, yesterday was cycling home from an evening on pretty much the exact route that Sarah Everard was walking home when she was abducted. When I go to that place that I was visiting a lot and I think about her a lot and I think about the stories and I wonder, I know where she walked. It's those kind of traces of history of violence that are alive in my mind and my imagination and that remind me that I'm not safe. That's something that we have to understand that these stories are situated in places. How do we acknowledge that in our built environment design is an interesting question. Ellie, thank you for that and I think just your recollection when you mentioned it about Sarah Everard and actually walking the route and it's real. We've all heard what has impacted on all of us but actually hearing that you've walked the route and the impact that has on yourself makes it even more real for people. So thank you very much for sharing that with us. I think just in hearing the three recollections that you know from yourself and walking the route from Alex and saying coming across as a gay man and obviously coming across from Sophia as a young teenage girl as well, this really brings a subject home and how really important this is. So thank you very much to all three of you for sharing that. I want to try and open up now a little bit more and examine the subject in a lot more detail. I suppose one of the key things is name the city that epitomises the safe city in inclusive space and explain why they've got it right for women, children, teenagers, older people and those with accessibility requirements. I wouldn't imagine that there's one city that's got all but in your own experiences. Who would you say has the best? Ellie, I'll probably come to yourself first of all and then Sophie and then Alex. Well honestly I think it's all to play for is my answer in terms of the city that is going to do it well. I get asked all the time what are the examples who show us how to do this well, where's already smashed it and actually the truth, the biggest truthful answer I always give back is looks like it's got to be you. However, we do know some of the things that really work. I don't know if I'm stealing other people's examples if I sweep to Vienna because Vienna is an example of a city who's been doing this work for a really long time since the early 90s has instigated action of gender mainstreaming into all public space design. They have a strategy for it and they have a long term commitment to it. One of the examples that I give often about the design of public spaces is that what they were able to do in Vienna was to really identify some key areas that they have power to invest in and do some proper grounded research in the gendered use of space. They looked particularly at their public parks and what they found from the research and from auditing who was using that space that by age eight, until the age of eight, boys and girls are using the space kind of equally and then something happens at age eight that means that the use of the public parks by girls and women just completely drops off. So what they decided to do was to create different areas of the park to see what to enable different types of uses. So there were particular areas where you could play certain types of sports and different areas that were that were co-ordined off the children, different areas to sit and talk, areas that would be pleasant for walking. And once the space is physically delineated, they found that girls started using the space again. And the message that came out of that was that when you have to socially negotiate the use of space, men win, boys win. And so what you need to do is make sure, and this is not because men are trying to take up lots of space, it's because that is how society has enabled, what society has enabled, that things like football can easily get bigger and bigger and take up more and more space. And not to say that girls don't want to and shouldn't be playing football, but it tends to be, anyway, you need to create different space for different type of activities. And so really there's all sorts of ways we can apply that type of learning to understand the gendered nature of any city. And by that type of learning, I mean collecting gender disaggregated data about use of space, how people feel in different, in different areas. Lighting schemes are super important, but they can't just be add more lights, because that has a huge effect in what, if you like, the main streets, secondary streets feel darker. Yeah, Ellie, just on that point, and sorry to interrupt, we obviously mentioned earlier that we collected data, how did you think in this regard, you know, because again, if you're seeing the data, it's got affected. How well do cities do that at the moment? Is that a piece of work that needs to be carried out by most cities and most countries at this stage? Yeah, I think there's, cities collect an awful lot of data, but the gender question, the gender data is just often it's not gender disaggregated, so we don't necessarily can't necessarily tell for who is the city working and for who is it not. However, I don't think we can, I think there is something that we can learn from Vienna in our own cities without having to do the hard graft of collecting all the data because we know, there are certain things that we know from theory and we know from other cities are just true, and that we can then apply. So I wouldn't want to say we have to wait five or 10 years until we've got really good data before we start designing good parks. You know, we know the principles of that. Sometimes it can be really good for making the case to funding bodies. And sometimes we're going to have super interesting insights. I've just done a project where we've been looking at how domestic workers get to work and some of the barriers for them in London, Karachi and Cape Town. So we're looking for principles about what are the barriers to safe mobility in cities, which can then be applied to other places. But there is a huge opportunity, I think, for making visible women's experiences through gender disaggregated data. Ellie, thank you for that. Sophie, I'll come across to yourself with the same question. I think off the back of what Ellie was discussing about parks specifically, I automatically thought of the opposite answer of this question, a negative example, which was Festival Park in Glasgow. There was an artwork of a women's legs spread on the gates to the park, very close to the locations of where sexual assaults had taken place. I think that's the result of young people and women being left out of the conversation, being left out of city planning and designing urban spaces. Obviously, we'll go more into the barriers to that happening later, but I think that the prime example shows how we have to change. I can't think of a place to answer this question that does it perfectly right. I don't think that exists. Especially across Scotland, there's still steps needed to be taken to improve safety for women and girls, accessibility for people with disabilities and to tackle issues such as racism and discrimination against the LGBTQ plus community, which continue to make communities feel unsafe. I don't think that anyone's got it perfectly right yet, but I think that we need to keep on learning and taking positive examples and continuing to work on them. Sophie, thank you for that. I think that the case that you mentioned was covered quite well in the press as well. It was staggering when you actually saw the work and I'm losing that look that it was referred to. It was staggering that we didn't have to, you know, that scene is acceptable, so quite agreeing that one. Sophie, thank you for that. I'm going to come across to Alex. Alex, same question. Thank you very much. Yeah, Sophie, I couldn't agree with you more. Nobody's got it right yet. And Ellie, to your explanation, I think you used the word something along the lines of it's got to be you. You know, I took that to mean everyone needs to try and do better and let's take it as a personal responsibility in our roles and our opportunities to influence to try and do better. So this is not a perfect example by any means, and I can sort of be quite open about one of the areas where I think this place falls down. But one place that I do think there's a lot of good to look at is Copenhagen. One example I've got, it kind of relates to some of the points Ellie, you were making about about the way places are defined, although perhaps less directly, but it does this thing of delighting people. So I was walking along one day and saw this really pristine looking grass by the side of a public space and I thought that looks nice and I saw a sign and my expectation, my prejudgment is that the sign is going to say keep off the grass. And as I got closer to it, I realised that the sign actually said on it, you are welcome to come and sit on the grass. And it's a really tiny example of perhaps a silly thing, but to me it shows a completely different mindset. How people think about cities is kind of welcoming perhaps empathetic spaces rather than prohibitive spaces. And I think it just sums up and like I say that Copenhagen is not perfect, but it sums up some of the delight that you get from a city like that. And that's followed through obviously coming from a Sustrans perspective. They do a lot well in terms of transport and mobility for everyone. They get a lot of people walking and cycling very easily. And it's having those people right on the street rather than driving along in metal and glass boxes who are actually disconnected from the spaces that they're going through. I think actually physically having people on the street really makes a difference and in cities like Edinburgh where the streets are spaces for people projects and glass go as well. That's going in the right direction too so some really big wins for Scotland on the way and already happening. But yeah the sort of egalitarian nature of the Danish state as well I think also contributes to a kind of safer and a kind of more caring place to be so it's got to kind of work at all levels. I think I've got to say alongside that though I think where perhaps Copenhagen might fall down in comparison to some of the some other places is perhaps with with accessibility. I don't know if it says I'm speaking not as a disabled person so I'd be interested to know the lived experience of people who have been there. But yeah my perception is it's not as disability or accessibility friendly as some other cities so that's it's not getting it perfect but yeah I'll leave it there. Thank you. OK, thanks for that. I just want to move on to another subject just now but just on the terms of that I've got one question that we've just kind of come in just now and we're asking around about city planners thinking about bus stop location and frequency. I don't know what your recollection is or what your views are on that at the moment. We'll move on to more open questions not the second but Moira's raised that point at the moment. Can you touch on that a little bit and talking a little bit about accessibility and the use of people with site issues for example? Are you aware of that generally speaking about how city planners look at that issue? Alex, can you come to yourself first of all and I'll go to Ellie and then Sophie after that. Yeah, sure. I think there's a recognition that some of the solutions particularly with cycling and bus stops and disabled people aren't there yet. There's still a gap between the engagement that needs to happen, a broader conversation and a better understanding from absolutely every street user about what's involved. And I think kind of related to Ellie's point on data disaggregation, we need to actually have more evidence to support different types of design or not to support but to kind of make sense of different types of design. I suppose, while there might be perceptions of winners and losers in current specific locations, I suppose overall it pains me to say this because I know some people won't see it this way but it's good to have those examples so that we can be looking at what is working and what's not and trying to understand better why. But I think everyone involved in us as such must certainly play a part in this. We need to remain absolutely open minded to learn from the lived experience of all people who are negatively impacted by some of the cycling solutions for things like bus stops. Alex, thank you for that. I'll go across to Ellie just now. Ellie, obviously you touched on that a bit about the data collection and I think that's something that was raised about that and how does that inform decisions? I don't know if you want to comment on that specific point that Moira made. Yes, I think understanding what a safe city is from a gender perspective helps us to think about the city as a place with multiple experience and where people have multiple needs. A corollary of that or something that follows on from that is that yes, when we think about gendered needs, ramps are really important, toilets are really important and what we start to find is that those sorts of things are just about making a city accessible generally. I think there is more work that needs to be done with physical disability but also neurodiversity and there is quite a lot of work being done at UCL around Alzheimer's in public space. How can we create spaces that are navigable if you don't know where you are? Autism and loud noises and how to create safe spaces for people who have particular cognitive needs. This is a huge inquiry but at the basis it's about understanding that our physical infrastructure design has different impacts and different value based on who you are. We need, when we are creating our investment decisions, to be able to say who does that create value for and how. How can we balance our investments such that we bring everyone up to a basic standard of living and therefore justify some really intense spending on some of the most vulnerable and excluded groups so that we can live in a society that we think is just and fair. I was very excited and moved to be part of a research project called Choreographing the City where we worked with dance artists to explore how we move through the city simply because dance artists have a very particular view on our movement and a very specific particular expertise. I was very moved to be on a panel there with a physically disabled dance artist who was in a wheelchair and he spoke very eloquently about how he was moved by the city and had very limited choices. If we can bring in the acknowledge that disabled people or all people and marginalised people also have a talent and an ability to express themselves and expertise that can be super valuable and we need to give some power as urban designers and people with expertise. Power to make decisions about our urban realm to people who are experts in a way that we are not. Sophie, I'll come across to yourself just now and we've had Kimberly from Glasgow making a point that there was some research carried out by you in Glasgow and found about social identity massively impacted on women and non-binary people and how safe they felt using the buses in Glasgow. In fact I said to the vast majority of women didn't feel safe at night time so we'll see how important that policy is at that time. Sophie, I'm going to come on to yourself and I know that we've got some other comments in the back of that and I'm keen to move on. Sophie, just on that point we talked about at the start. Public transport and sexual harassment on public transport are big passions of mine to tackle. I propose a motion at SIP that passed with 96 per cent on taking action to prevent sexual harassment from occurring on public transport and seeing decision makers and service providers reviewing their policies to ensure that systems are in place to help young people feel safe on travelling. I think that the Young Women Leads research that you pointed out is really interesting and I would recommend having a look at that after the session. Through SIP's campaign all aboard, which was specifically about public transport, we found that just over one in five of female respondents did not feel confident travelling alone on public transport compared to less than one in 10 male respondents. There's a big gender gap within that and the time and availability of public transport is also a challenge for some young people. We had a 17-year-old girl say that she finished work at half eight but the next bus home wasn't until half ten, meaning that she would have to walk home along a dark track after midnight. There are inequalities within our transport system. There are also inequalities when we look at disability. The same all aboard research found that nearly two thirds of young people who have a disability do not feel comfortable using public transport. Some specifically mentioned difficulties that are faced when using pushchairs or other passengers being in accessible seats and facing discrimination and stigma from staff. Those are all massive issues and inequalities that still need to be dealt with within the transport sector. I think that a lot of work needs to be done to improve that. Sophie, thank you for that. I was going to take that question later on but it's kind of doing some of the discussions. Kimberly from Glasgow said about the point that you made about the research that has been carried out. Her ultimate question was who is responsible for women's safety needs that are built into town planning. I will ask that question but the key thing then is that this is an important context. Are all local councils across the UK prioritising these changes as fundamental to climate change, for example? How seriously are local authorities taking the point that Kimberly says?  That is a really important point. Thank you. I think that this is absolutely core to how we start to make progress in this area. My answer will always be that it is all of our responsibility to find where our power is and work together to create a comprehensive plan and action. Some of us have more power than others. We have to acknowledge that but some of my criticism and disappointment in some of the funding responses that we have had in light of Sarah Everard's adduction, which focus on policing and CCTV as the solution and prioritising a policing and crime approach shows to me that the Cabinet Office does not understand the reality of violence against women because the policing system is not a criminal offence to harass women in many ways. It is not even illegal to follow her home. On top of that, as I said before, it is not the actual crime against women, the crime rates that we are scared of. It is the knowledge of our vulnerability because we present as female. In order to create strategies that do work, my view is that we need to carry out women's safety audits where we work with women in local communities who have lived experience of the place and can tell us, whoever us is, who can vocalise and the specific needs, the specific areas they feel particularly vulnerable and why, what their safety behaviours are and why. The people that should be alongside and listening are transport authorities who maybe have bus networks that they can rethink of a bus as a safe place, local businesses who often can create the first response. What does it mean to be a good high streets? Local authorities, schools to work together to create a holistic plan and strategy with people with different responsibilities that you can see how you fit into a larger story. In London we have the women's night safety charter where night time venues are signed up or committed to action to support women's safety at night. If we can invest, and police should be there too, not anti police, there is a purpose for police in women's safety, but when we only say that it is a police in crime response then we are completely lost, I believe. If we can get together to have genuinely nuanced conversations about the diversity of safety experiences and needs in a particular space and we can get creative about what our individual power and responsibility and ability is to act, we can create a movement that becomes a strategy and that we are actually accountable to. I hope that that is what people will start to be doing. I have applied for some funding for it, but let's see. Thank you for that. I think we are touching on why gender inequality is much bigger subject than you said. It requires a mind change, particularly from men. Come on to yourself and then on to Alex. Just on the same issue that was mentioned there. I think that the point that you just raised there is that a lot of the responsibility is on women to make those changes. When it needs to be turned away, we are not the ones that are perpetrating this violence against women, so the responsibility should be on men to change behaviours and attitudes. When looking at city planning, decision makers and everyone involved has a responsibility to make sure that they are consulting people who will be using the city, not just those people who are perhaps easy to consult with. I think that that can happen quite a lot. It is groups of people who are responding a lot to things and you miss out a lot of seldom heard groups when consulting. I think that we need to make those systems more accessible to young people, to women, to different minority groups so that you actually have a diverse picture in the research that then can be actioned on. Sophie, thank you for that. Alex, go ahead. Thank you. I do not really have that much to add to that, to be honest. I think that you have both put it so well. The only thing that I was going to draw upon is that we have seen some atrocious examples in politics thinking of Donald Trump with his locker room talk. As a gay man, I think that gay community gay men have a unique opportunity to hear about women's issues and see it from both sides. I think that there is a natural link between feminism and gay men. I go into a male locker room and I hear what people say. I think that we have no more responsibility than anyone else, but an opportunity perhaps to challenge or to take some of the things we hear. Ultimately, I think what needs to happen is we need to do what we can to grow empathy in the right direction. I think that there is so much empathy between women and perhaps between the gay community and women. Gay male community, particularly from my perspective, but I think we need to work harder to get that empathy grown to a broader spectrum of society. Just to put this into a slightly different context, I was lucky enough to do some disability awareness training recently. Well, actually, ages ago before COVID, but that's a time walk, isn't it? We went on electric wheelchairs and push wheelchairs and we had blindfolds. We actually went around the streets and put ourselves in the position of people with disabilities and it was profound. We noticed police cars parked on the pavement. We noticed bins blocking the way. We noticed that the alternative is to go into a busy highway. If we can generate the same kind of empathy for those issues that that generated for me and the design team at Sustrans that took part in that session, I think that that is definitely part of the solution. Alex, you thank you for that. I've got a couple of comments that have come in just during, as we've been talking here. Ellie, the first one is probably just for yourself and it was specifically on the comment that you made regarding public spaces. One was asking about how we strike a balance between encouraging people to use the spaces, but potentially we mentioned it as well as trying to avoid segregation. As you said, I think that you mentioned that it's usually boys and men that take over that space. What ways can we try and manipulate and use and how can we try and encourage that use without segregating the area? That's probably the first question for yourself. The second question, and I'll open it up and give everybody the opportunity to think about it, was... This is Harriet Kim that's asking about this. Mentioning it in about... We've had a built environment that's been designed in many cities over a long number of years. Maybe what we're doing at the moment is trying to redesign that, or I had the opportunity to completely redesign, I suppose, transport links and cross-suburb links in other parts of cities. Not just building on, but completely re-jigging and looking at where we are to ensure that people can travel safely and so on. So, early the first point and then about the public parks. Then we'll come back to yourself around about the built environment and do we change that and then open that up after that if that's okay. So it's specifically on the public parks point to yourself first of all. Great, thank you. I think that's a really good point. My view is that when we're thinking about creating public space we should always be thinking about opening up opportunities. Opening up opportunities rather than closing them down. So in fact by creating just a cordoned off spaces. They don't say boy space, girl space. What they say is this type of activity, that type of activity. In some senses we think that barriers are... Many times we assume a barrier is about excluding. Whereas actually sometimes it can be about curating. So we have a football pitch or some kind of sports pitch which we have a sense may be predominantly used by males. So what do we do about layering on social infrastructure and projects and programmes that open up that space? So it's not just the physical infrastructure that we need to think about in terms of curating. But we need to think about how we as a society then mould and use. My view of the public park creating different zones is about opening up rather than segregating. Men like to go on nice walks in nature too or sit and talk to their friends. So we have to think about the multiple types of uses. And then make sure that we're creating safe spaces for them. But I do take the point that might turn into like boys over here. That question was from Morgan Nicolae or I think maybe one of my MSP colleagues in the Parliament. So thanks to Audrey for that. And the second question, Ellie, and I'll stick with yourself obviously is from, I think it's Harriet mentioning about obviously the built environment. And it's rather than just changing the built environment can be completely amend what we're doing in our cities just now and create I suppose new opportunities, new apps systems that can respond to where we are now rather than where the design systems that were built 40, 50, 60 years ago. Yeah, if I understand the question correctly, I'll answer what I think the question is. I think there's a, yes, when we have the opportunities to do big infrastructure redevelopments we need to make sure we're ready to go with how it needs to work. We need to understand our community, the needs of our communities who we're serving and have a gender and disability and racial lens on those. However, those opportunities don't necessarily come around so often. And so we need to think about the ways as a society that we can create some sort of unity culture and standard about how we treat each other in public space. And so a big dreamy investment from my point of view that would make a massive difference to people's feeling of safety in public space would be a huge push and a social conversation and an advertising campaign on bystander intervention training. We know how to, how bystanders can safely intervene when they notice or see any kind of harassment. We know the types of activities, we know what makes people who've experienced any kind of violence in public space feel better even after the event if it was awful. It just, you know, there are all sorts of things that we know. If you go down to Hollaback, Google Hollaback by five Ds of bystander intervention training, we know what works to create cultures, to create safe spaces for women. And so I would say, let everyone know that and get people talking about how to safely intervene. I know that some men, especially, for example, my brother-in-law is a big man, feel like they will escalate a situation if they intervene and that it can get more violent. So there are other things that they can do, but they don't necessarily, but people don't necessarily know. So I'd say get the five Ds of bystander intervention as a publicly knowledge like your five a day. Like, just the sort of thing that we know, we eat five portions of fruit and veg a day and there are five things that we can do if we see harassment in public space. Like, that's where I would go. And there are apps. Ellie, thank you for that. I'm conscious of the time we're going to try and bring in as many people as possible. Like, just on that point, and Sophie, I don't know if either one of you want to come on in the point that we just raised. And if not, we're trying to get as many questions, but just on the point that Alex, that Ellie talked to her about there, about obviously, you know, it's trying almost not designed around about what's there, but an opportunity to create something that's different. I don't know if you want to briefly touch on that. We've got another question after that and obviously encouraging panellists to come in with other questions at this stage, but Alex, and Sophie, do you want to touch on that point at the moment? Alex yourself was involved. Sure, yeah, just a really, I suppose, a really good comment. I think rightly or wrongly, we've got to communicate this to the one group of which the element is perhaps the problem, which is men. We need all men to understand this, not because they're all at fault, but because some, you know, it's a small contingent. So we need to talk positively about and get the messaging right about this, about making places better for everyone and why wouldn't that be a good thing? And it's just a really simple message that is hard to disagree with, that everyone can, you know, all men should be able to buy into. And then if somebody can't, then it's really obvious that they might be the problem. Alex, thank you for that. Sophie, and what I'll mention on this as well, if anybody's got questions, we've got around about 15 minutes left to try and get them in and I'll try and take as many as we possibly can. But again, Sophie, just on that question, that previous question. Yeah, I think in the ideal world it would be great if the built environment could adapt quickly to the changes in people's lives and the way we travel, but I don't know if this is possible to, you know, overhaul huge infrastructures. I think on the points that Ellie was raising, I think just even opening up conversations. I think on the back of Sarah Everard, I've had conversations with male friends about things that they can just change to make women feel safer, simply crossing the road, or, you know, like, there's really simple things that men can do to make women feel more safer. And I think it's about opening up that conversation and discussing these things. I really back the idea of a campaign and what bystanders can do when they do see harassment and sexual harassment happening. I think that's a wonderful idea. No, Sophie, thank you for that. And this probably leads really neatly into our next question. We've got a question from Joanne Binney, and Joanne's wondering if any of the panellists have had any thoughts on the current taxi crisis in Glasgow, where at the moment we have a lack of taxi drivers. I think that this is in the UK cities, where it's almost making it impossible for women to get home safely, particularly late in the evening. Are there current movements encouraging Government intervention to assist us, or what can be done in regards to intervention? We are now facing, as I said, a lack of taxi drivers, and women safely can't get home. There are no transport links and there's no taxi service. We are facing real issues, particularly as we move into this winter period. Sophie, I'll probably come to yourself first of all, then on to Ellie, and then on to Alex. Sophie, you probably know the city and are aware of the issues. Do you have any comments on that? As a young woman who lives in Glasgow, having an effect on many people in my life and myself, our ability to do things, especially in the evenings or at nights, there is a huge problem and such a big demand, but lack of service. I think that we need to review our procedures and policies. Something needs to be done quite quickly and intervention by decision makers needs to happen. It's having a large effect on women's ability to be able to get home safely and having to change plans or do things differently because of this. It's a safety issue. It leaves women stranded in dangerous situations. I'm not aware of any intervention, but I think that more needs to be done. Ellie, I don't know if you were aware of the situation in Glasgow or in other cities. If you're aware of any other interventions or any other movements that have sprung up in specific, we're keen to hear your views on that point. I guess it's best for me not to talk too much in this because I certainly don't necessarily understand the situation. What I would say is that it seems important to me to be able to work with, to be able to understand how we finance women's safety, particularly in relation to mobility and transport. Where does the buck stop in terms of investment and how do we make the case for something that we cannot and will not ever be able to quantify in a compelling way because of the nature of financing against women? This is a huge issue. How do we finance a sense of safety for more than half of the population? That's a question we're going to have to come up with. I don't know the answer. But then when the questions like this come up, we're going to be able to say, okay, this as a society, as a government or someone with power is something we're going to prioritise and we're going to invest right now. At the moment, I think that we're so blunt in our finance instruments in the way in which we can finance these kinds of health crisis, maybe repurposing it as health, rather than crime, might be something that we don't know, but we need to get creative. Ellie, thank you for that. Alex, I'll come across to yourself. We've got another question after this and then I'd like to move on for closing comments. Alex, just in the same point that was mentioned earlier about the taxi crisis or a way of issues in that regard. I'll admit that I'm not very plugged in with what's going on in Glasgow in detail and I don't think that I can pass much comment on that. But I think just as the others were talking, I was just thinking in my head, in my life experience, I've had majority male taxi drivers. I think I've had two female taxi drivers ever. So even if there were enough taxi drivers, that's something for everyone to think about is that taxis themselves might not be considered a safe space. So I think that those things just need a 360-degree look at them. Alex, thank you for that. I've got two questions that have kind of come in, so I'll try and take these and if we can answer these very briefly together if that's okay. The first one is from Jackie Malkin, when Jackie has mentioned about obviously the opportunities that Covid has probably brought on. And that's particular in about the safe spaces that Alex mentioned in spaces for people. Is there anything we can try and do, obviously, to try and engage that with tonight? That's the first question and I'll ask you to take that. In terms of a guide to bystander intervention, I said that it was very impressive and I think that could panellists provide webpages in that regard. So probably what will come to yourself and probably just try and keep your answer very briefly to a little bit of a minute each on both these issues. I'm conscious of the time and then we'll move on to closing statements. But the first one is about the opportunities that we've got around about safe spaces in backs of Covid and in terms of useful tips on the holoback guide to bystander intervention. But Ellie, I'll come to yourself and then to Alex, then to Sophie. So there is an opportunity, I think, that we've certainly seen cities look to pedestrianisation and increasing cycle lanes and allowing road users to take up or non-motorised road users to take up more space. So, of course, there's an opportunity in there to rethink. The barrier is a perception of lack of funding to do so. In the sense that you've got this paradox of a great need, but then also people haven't been using transport networks, so a lot of transport networks are really feeling the burn in terms of financial security. So there is an opportunity because people are rethinking how cities should work and should function and what should be prioritised. But it's not really being done with a huge amount of investment in that. It's not like we've got this golden opportunity that's come with a huge financial backing. It's an opportunity for rethinking that has come out of closing down, which is a bit of a paradox. With respect to the links for bystander intervention, I can put that in the chat. Yeah, Ellie, thank you for that. Alex, just on these two points. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that point, Ellie, made about the investment needed. I think the opportunity with Covid has been to see what can be delivered when things align, political will and obviously a very serious sudden need for some change. But also, I would say that the social benefit of having these spaces not car dominated, we haven't even got to fully realise what that could do for us as a society. I think if these places were, a lot of these interventions are temporary and they're all for the right reasons, but if they're done in a more permanent quality way, in line with changes to more home-based working, which has given opportunity for less traffic on occasions, and I know that hasn't been a constant. We've had situations where it's been worse again, but I think we should lead with some ambition on this and try and create the sort of healthier streets that we know. Pollution sits at the level of a two-year-old. You can't say it better than that. We need to make these changes. Even with electric cars, you've got pollutants from brakes and things like that that are breathed in by little toddlers, so yeah, enough said I think. Alex, thank you for that. Sophie, to yourself. I think that Covid has opened up quite a lot of conversations around safe spaces. One thing on the back of Alex's point is the lack of ScotRail trains running on Sundays and the impacts there for climate change. It's leaving a lot of people without access to a main forum of public transport for one of the seven days a week and that impact is huge when people are trying to be more equal conscious. I think that another conversation that came up during Covid, in 2008-20, although not directly related to Covid, was the issue of systematic racism within the statues and street names within our cities. I think that for some young black people and people of colour, the statues, plaques and street signs are a daily reminder of decades of inequality and the enslavement of their ancestors and the inequality that they face day to day. I think that that issue was widely discussed in 2020 and continues to be, but to make our cities safer and more inclusive we have to look at changing things like that. Although not directly related to Scotland, it has committed to incorporating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child, which guarantees children and young people the right to have their voices heard. I think that that will have a huge impact on designing urban spaces and making cities safer. That means that meaningful engagement has to happen with young people on those issues. As we are coming towards the close of the event, I think that we could probably look and go on for another two or three hours. Never mind just the hour that we have had, which has passed very quickly. Before we close, I wanted to give each of the panellists one minute just to sum up the issues raised in the discussions and probably look at the barriers and opportunities and probably look around a minute if we can keep it to a minute if that is possible. I am going to start with Ellie, then Sophie and then finally with Alex, Ellie Tiers. I am in it please if you can. I will put another link to a resource that I have in the chat around making cities safer for women and girls, particularly focus on London. The principles and philosophies are relevant everywhere. Two calls to action really, if you have been inspired or moved by anything that you have heard today. Educate yourself about the issues further, be curious, follow that inquiry and secondly think really deeply about where your power lies for action. You have power and we have to do this as a community. What does your power look like? Maybe it looks just like talking to your friends and family, but maybe you have a whole community that you can work with or mobilize. Maybe you have access to finance. The list is endless, I do not know where your power is, but we need people to be very conscious about both understanding the whole issue and knowing what slices they are going to do that. Partner, partner, partner, I am here, so you can reach out to me if you need more resources. Thank you very much. No, it is okay, Sophie, yourself. For me, the main important thing in this discussion is that young people have to be meaningfully involved in discussions around city planning, transport and design to help us feel safe and listen to. There are many challenges that young people face in participating, including meetings taking place at times when they are in school or university or when young people have jobs. Young people do not always know how to feed into interviews or consultations, as they do not use accessible language for young people or they are not designed in a young friendly manner. Young people want to be asked and listened to, but do not always feel confident stepping forward to participate because they are worried that they will not be listened to or their views will not be taken seriously. It is particularly important that young people from seldom heard groups such as those of disability or young people of colour are actively and meaningfully involved to ensure that their specific experiences are considered. I would also recommend taking a look at Girls and Scotland 2020 report, the young women lead report that was mentioned earlier, and the Scottish youth parliaments from Scotland's young people manifesto to find out more about young people's views and the experiences specifically of girls and women. I have just written five very, very quick bullet points, and they are as much learnings for myself that you might find them useful if you are listening. One is to keep learning, to be reflective of the diversity of the communities that we are working with, to speak with everyone, to collaborate and to encourage empathy. Alex, thank you for sticking to that. I think that we have got to end up there. I would like to thank everyone for joining us today in making such a big contribution to our panel brought to you in partnership with the Scottish youth parliaments. I would also like to thank our panel, Sophie Reid, the member of the Scottish youth parliaments, Alex Bortrill and Dr Ellie Cosgrave for giving up their time to take part tonight. From my own personal point of view, as a legislator, as an existing councillor, as a policymaker, I will be in touch with all three of you because I have learned a lot tonight. I think that there are lessons to be learned and the message that we need to get across to all politicians to be councillors, MSPs, MPs or so on. I will be in touch and take up some of these issues. I just want to take this opportunity to remind you that later on tonight we have the writer and environmentalist George Monbiol in conversation. Over the next four days, we have debates on everything from fast fashion to a just transition to violence against women, which we have talked about tonight, diversity in politics and climate activism, to name a few. I hope that you can join us in these discussions. Again, a big thanks to our panels for joining in tonight. Thank you very much and have a good evening.