The contradictions of private and public space are indeed convoluted and our relationship to them complex. Suburban streets, parks and paths, especially at night, can offer solace in suburban solitude and isolation. The nightwalker may find safety in the dark quiet streets. The streets might offer much desired privacy and anonymity not afforded in the home. This again comes back to public spatial design. What is craved for in contemporary suburban public space and healthy municipal cities are places that are accessible and pleasurable for walking. These spaces are uncrowded, rejuvenated “areas of public open space” and “gathering space” with more trees “enhancing our urban forest.”[11] But this is a contradiction of needs and wants. These characteristics may signify and pose threats to safety. “A man crawled out of the bushes in the creek bed and followed me along the trail for several hundred metres.”[12] “Lovely park during the day, a little bit sketchy after dusk as there aren't many people around,”[13]  “I've heard bad stories about this place, [t]he behaviour of people here makes me feel uncomfortable.”[14] Public space at night offers the protection of invisibility and anonymity to both perpetrators and women alike. 

A paradox also exists in the hyper-visibility of women in public space. Traditionally public space is designed for men, so women simply daring to be in this space attracts the male gaze and are ‘asking for it’. Ogling, cat calls and unsolicited demands to smile lets us know we are in their sights.[15] The night offers some protection from being seen. It is a calculated decision to be out in public space at night, particularly alone, particularly on the quiet suburban streets. I know a woman who only runs at night, so that she doesn’t have to deal with being seen exercising. It is more enjoyable for her, and safer. Another of my female friends walks her dog only after dark, it’s easier that way. They’ve weighed up the risks, for them safety is found in the darkness of night. But women have been conditioned to not use public space in the same way men do. Do men avoid jogging during the day, or even at all, to avoid unwanted stares or attention, or because they feel they aren’t entitled to? Do men find it more pleasurable to walk their dog after the dark? Do men even consider these things?

Women make all sorts of decisions daily to avoid threats to our personal safety. Almost 90% of women have experienced verbal and/or physical street harassment and have changed their behaviour as a result.[16] Imagine having to decide the safest way to get home after a night out, not just the quickest or easiest route. If you’re a woman, chances are you’ve had to weigh that up before. For many years after experiencing sexual harassment from a taxi driver I chose to walk. I would always walk with my phone in my hand and my keys threaded through my fingers. The fear of being attacked, kidnapped, raped or killed was very real; and I would question my decision again when Jill Meagher was attacked in the very street I walked;[17] when Eurydice Dixon was murdered walking home at night; when a young women was raped on a bridge I walked over every day and frequently in the dark; every time a woman was attacked walking along a suburban bike track; and when Sarah Everard was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a police officer in South London earlier this year. The sensationalist reporting and the justifiable public outcry of these horrendous crimes reinforce and reimagine the violent stranger girls and women have been taught to fear. The paradox here is that men are more likely to be physically assaulted by a male stranger in public.[18] It’s the conditioned female fear and the onus of the female victim’s choices which are supposedly the crux of how we experience public space. It’s as if getting home safely is a choice, and victims choose not to. Whereas the only real decision lies with violent perpetrators. 

Text me when you get home safe.

Women’s safety is not a black and white issue. It is complex, layered, steeped in power relations and paradoxical. It cannot be solved with added streetlights. But women’s enjoyment of public spaces may. As Virginia Woolf attests, to nightwalk as a lone woman is “to escape, it is the greatest of pleasures.”[19]  Nightwalking, enjoying the quiet darkened streets, without fear and purpose, with permission to take it all in, to be a flâneuse, is to have the same rights and access to public space as men. Then when we return to our homes, we return to a sanctuary, a place of safety that “fold us round;” we are “sheltered and enclosed.”[20] For all the paradoxes and contradictions, for all the light and dark, the suburban flâneuse should expect safety walking the suburban streets, as she should expect to be safe in the suburban home.

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Jenna Corcoran, 2021