The Challenges of Bike Lanes as Newly Emerging Public Spaces in Tehran (an Autoethnographic Study)

Bike lanes are globally addressed as one of the most important public spaces in a humanistic city. These paths substantially show the social, political, urban and other structures of cities. Construction of a bike lane in Karim Khan Zand Street, the distance between Valiasr Square and Haft Tir Square in Tehran, as the first experience of constructing bike lanes, is a sign of beginning of tangible changes toward realization of humanistic public spaces in Tehran. However, examination and analysis of the challenges of these types of spaces in urban context can show us the existing realities in Tehran, and then facilitate future course of these types of spaces in Tehran and other Iranian cities. In this study, as a qualitative research based on auto-ethnography which owes to the field of anthropology, I will examine my own life experience in this regard, as someone who has been cycling in Tehran for many years. The present study will explain the challenges of these paths under six main categories: “rejection of the minority”, “violation by others”, “lack of a story”, “mental-spatial break up”, “non-familiar space”, and “abandoned space”. Evaluation and reviewing of newly emerging public spaces in their real context can help us to move toward creating efficient changes in urban public spaces.