Women, heritage and city: bike tour by monuments and symbolic spaces for them in Bogotá

Abstract

Insecure cities generate significant constraints on the exercise of citizenship and coexistence, whom live with a restrict feeling related with their schedule and transit through the city, therefore citizens become armed, the surveillance and public spaces are privatized, accentuating the processes of spatial and social segregation (Dalmazzo, 2008: 35). Segregation measured in terms of “socio-economic distances and equipment distribution inequality” does not promote the equal opportunities, the exercise of rights and the inherent diversity expression in the urban space (PNUD, 2008: 35). The bike tours drawn up by the City of Bogota District Secretary of Women, to visit monuments and symbolic spaces for women, are an affirmative action that promotes empowerment, research, culture, health, sports, sustainable transport and affectionate appropriation of an unexplored territory viewed as part of women’s right to a safe habitat. The proposed route makes women visible and present in public space. Visible by identifying as sculptural heritage that names and rescues them oblivion, by visiting these urban spaces. Present bay riding a bike to enjoy the city with a thematic purpose. Understand the sexed body in territory, conditioned to free mobility by cultural traits by reconstructing a collective memory that contributes to close gender inequality breaches as well as break the silence in the official story that hides other voices, other modes of living and other ways of representation.