Socially Just Planning: Invisible Walks

This research examines women’s everyday walking experiences in the city of Santiago, Chile. It was developed from a feminist and phenomenological perspective taking ‘the route as a line’, empirically addressing the Chilean case with data gathered from 16 women through field-diaries and shared walks. By considering walking as a lived experience, the research explores the shape and configuration of different walking lines focusing on rhythm, gender-social interactions, and the built environment, as well as the correlation between them.  

In the growing context of pedestrian urban projects, walking as a research topic, and the feminist city claims, this descriptive study contributes to address walking practices to the academic literature and to broaden the view of decision-makers when designing urban spaces at every scale. Inquiring into the walking practices from a gendered and experiential perspective brings to light how intertwined are personal backgrounds, everyday routines, spatial and temporal aspects as well as the social interactions that occur in the walk. The indivisible walking line that all these components shape, gives an account of how women adjust their pace and transgress the normative to meet their or other’s needs, how they assign meaning and emotions to different stretches of their journey and how their identity is constituted in the public space.