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Going Home, Gendered Mobility in Cairo’s Buildings
Abstract
Moving between places can be a functional act. People move from their housing units to the streets, using transportation to go to other places. The movement itself is gendered, and varies from one geography to another. A lack of walking infrastructure arose with the rising of mechanised machines of motion. The modes of production made place-making favouring the fastest ways of moving, and walking is the slowest motion of them. In 1905, there were 110 motorised vehicles in Cairo, while in 2016, the licensed vehicles in Cairo reached 3.5 million. The population was 400,000 and became 21 million. The minimum walking infrastructure people use is two: one is from their own housing unit, to the entrance of the building, which is the basic architecture design level of residential buildings and housing units. The second is the walking infrastructure on an urban design level, that speaks to the walking distance from the building entrance to the vehicles, whether public or private. Gendered-based-violence forces people to make choices about their pathways to ensure safety to their own bodies. Women and LGBTQ+ groups are the most vulnerable in terms of gender-based- violence. Since the designers are not ensuring the safety of gendered subjects in many walking distances; in this paper, I analyze designs of neighbourhoods and residentials buildings where gendered vulnerable groups have to make choices of how to avoid violence. In this paper, I analyze the walking infrastructure, on both architectural and urban design levels, and how gendered subjects make decisions of their walking pathways to ensure safety to their everyday errands and functional movements between places. In this paper, I analyze urban fabrics of neighbourhoods and communities inside the boundaries of the core of Cairo and Giza. The neighbourhoods I will analyze, and its population do belong to social classes of middle-class, middle-upper-class, and lower classes, who live at the central Greater Cairo i.e., Mohandseen, Doki, AlHaram, Bulaq, DownTown, Garden City, and ElMounira.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
None