When Walter Benjamin brought Baudelaire's conception of the flâneur into the academy, he marked the idea as an essential part of our ideas of modernism and urbanism. For Benjamin, in his critical examinations of Baudelaire's work, the flâneur heralded an incisive analysis of modernity, perhaps because of his connotations: "[the flâneur] was a figure of the modern artist-poet, a figure keenly aware of the bustle of modern life, an amateur detective and investigator of the city, but also a sign of the alienation of the city and of capitalism," as a 2004 article in the American Historical Review put it. Since Benjamin, the academic establishment has used the flâneur as a vehicle for the examination of the conditions of modernity—urban life, alienation, class tensions, and the like.(and see also https://newrepublic.com/article/141623/death-flaneur Death to the Flâneur Livingstone and Gyarkye
Bijan Stephen, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/10/17/in-praise-of-the-flaneur/
and http://psychogeographicreview.com/baudelaire-benjamin-and-the-birth-of-the-flaneur/