ancient cities

958 Walking City
bias and neglect of how women engage with their
urban environments.
The Democratic Possibilities of Walking
Urban walking has often been situated within discussions
concerning the democratic and civilizing
possibilities of city spaces. It has been linked with
urban citizenship and noted for its emancipatory
potential as people move on foot with and among
strangers. For example, in the 1960s, Jane Jacobs
wrote the hugely influential book The Death and
Life of the Great American Cities, which stresses
the importance of streets and sidewalks to the
unplanned interaction of strangers, and the role
these interactions play in maintaining safe urban
areas. It is argued that a well-used street is a safe
street, and successful city neighborhoods are those
that use the presence of strangers as a safety measure
in increasing the number of eyes on the
street.
Furthermore, in the 1970s, Richard Sennett
wrote about the nature of encounters between
strangers when walking and negotiating public
space in the city. He proposes that the social heterogeneity
of public urban spaces offers unpredictable
encounters that are democratic and civilizing.
The work of French social theorist Michel de
Certeau also frames walking as a form of urban
emancipation that opens up a range of democratic
possibilities. Within this context, walking can be
understood as a distinctly political act. De Certeau
rejects the notion that pedestrians are shaped by
urban space and control and explores walking as a
mode of political resistance. He distinguishes
between the strategies of the powerful in their production
of space and the tactics of pedestrians who
disrupt the rational plan of the city.
Engaging with movement as a form of political
resistance was also drawn on by Guy Debord in
the notion of the dérive. Like the flâneur’s walk,
the derive constituted a drifting motion around
and through the city, a movement that represented
a political statement against the rational, ordered,
capitalist city. Events such as Reclaim the Night
are more contemporary examples of these pedestrian
acts of resistance, whereby walking on the
street at night constitutes resistance to the dominant
view that women cannot walk at night without
the presence of men.
However, the emancipatory potential and democratic
possibilities of urban walking are far from
straightforward and unproblematic. For example,
much of the literature on walking in the city is
imbued with a degree of romanticism; walking is
often considered, without question, as a positive
urban practice. This romanticism is also a theme
that runs through urban and pedestrian policy,
particularly in relation to promoting healthy cities
and walking-to-school and -work campaigns. Once
the physical environment is considered to be
pedestrian friendly, the negative aspects of walking
in the city are rarely called into question.
The fear often experienced by the urban pedestrian
illustrates some of the limitations in considering
walking as an emancipatory practice. There is
no doubt that fear of crime is a phenomenon that
shapes cities and has a great impact on the practice
of walking in terms of how, where, and if people
walk. Research has started to reveal the complexities
of geographies of fear overlooked by policy,
including work by Rachel Pain and Gill Valentine.
However, there is little in the way in which geographies
of fear influence and limit the emancipatory
potential of urban walking.
The contradictions and complexities surrounding
the practice of walking and its emancipatory
potential are perhaps best exemplified by some of
the academic writings on women’s experiences in
urban public spaces. For example, Elizabeth Wilson
draws specific attention to how the city is a place
of excitement and opportunity for women and not
just a place to be feared. Thus, it is possible for
women not only to experience fear as they negotiate
urban public space but also to find freedom
when roaming the streets. This freedom and fear
associated with pedestrian activity in the urban
environment illustrate the ambivalence that surrounds
the practice of walking in the city.
Mobilities, Time, Space, Rhythm
However, walking in the city needs to be situated
within the multiple spatiotemporal rhythms of
everyday urban practices to understand how the
time–space routines of pedestrian movements and
the city emerge out of and shape individual and collective
urban walking patterns. Concerns with
mobility have become increasingly established in
providing critiques of place-based accounts of social