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Sprawlism (formerly A Feminist Newsletter about Urbanism) does editorial reporting on feminist urbanism in New York Metro through the political lens of feminism. We encourage moving the theory of feminist urbanism into practice, and we provide information so that the public and policy makers can educate themselves on the topic of feminist urbanism.
Sprawlism (formerly A Feminist Newsletter about Urbanism) is a project of Alternative Newsweekly Foundation (ANF) founded by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (now known as AAN Publishers) in 2002. We are also in partnership with the public Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media, and we are a member of the Tiny News Collective!
Why are we based Newark rather than Manhattan?
First off, we love Newark. It is BEAUTIFUL, secondly, New Jersey is the most urban state in the United States. Every county is designated as urban by the US Census Bureau and it is the most dense state in the United States. We hope that what we discover in New Jersey can be a model for Feminist Urbanism across the US.
What is Feminist Urbanism?
Feminist Urbanism uses a feminist lens to construct an intentional community that allows all genders to access the instruments to create the life of their dreams. Feminist urbanism believes that your income should not dictate where you live and your gender should not dictate your income. Feminist urbanism is also about the utility of cooperation and collective efforts, it harnesses people-centric metrics rather than market centric metrics to effectuate new relationships.
Feminism is a powerful lens to organize, critique, and develop projects.
Definition of Feminism
Space is a means of production—takes our definition of feminism from bell hooks:
“A movement to end sexism, exploitation, and oppression.”
Space is a means of production also borrows from the Combahee River Collective (CRC):
“If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”
The CRC quote must not be taken as exclusion of other historically excluded or marginalized women groups. This idea includes transwomen, senior women, unmarried women, & disabled women. It is solidarity, a bridge of how deep our pluralism is rooted, no one’s oppression is a distraction.
Feminist urbanism is the perfect adversary for individualist bourgeois feminism and market based urbanism that aggrandizes that all we need to do is change zoning and equity, and equality will magically grow.
Feminist urbanism understands that true free market capitalism is a cruel farce and fiction: tweaking zoning and eliminating parking is not going to make market urbanism more fair. As we are active economists and urban planners that work in the field, we understand that real competition in corporate capitalism is not a free for all with fair rules. Real competition involves law & the political economy, in layperson’s terms: regulations, policies, and laws that unfairly side with developers to disempower people and communities and empower hegemony. We need regulations, laws, and policies that are not siloed into lanes, that understand that urbanism is a complex system and that for urbanism to all work we need institutions to actively support communities and their people in accessing housing, accessing public transit, accessing walkable communities, accessing a thriving income, and to be mindful of the challenges that are occurring owing to the climate crisis.
Sprawlism definition of Urbanism
Sprawlism (formerly A Feminist Newsletter about Urbanism) is rooted in the theory of Space is a Means of Production (we are not productivists) is definition for the space that inhabits urbanism—it is borrowed from the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre and his 1968 book Le Droit à la Ville and his Right to the City concept:
“Space is not a scientific object removed from ideology or politics. It has always been political and strategic. There is an ideology of space. Because space, which seems homogeneous, which appears as a whole in its objectivity, in its pure form, such as we determine it, is a social product.”
There is abundance in the collective. We believe that together we can create a citylife that a diversity of people can share.
STAFF:
đź’‹Founder & editor L. Lo Sontag is a feminist urban critic, filmmaker, essayist, and journalist in the “City of New Jersey.” She was the Inaugural Sadie T.M. Alexander Economics Fellow at The New School from 2022/2024 and an Ethic and Equity Fellow from 2021/2022 at the Lincoln Land Policy Institute. She is an alumna of the LA women’s college, Mount St Mary’s University as well as Claremont and The New School she holds an MPA degree with concentrations in urban planning and urban economics. She is the curator of La CiclovĂa de Bloomfield Conversations, a series discussing the climate crisis impacts on New Jersey, a stringer with Associated Press supporting their political & economics coverage, and an op-ed & opinion writer for various media including NextCity, Los Angeles Times, NJ.com, and the LA Weekly. She has over 20 years of independent media experience, running the Morningside Park Chronicle, The Bus Bench, and The BrickBat Revue.
đź’‹Kimberly Clark Co-Host Auto Asphyxiation and social media manager a nurse, multidisciplinary artist, and visionary feminist urbanist whose work bridges the realms of public infrastructure, social justice, and cultural innovation. A compelling voice in urban advocacy, she champions the transformative potential of public transit as critical infrastructure, interrogating how mobility systems shape equitable cities, human connectivity, and collective liberation.
With a career spanning clinical care and creative practice, Clark employs a rigorous yet empathetic lens to dissect the interplay between urban design, community agency, and intersectional feminism.
A citizen scholar of both civic systems and galactic mythos, Clark occasionally (often) draws parallels between Star Wars lore and urban governance, reframing complex sociopolitical themes through speculative allegory and strategic levity. This signature approach informs her podcast contributions and social media management, where she renders intricate policy debates into dynamic, accessible dialogues without sacrificing intellectual depth.
Whether analyzing bus rapid transit through the lens of Rebel Alliance tactics or unpacking healthcare disparities via textile art installations or telling you to behave on our public square, Clark’s work remains anchored in a singular mission: to reimagine cities as sites of radical care, creativity, and democratic possibility.