ADAPTACIÓN DEL DERECHO INTERNO A LAS NORMAS DE DERECHO INTERNACIONAL

How do walking practices intersect with these conditions of urban inequality? Before explaining that question, I shall recall some features about what it is to walk in the city (see section "."). Walking in urban settlements entails specificities that affect the way we move and the experiences we have. Probably because cities organise movement through already established paths (streets) and because walking is embedded within a major system of mobilities, it acquires the characteristics of a transport means in which people move by foot in covering distances. However functional a journey on foot may be, the sensorial and embodied dimension of habitual journeys is still relevant as Jennie Middleton (HIIJ, HI"I, HI""a, HI"c) demonstrates in her work exploring everyday trajectories on foot in London. She understands walking ‘as a socio-technical assemblage that enables specific attention to be drawn to the embodied, material and technological relations and their significance for engaging with everyday urban movements on foot’

(HI"I, [a[). Thus, she explores the complexity of the lived experiences that constitute journeys on foot, paying attention to the transformations that take place during a walk.

The fact of defining walking as an assemblage allows her to acknowledge the relational nature of pedestrian experiences and how different elements merge together in walking situations, rendering it complex however habitual it may be: sensorial experiences, affectivities, materials and many more elements can become part of a walk thus transforming it. In that sense, the same walk can be ‘different sorts of walking’ (Kärrholm et al. HI"a).

Considering that mobility practices are social practices, then the way we move responds as well to the socio-economic conditions of places, people’s own economic possibilities and also to the social representation of mobility practices. John Urry (HIII) highlights the importance of socio-economic conditions in the possibilities people have of performing walking. He mentions how urban walking needs to be considered in connection with other

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ways of movement and class difference, which in urban spaces becomes a crucial issue as socio-economic differences shape greatly the way cities are built and lived. While research participants of different socio-economic groups tended to consider walking as a good activity, some of them—especially those living in high-income areas who moved mainly by car—tended to consider walking a potentially uncomfortable activity when used as an everyday means of transportation or as a way to reach public transport. Therefore, an important aspect of walking in the city is related to who walks, where and how; this leads us to consider how differences of class affect the practice of walking.

The features and conditions of the places we live and move through are experienced through movement (see section H.H). The same kind of relation of co-production that has been recognised to exist between space and economic inequality (how socio-economic inequality is expressed in urban space) can be applied to everyday ways of going through the city; therefore, I understand that socio-economic inequality influences pedestrian experiences. Paola Jirón, Walter Imilan and María Bertrand (HI"I, P") in their analysis of urban daily mobility and social exclusion have highlighted that ‘the multidimensional nature of social exclusion manifests itself in the unequal, differentiated access to means and mechanisms of urban daily mobility’. Therefore, inequality is expressed not only through the conditions of the neighbourhoods in which people dwell, but also in the possibilities and experiences those people have for daily movement across the city. Jirón, Imilan and Bertrand criticise the fact that in Chile ‘inequality and social exclusion have been mainly analysed from a residential segregation perspective’ (P") which limits the understanding of the problem of inequality and social exclusion. If in the "JaI’s critical theory about justice and urban space drove the debate to consider space as a resource, now with mobilities studies we are encouraged to consider movement as a resource as well that needs to be explored from a political perspective such as inequality.

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Following this call, in the last decade Chilean scholars have questioned urban conditions beyond static perspectives of analysis. They have started to show interest in the way people move through the segregated city, exploring the relation of mobility practices with social exclusion and inequality (see Jirón HIIa, Ureta HIIg, Avellaneda and Lazo HI""). These works have made great progress in understanding inequality as a ‘multidimensional phenomenon’ (Jirón HIIa, X[) that needs to be explored from a variety of perspectives, including movement. However, most of these works are focused on the lack of access to means of transport (Ureta HIIg, Avellaneda and Lazo HI"") or on the qualities and experiences of daily trips in general (Jirón HIIg, HI"Ia). Walking is addressed incidentally within descriptions of everyday journeys, without having been attended to more seriously in considering its specificities, particularly the kind of relationship it generates with urban places. I argue that investigating pedestrian practices would allow us to rethink the way urban inequality is lived and give space to consider the kind of relationships urban dwellers can or cannot build with the environment, which is more than simply an issue of having access to resources.

This interest shown by Chilean scholars working in the field of mobilities concurs with those working on mobilities globally, who have shown awareness of the uneven conditions and political consequences of different modes of movement. For example, it has been claimed that the mobility of some people implies the immobility of others (Jensen HIIJ, Cresswell HI"I) and that we need to be aware of this ‘power geometry’ (Massey "JJ", H[) which creates exclusion. Recently, more critical works within this paradigm call attention to less explored ways of movement, walking among them (see Vannini HIIJ). Thinking in terms of power and asymmetries, researching on walking presents a particular defiance because it is part of a constellation of ‘alternative mobilities’ (Vannini HIIJ), which is marginal within a mobility system centred on more technological means of movement. In many contemporary cities, walking is not considered an efficient or desired way to be

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mobile. Regarding western societies’ ‘ideology of movement’ (Urry HIIa, "g), it seems more a form of immobility if we compare it to cars or planes, which emphasises the need for exploring these marginal modes of movement of hypermobile life (Jensen HIIJ, xvii).

Besides showing this interest, walking practices and how they relate with urban inequality has not had much attention from mobilities studies. The subtler aspects of the practice of everyday walking, such as the lived experience of moving through cities, remain underexplored.

What is the contribution of exploring walking practices in the research context of urban inequality, mobility and transport research? I propose to research the practice of walking attending to its singularities: the small scale, the low speed and the sensory and tactile engagement with the environment that walking provides. Walking serves daily mobility, but at the same time it permits dwelling in the city in a way that configures an experience of presence that other means cannot have in such an intensive way, due to speed and technological mediation. I argue that exploring this way of being in and moving through the city allows us to make sense of subtle forms of inequality that take place within the embodied relationship between dwellers and urban space affecting people’s possibilities or capacities for inhabiting the city. I am inspired by Tonkiss’ (HI"P, gJ-JI) assertion saying that ‘economic inequality and social power are reproduced not only through formal property divisions and entitlements, but also through more ordinary and minor practices of occupying space, and the management of social proximity and distance’. The intersection between socio-spatial conditions of places and walking shows that effects of spatial segregation do not relate only to access to goods and services in the city, as discussed by literature on urban segregation and mobilities, but also to possibilities for experiencing the city that are allowed or restrained; therefore, it shows how inequality is embodied in the lived experience of the city.

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