This serves a dual purpose – saving their belongings from pickpockets and saving themselves from being groped in public. Women make the habit of staying alert about straying hands, and can often be seen holding their bags in front of them. Women also risk facing sexual harrasment when navigating the streets of Dhaka. As if seeing a woman out on her own is still an oddity in the 21st century, in a nation where 80% of the workers in the readymade garments industry are women. It is as if the city does not belong to women, with men’s gazes constantly following their movements. Although women comprise a large percentage of the working population in Dhaka, they have yet to make a place of their own in the city’s public realm. The city’s infrastructure is built in such a way that it only allows men to roam around freely, while the women move hesitantly, like a guest who is unwelcome at a house they are just passing through. Adnan Morshed says the male gaze in Dhaka streets is “….a paradoxical combination of patriarchal understanding of purdah and gender insensitivity”. If Dhaka streets are challenging for men, it’s even worse for women who have to face the additional burden of the male gaze, along with the issues mentioned above. A year before Jacobs’ book was published, American urban theorist Kevin Lynch’s groundbreaking book The Image of the City also emphasized on the importance of walking. The book is a critique of urban planning policies of the 1950s, where she denoted the first two chapters on the significant uses of the sidewalks, the public interactions ensured by sidewalks and the benefits of having safe and vibrant streets in cities. This was when American writer and activist, Jane Jacobs, became vocal about the importance of walkability in her renowned book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961. As a result, most modernist planning approaches focused less on walkability. The development of suburban areas created a disconnect from people’s houses and the major business districts, which increased their reliance on motorized vehicles. This was due to the popularity of automobiles and the suburbanization that was occurring, alongside adaptation of the International Style of architecture. Inspired by Baudelaire’s poetry, German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin made this topic of flaneur a matter of scholarly interest in the 20th century, where it was considered as a representation of a typical example of an urban experience in modern society.Īfter World War II, walkability had become even more significant in the United States and Europe. For the French writer Charles Baudelaire, walking in the city becomes a sort of a ritual, which he calls flaneur. This is the one idea that is preached by most experts and researchers involved with city design. It is unanimously agreed by all city lovers that walkability is what makes a city good by definition.
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