Abstract:
Many thinkers have put forth various theories about urban issues. Among them, German
sociologist “George Simmel” considered city more as a societal construct than a physical
and substantial reality. He presented five spatial aspects by which he understands the city
as a subjective reality shaped in societal interactions. Tehran Enqelab Street as a symbol
of break up in Tehran city evolution, has been a setting for political demands. It maintains
modernity characteristics and also has a unique geographical location in the city center that
makes it absorb many populations. All these, resonate Simmelian societal boundaries and
space exclusivity.
Aim: This article attempts to study some Simmelian ideas about the spatiality of social
formations in urban space by exploring these formations in Enqelab Street.
Method: Enqelab Street is taken as a case study for its high level of activities and different
social formations that is the result of its historical events and geographical location. The This
study attempts to explain social actions through Simmel’s ideas, and for this, it collects text
and image documents by field and library researches. It also considers related evidence in
social media and takes an exploratory-comparative analysis approach.
Conclusion: Applying Simmel’s ideas about general societal concepts like exclusivity,
boundary, etc. and his offered method that is analyzing the most delicate social interactions
in order to explore the most robust social connections, all the gathered documents prove a
societal gap from the point of political-civil thinking in the street. From Simmel’s view, this
gap is not only explainable but as he showed, it is spatial.