Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Lecturer at the Department of Urban Engineering, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Soureh International University, Tehran, Iran.
2
Undergraduate student in Urban Engineering at the Department of Urban Engineering, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Soureh International University, Tehran, Iran.
3
Undergraduate student in Urban Engineering at the Department of Urban Engineering, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Soureh International University, Tehran, Iran..
10.22034/rau.2026.2065772.1226
Abstract
Public spaces are widely regarded as essential elements of urban life and as central mediators in shaping and structuring everyday urban experiences. Rather than serving solely as physical or architectural backdrops, they function as dynamic social and sensory arenas where relationships between people and places are continuously produced, negotiated, and transformed. This study argues that the intersection of mobility—through space, body, speed, and time—and the lived experience of users is crucial for understanding the vitality and inclusiveness of urban public spaces. In contemporary cities, public spaces operate as both material and symbolic grounds for social interaction, identity formation, and the exercise of urban citizenship.
Over the past few decades, research on public space has expanded substantially, incorporating a wide range of disciplinary perspectives—from urban design and planning to geography, anthropology, and sociology. This proliferation has diversified concerns: public space is examined as a stage for political contestation, social encounter, cultural expression, and environmental behavior. Within this context, a particularly significant line of inquiry focuses on the lived and experiential dimensions of public space—how users perceive, appropriate, and bodily inhabit urban environments in everyday routines. This study specifically investigates these experiential aspects to reveal how different social groups engage with and interpret the city, producing their own micro-geographies of belonging and avoidance.
Despite the expansion of scholarship, much of the literature remains influenced by sedentarist assumptions, which conceptualize space as fixed, stable, and bounded, and social relations as confined to static places. This perspective often leads to analyses that prioritize built form and spatial configuration over the dynamic and processual aspects of urban life. The “mobility turn” in the humanities and social sciences has increasingly challenged this view. Originating in disciplines such as sociology, geography, anthropology, and cultural studies, the mobility turn shifts focus from static spatial arrangements to the flows, movements, and circulations that define contemporary existence. It posits that mobility—including physical transportation as well as the movement of information, emotions, and ideas—is a fundamental condition of modern urbanity.
Within this epistemological and methodological shift, mobility is understood not merely as displacement between fixed points but as a lived, embodied, and situated practice. This perspective prompts a reexamination of public space: rather than serving as a neutral container for activities, public space is continually produced through the movements, encounters, and negotiations that take place within it. Motion—such as walking, cycling, driving, and pausing—endows space with experiential, affective, and political qualities. As a result, research focused on mobile experience can reveal how public spaces are constituted through the interplay of bodily practices, sensory engagements, and temporal rhythms. In this light, a growing corpus of public-space studies now concentrates on users’ mobile and lived experiences: on how urban environments are encountered, navigated, and made meaningful through everyday movement. Such work typically employs qualitative methodologies to capture the situated nature of urban experience—methods such as ethnography, walking interviews, participant observation, and mobile diaries. These approaches allow for the exploration of how social, cultural, technological, and political forces intersect in the ordinary enactment of space. Insights from this research are not only theoretically valuable for understanding the relational production of space but also practically relevant for informing inclusive design, participatory planning, and policies promoting spatial justice and accessibility.
This study directly examines the lived mobile experiences of users along Keshavarz Boulevard, a major public corridor in central Tehran. Focusing on pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, it examines how each group’s movements and interactions shape their experience of public space. Employing ethnographic methods—including participant observation, fieldnotes, and interviews—the study analyzes how space, body, speed, and time intersect to shape users’ everyday engagement with the boulevard. The goal is to illuminate the relational nature of these experiences and the specific practices that distinguish the mobility of each group.
Space is understood not as a static backdrop for human activity but as an active, sensed, and contested field. Users continually negotiate both visible and invisible boundaries, including physical infrastructures such as curbs, lanes, and pathways, as well as social codes and sensory atmospheres that influence or disrupt movement. The boulevard’s physical layout, vegetation, and soundscape shape how users orient themselves and perceive proximity, exposure, and comfort. However, these spatial conditions are experienced unevenly. Pedestrians frequently encounter disruptions from unauthorized motorbike traffic on sidewalks, while motorcyclists establish and follow informal routes, asserting alternative spatial logics that challenge the boulevard's intended design.
The body is central in mediating perception and meaning. Informed by phenomenological perspectives, this study conceptualizes the body as the primary site through which the world is sensed, inhabited, and understood, rather than as a passive vessel. Walking, cycling, and motorcycling each engage the body differently, activating distinct sensory registers and affective responses. For example, walking enhances tactile and olfactory awareness and encourages a slower, more reflective engagement with space. Cycling involves rhythm and balance, producing both pleasure and vulnerability as cyclists navigate between pedestrian and vehicular domains. In contrast, motorcycling often distances the body from its immediate surroundings through speed and mechanical power, generating feelings of control, detachment, or risk.
Speed, often overlooked in static conceptions of urban space, emerges as a critical experiential variable. Variations in speed influence not only the duration of encounters but also the intensity and depth of engagement with the environment. Fast-moving users, primarily motorcyclists, tend to experience the boulevard instrumentally, prioritizing efficiency and directness over sensory immersion. In contrast, pedestrians and slower cyclists engage more deeply with the surrounding textures, rhythms, and social presences. Cyclists occupy an intermediate position: their variable pace allows them to alternate between detached and immersive experiences of space, depending on situational constraints and personal navigation strategies.
Time shapes spatial experience in both objective and subjective ways. The boulevard’s temporal rhythms—including daily commuting cycles, changes in light and temperature, and weekly social routines—influence when and how different users occupy the space. Time is also experienced subjectively: for motorbike couriers, it is a resource to be managed and optimized, while for strolling pedestrians or leisure cyclists, it becomes qualitative, affective, and open-ended. Moments of waiting, resting, or lingering are integral to how users appropriate the space and assign meaning to their movement. These temporal variations illustrate that public space is not a fixed setting but is continually reconstituted through the temporalities of its use.
By analyzing how space, body, speed, and time intersect, this study shows that public space experience is mobile, embodied, and relational. Users’ experiences along Keshavarz Boulevard result from interactions between physical design, social practices, and individual rhythms. By centering mobility as both a methodological and conceptual lens, the research advances understanding of how urban environments are inhabited and made meaningful through daily movement, with attention to the distinctiveness of each user group.
The findings highlight the importance of understanding differentiated and dynamic mobility experiences when designing and managing public spaces. For Keshavarz Boulevard, attention to the needs and practices of pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists can inform responsive, context-sensitive interventions. This research underscores the value of experiential perspectives in bridging gaps between design intentions and lived realities, with implications for inclusive planning and policy.
Finally, to further consolidate mobilities-informed urban research in Iran, future studies could extend the framework. To further advance mobilities-informed urban research in Iran, future studies could apply the framework developed here to other types of public spaces and social contexts, examining how identity, gender, class, power, and technology shape mobile experience. The four identified dimensions—space, body, speed, and time—provide productive entry points for critical and situated analyses of everyday urban mobility, contributing to broader debates on how cities are lived, sensed, and continually transformed through movement.
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