Gender aspects appear absent in Danish municipal urban planning, and rarely the planning policies and spatial strategies provide explicit procedures for incorporating gendered perspectives into urban planning. In a European context we see examples of more explicit strategies for gender planning, however the thought of achieving gender equality through spatial design seems unfamiliar to Danish municipal planners. This qualitative research explores how gender aspects appear in the planning of recreational urban spaces across 8 different municipalities through semi-structured interviews with 10 planners. We examine how the planners engage with the gender neutral strategies on a strategic and practical level following Shore and Wrights (2011) policy studies from a practitioner's perspective. The planners apply different explanatory models to support the gender-neutral strategies,
which in a variety of ways suggest that gender equality is not being perceived spatially manifested or constituted. However the planners also demonstrate gendered practices through specific projects and remarks of gendered patterns of behaviour. We therefore argue that there is a discrepancy between the gender-neutral strategic approach, and how gendered aspects are managed in practice. This further challenges the gender-neutral approaches, through the theoretical perspectives presented by Massey (1994) and Criado Perez (2019), who point out that space and place play key roles in the constitution of gender relations. Using Huning et al.s (2019) definition of gender categories as an analytical framework we identify different gendered comprehensions among the planners. We argue that the different gender categories seem to coexist in the planners' practice, although they occasionally conflict. We therefore conclude by suggesting that there is a strong potential in incorporating a gender perspective into Danish municipal urban planning strategies since the current principles of inclusion already respond to different needs and preferences. However, to achieve better inclusion gender disaggregated data is necessary in order to attain more nuanced and place specific understandings of gendered patterns in urban recreational spaces.