IJIA 2 (1) pp.

157–178 Intellect Limited 2013

International Journal of Islamic Architecture

Volume 2 Number 1
© 2013 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ijia.2.1.157_1

Reza Masoudi Nejad

SOAS, University of London

The Spatial Logic of the Crowd: The

Effectiveness of Protest in Public Space

Abstract Keywords
The result of the 2009 Iranian presidential election sparked protests in the streets space syntax
of Tehran. This article focuses on the spatial logic of crowd occurrence and the crowd
role played by protest location in its effectiveness. Although the symbolism of protest
space is pronounced in crowd studies from Gustav Le Bon to Charles Tilly, there uprising
is a lack of attention to the logic of crowd culmination and movement in rela- public space
tion to actual physical urban spaces. There are new studies examining how public Tehran
space is utilized during times of political turmoil; these studies, however, focus
mostly on the specific place of protest, and do not examine crowd dynamics in
the city at large. This article, in contrast, contributes to the understanding of the
spatial logic of mass occurrence by examining the city structure as a whole. It
argues that the location of a public space in a city is far more important than its
symbolic connotations, and that, following Tilly, the impact of crowds depends not
only upon the what he calls WUNC equation (representing Worthiness, Unity,
Numbers and Commitment of a crowd), but also on the spatial characteristics of
the place of the protest.

Time magazine named ‘the protester’ the person of the year in 2011. The
magazine’s cover exhibits an intense close-up portrait of a woman whose
eyes are just visible between the woollen cap and cloth mask that hide her
other features. The image stands for the growth in leaderless uprisings in the
Middle East and the Occupy movements around the world, meanwhile subtly
implying that the dynamics of such uprisings are veiled and not yet fully
understood. There is, for example, increased attention being paid to the role
of public space in recent political developments in the Middle East, yet public

157
Reza Masoudi Nejad

spaces are usually considered only insofar as they embody a symbolic role in
uprisings, such as that played by Pearl Square in the capital city of Manama in
Bahrain. However, the importance of public spaces goes far beyond their mere
symbolism. When King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa bulldozed the monument
at the centre of Pearl Square, he defused neither the uprising in Manama nor
the effect created by the weeks in which protesters had camped there.1 In fact,
the fight for change has been inseparably linked to the ability of people to
assemble in and claim public spaces. Adopting the terminology from anthro-
pologist Victor Turner, one could claim that people push the city into an anti-
structural status by disputing ownership of public spaces in order to negotiate
the conditions of power relations, or attempt to restructure them.2
This article explores the spatial logic of crowds during protests in Tehran
after the tenth Iranian presidential election in June 2009. It particularly explores
the manifestation of spontaneous crowds and formulates an approach to
understanding crowd effectiveness by taking into account the structure of the
city as a whole and the role of public spaces within it. This leads to an analysis
of how place-making factors and crowd dynamics push the city into an anti-
structural state, and an examination of those spatial dimensions that have the
most impact on the effectiveness of crowds. The idea is neither to regard
public space as a passive background for crowds nor as a symbolic catalyst
for protest; rather I focus on spatial processes that underlie how crowds come
about and function in cities, whilst acknowledging that the structural config-
uration of a city is part of the process that determines crowd effectiveness.
Therefore, this study contributes to the understanding of the spatial logic of
spontaneous masses in public places and the effect of claiming public space
in the city at large.
After providing the historical context for the events of June 2009 and
positioning the article theoretically, I introduce the ways that graph theory
and topological ideas of space (as the backbone of the space syntax method
used in this study) can provide a new framework for reading crowds and
protests in the landscape of the city at large. I then use the syntactical analyses
of Tehran to capture the configuration of the city’s structure and conclude by
articulating the spatial logic of crowds and the dynamic of crowd efficiency
when the protests were pushed to the periphery.

June 2009: The Time of a Political Ritual

Since the revolution of 1979, Iranian public policy has aimed at encouraging
people to participate in elections. Iranians, however, have been gradually
losing interest, referring to the trend with an expression that translates as ‘this
henna does not have colour anymore’. Yet surprisingly, most people described
the campaigns for the 2009 presidential election as the most motivational
since the revolution of 1979. The reformist candidates were qualified by the
state for election, therefore general belief that there might be space for change
was rife, along with hopes that the Islamic Republic would be willing to accept
the people’s favourite. There were two main candidates for the presidency:
Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad, the incumbent president, and Mir-Hussein Mousavi,
Iran’s prime minister during the 1980s and a reformist candidate. An inter-
viewee (in his 40s) in Tehran commented on the candidates:

Although nobody initially believed that Mousavi would gain vast majority
support, he soon became a very popular candidate across a diverse

158
 The Spatial Logic of the Crowd

range of social groups. Personally, I am not interested in political activi-

ties, but I had Mousavi’s poster in my car, actively supporting him. […]
Artists were behind Mousavi like no other candidate before; there were
even meetings in support of Mousavi in some of Tehran’s art galleries.
A couple of underground singers sang songs to support him; these songs
were loudly and freely played by youth in the streets, changing the city
like never before. […] The hope for change was high, as [unusually] state
[forces] did not interrupt all the excitement in the streets.
(Interview in October 2012)

One ‘street campaign’ was a human chain through Vali-Asr Street, organized
by the Mousavi campaign known as the ‘Green Movement’ on June 9, 2009.3
Vali-Asr Street connects the south of the city, usually associated with the
working class, to the wealthy north of the capital. The idea of the chain was to
demonstrate that diverse social classes supported Mousavi, and to show that
this support for the reformist movement came from a vast trajectory of Iranian
society. On the very same day, Ahmadi-Nejad’s campaign organized a huge
rally in Mosalla, Tehran’s prayer hall, where tens of thousands of his support-
ers gathered. As Worth and Fathi report, the two concurrent campaign activi-
ties brought the capital to a standstill just a few days before the election.4 This
was the landscape of Tehran just prior to the political ritual through which
power might be transferred.
In 2009, both pro-government groups and reformists were able to mobilize
large numbers of people to assist in the election; indeed, the degree of partici-
pation was possibly the highest in the history of presidential elections in Iran
(held since 1980). Nonetheless, it was generally expected that Mousavi would
win, or at least that the election would be continued into a second round.
However, just two hours after the polls closed, in the early hours of June 13,
2009, Iran’s official state news agency, IRNA, announced that Mahmoud
Ahmadi-Nejad had won the election.5
This outcome sparked the convergence of millions on the streets of
Tehran on June 13, principally along the east–west spine of Tehran through
Enghelab and Azadi Streets. It was not an organized gathering but rather a
spontaneous flood of people into the streets, clearly demonstrating that ‘the
assumption of the election having been rigged is now a “social fact”’.6 This
marked the beginning of the street protests in Tehran against the election
results. In response, Ahmadi-Nejad’s supporters also gathered at Vali-Asr
Square on June 14 ‘to celebrate the results of the […] election with Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who according to figures released by the interior ministry won
a second term in office with 63 percent of the votes’.7 After a week of street
protests, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, asked for an end to
them in his Friday sermon. He stated that ‘the outcome had to be decided
at the ballot box, not on the street’.8 After this statement, the state no longer
tolerated public rallies, and the protestors were seriously suppressed.
The post-election events arguably comprise the most serious mass protest
ever to challenge the authority of the Islamic Republic. Riot police and other
semi-official forces were mobilized on a vast scale to suppress the crowd and
drive the protesters to peripheral areas in the city where they then demon-
strated their resistance in a variety of forms, including deliberately jamming
highway traffic. Protest was then pushed even further from public spaces onto
building rooftops, where people gathered at night to chant ‘God is great’. The
final step was when it was limited to cyberspace, where it then hibernated.

159
Reza Masoudi Nejad

Reza Masoudi Nejad. The background image: 2012 TerraMetrics, Google.

Figure 1: Tehran: (a) Azadi Square, (b) Enghelab Square, (c) Imam Hussein Square, (d) the Railway Station,
(e) Vali-Asr Square, (f) Mosalla.

In theory, political power can be transferred by elections; however, if there

is no ballot box or if it does not adequately mediate the process of power
transferral, then the streets may become the loci of change. Therefore, radical
socio-political transformation has always been inseparably linked to the ability
of people to assemble. As such, protests, revolts and revolutions can be read as
rituals aimed at changing relations of power. Public protest is a transitional ritual
that interrupts the everyday life of a city and shifts it into a transitional phase
wherein lies the possibility that power relations can be altered. In Turner’s termi-
nology, people need to be able to push the city into an anti-structural status.9
The notion of anti-structure has been developed on the basis of Van
Gennep’s work which demonstrates how specific rituals enable people to
move from one life stage or status to another. He formulates the process of
each transformation as comprising three stages: the preliminal, liminal and
postliminal.10 The significance of the liminal stage is initially considered by
Turner in The Drums of Affliction, and then further developed in The Ritual
Process.11 Turner explains the rite of passage as a process moving people or
groups from a specific structure or status into an anti-structure and returning
them to a structure. He emphasizes the social role of the liminal stage, which
signifies a temporary reversal of, or an expulsion from, the social order during
liminal rituals. As Turner explains, liminal status is a transitional time in which
everyday norms/rules are ignored, and individuals or social groups have a

160
 The Spatial Logic of the Crowd

position or authority that they do not have normally. The significance of this
temporal anti-structural situation, particularly for the discussion at hand, lies
in the potential it offers for restructuring social and power relations.12 What
is particularly interesting about Turner’s idea is to read riot, unrest, uprising,
revolt and revolution as liminal rituals. Such a reading emphasizes an analyt-
ical approach to the process of changing power relations and avoids using
politically charged terminologies to read events.13

Crowd Theories and Public Space

The literature on crowds is grounded in classic studies on revolts during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which developed the psychology and
typology of mass gatherings in order to understand crowd behaviour and the
effectiveness of masses.14 Nye explains that the classics regarded ‘the crowd’
as integral to a modern world experiencing the disastrous circumstances of
industrialization and rapid urbanization, and used the conjuncture to develop
the ‘theory of mass society’.15 It was as fascinating a notion then as new
communication technology is today. ‘Mass’ was described not only as a new
phenomenon in the West but also implied a new era, when ‘the divine right
of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings’.16
Harrison, in his comprehensive study, focuses on mass phenomena during
the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revolts and protests in British cities,
addressing diverse subjects including public spaces.17 However, his discussion
of the latter is limited to simple description or brief references to the symbolic
role of public spaces and their monuments. Nonetheless, the classic studies of
revolutions/protests are still reflected in contemporary research such as that
by Tilly, a leading contemporary scholar in the field. When describing public
processions, Tilly notes that ‘participants gather in a symbolically potent public
space where they display their collective attachment to a well-defined cause,
they [then] march through thoroughfares towards symbolically powerful desti-
nations’.18 This paraphrases Harrison’s work and also implies that Tilly’s discus-
sion of public space is largely limited to its symbolism. On the other hand, Tilly
addresses the effectiveness of crowds using his interesting WUNC formulation
which draws attention to the ‘Worthiness, Unity, Number and Commitment’
of a gathering.19 In doing so, although he may have initially talked about the
symbolism of spaces, he then ignores the role of public space in favour of devot-
ing attention to the efficiency of the crowds that gather there. This tellingly
reveals a lack of analytical attention to understanding crowds in conjunction
with public spaces and the city at large, thereby raising the question of whether
a crowd really have the same efficiency wherever it occurs in a city.
Since the late 1970s a growing body of literature has taken a spatial turn
by associating space with social theories.20 Based on this theoretical develop-
ment, an academic discourse has recently emerged that explores how public
space is utilized, controlled and contested between protesters and the police,
thereby making major contributions to studies of urban protest, the geogra-
phy of policing and the process of place-making through political protests.21
However, such studies have mainly focused on the place of protest on its own,
not as a part of a city at large. This has resulted in the absence of analytical
frameworks that capture the effect of public protest in its macro context.
Meanwhile, ignorance about why public protests occur in certain parts of a
city has continued, it being tacitly assumed that this is an obvious matter. This
has led to more attention being paid to the symbolic aspect of space, which

161
Reza Masoudi Nejad

has been widely reflected in the initial academic outputs on the recent upris-
ings in the Middle East. As mentioned above, public spaces are considered
only insofar as they embody a symbolic role in the recent uprisings. However,
we realize that bulldozing a monument does not defuse an uprising or the
effect of a group of protesters laying claim to public space.
It is clear, therefore, that there is a need to reposition questions about
crowds and their effectiveness, conjoining them with the notion of space. In
this article, public space is not approached as a passive background, nor is it
studied on its own; rather, it is investigated as part of the process of crowd
occurrence in the macro landscape of the city. I do not disregard the signifi-
cance of symbolism of space, or ignore the significance of microanalyses of
protest. However, I would like to illuminate the lack of attention to, and
the importance of, exploring crowds in a city at large. Therefore, this study
employs ‘space syntax’, a topological technique that helps to capture and
analyse the spatial structure of the city as a whole.

The Idea of City Topology

Topology, as a major branch in mathematics, was introduced to built
environment studies in the 1960s.22 Based on graph theories, topology aims to
describe and analyse relational schemes by which different parts of a system
are configured as a whole. In the topology of a city, the width of a street or the
size of a square is not important; rather, the way that a street or square is posi-
tioned and related to the other parts of a city is what matters. In other words,
the topology of a city is primarily not about the geometrical properties of parts
of the city but about the way that the parts are constituted as a whole.
Bill Hillier is one of the scholars who employed a topological approach to
study the built environment during the late 1970s, as a result of which Hillier
and Hanson introduced a new theory: space syntax.23 As the name of the
theory suggests, it is based on the idea that buildings and cities are syntacti-
cally constituted as a whole. Hillier argues that architectural theories have been
much concerned with how built spaces should look.24 However, architectural
studies have suffered from the lack of an analytical language to explain how the
built environment actually works, a problem on which space syntax focuses.
Space syntax aims to articulate the configuration of buildings and cities.
Hillier explains:

Configuration seems to be a concept addressed to the whole of a

complex rather than to its parts. Intuitively, it seems to mean a set of
relationships among things all of which interdepend in an overall struc-
ture of some kind.25

Therefore, configuration exists based upon the relations ‘between parts’. This
idea accepts that ‘space is merely a system of relations’;26 space is a system
out there in the real world; however, it is not a physical entity and coexists
with other elements. As Bertrand Russell explains, when we say Edinburgh
is to the north of London, we are describing a relational scheme. Although
these two cities are actually out there, it is not easy to state whether the rela-
tion between the two cities is an abstract or a material one. Nevertheless,
although the relation exists based on the two cities, its property is independ-
ent from them.
A large number of indices/measurements are used in graph/topological
analyses. Two very basic indices are connectivity and depth. Connectivity is

162
 The Spatial Logic of the Crowd

simply the number of connections that a node has in a graph. For example,
in Figure 2, D has four connections. Depth or ‘graph distance’ is the number
of steps between two nodes in a graph. For example in Figure 2c, the graph
distance between ‘i’ and ‘g’ is two steps. Depth, however, does not imply
metric distance, therefore while the metric distance between ‘i’ and ‘a’ is much
more than between ‘i’ and ‘g’, the graph distance is two steps in both cases.
Total depth (TD) from a node to all other nodes in a graph indicates its posi-
tion in that system. If a node has the lowest TD, it means the node is topologi-
cally the centre of the system, while nodes that have higher TD values are in
peripheral parts. In Figure 2, this is simply illustrated by arranging the graph of
the street network [Figure 2a] from different parts of the street network. The
graph arranged from ‘i’, which has minimum TD, has less depth compared to
the pair arranged from ‘L’, which has a maximum TD. This simply shows that
‘i’ has higher closeness value in the system [see Figures 2c and 2d]. While depth
is the basic index to capture the closeness of a node, connectivity helps to assess
between-ness of nodes, showing how likely it is that a node would be passed
through to go from every node to all other nodes.27 Although it is easy to

Reza Masoudi Nejad.

Figure 2: Three different representations of space: (a) map, (b) axial map and
(c and d) justified graphs. The graph, which is arranged from ‘i’ (bottom right), has
less depth compared to the graph justified from ‘L’ (bottom left).

163
Reza Masoudi Nejad

perceive closeness and between-ness in a small network with no calculations,

when a network gets bigger and more complex, it is more difficult.
The pioneers of space syntax have innovatively introduced a number of
measurements. They also developed different representative graphs, such as
‘convex map’, ‘axial map’, ‘visual modelling’ and, more recently, ‘segment’.28
Although, for example, an axial map [Figure 2b] looks like a two-dimensional
map, it is in fact a graph, representing visually continuous spaces. An axial
map is defined as representing urban structure by the longest and fewest
numbers of axes passing through all spaces.29 In this so-called map, each axis
is a ‘node’ in a graph, not a two-dimensional entity. Although a graph looks
like a two-dimensional entity, mathematically it is not. Nevertheless, a graph
can represent not only 2D or 3D systems but also n-dimensional systems.
We can represent built environments by different types of graphs and then
analyse the graphs based on diverse indices to capture different topological
properties of a system. The way that we choose to represent and analyse a
system depends on the research question.
Space syntax is neither the first approach to introduce topological analyses
in urban studies nor the latest; however, it is arguably the most developed.30
Space syntax methods and techniques have continually changed and devel-
oped over the last three decades.31 There is a wide range of space syntax
modelling and analysing methods, articulating the correlation between urban
activities and the spatial layout of different-scaled space, from a public square
to an entire mega-city. Some space syntax methods are appropriate for micro-
scale analyses of crowds and protests. However, because this article is particu-
larly aimed at exploring crowds in the macro context of the city, it employs
those methods that best allow us to analyse city structure as a whole.
The following section details the analyses of the structure of Tehran using
space syntax methods. These methods are explained in the context of the
discussion as it makes it easier to clarify the ideas that underpin them though,
because the article is aimed at general academic readers, it does not discuss
analyses mathematically. This is justifiable because this article employs methods
that are commonly used in space syntax studies. Moreover, the mathematical
results of analyses are graphically represented to allow a better understanding
of the process.

The Spatial Structure of Tehran

The capital city of Tehran is located between the desert in the south and the
northern mountains. The old city and commercial parts are located in  the
south of the city, where the street network is denser than elsewhere. Ali
Madanipour describes the city structure as based on two axes: the main axis,
Vali-Asr Street, links the south-centre to the northern areas.32 The east–west
axis, Enghelab Street, is the secondary axis of the city. This may have charac-
terized the city structure before the 1980s; however, it does not depict the city
structure as it is today. The old city stretched towards the northern foothills
until the late 1970s, but since then the city has mainly grown in an east–west
direction, especially towards the west.33 The land value generally increases
from the south to the north, which supports the general perception of the city
as comprising a poor south and a wealthy north.34 It must be noted, however,
that although these descriptions may illustrate an overall image of Tehran,
they are not very accurate observations. Tehran, like other mega-cities, has a
complex structure and variegated land use.

164
 The Spatial Logic of the Crowd

Reza Masoudi Nejad.

Figures (from top to bottom) 3a: The cityscape of Tehran: The view over Navab
Street towards the north; 3b: the eastern part of Tehran and Damavand Peak.

Figure 4 shows the configuration of Tehran based on the distribution of

integration value across the axial map of the city. Closeness, or integration as it
is called in space syntax literature, is based on the notion of depth or graph
distance. We usually talk about distance between two places, but integration
is based on a kind of universal graph distance that indexes distance between
each part to all other parts of a graph. If a part of a city gains the highest inte-
gration value, it means it is topologically the centre of the city. Thus, Figure 4
depicts the configuration of Tehran based on an integration in the city at large
(or global integration). The integration value of all parts in the axial map
is calculated and represented by a colour spectrum, from red to blue. In this

165
Reza Masoudi Nejad

Reza Masoudi Nejad.

Figure 4: The configuration of Tehran based on indexing integration at large (global integration). The axial map
is rendered according to the logarithm of integration values (Log Int.); axes are rendered from red (the highest Log
Int. value) to blue (the lowest Log Int. value).

figure, the map is rendered based on the logarithm of integration. This graphi-
cally distinguishes the core of the city structure better than rendering the map
based on integration itself, as the method produces more contrast between
the core and peripheral parts. The areas tinted in warm colours have high
integration values, shaping the core of the urban structure. The bluish areas
are deeper or more remote places; therefore, they are topologically segre-
gated. Since this analysis is based on an axial map, it gives a holistic picture of
the city structure, which is one of the goals of this article. However, for more
complex and detailed analyses we may use a different representative graph.
As shown in Figure 4, the east–west axis is the most integrated part of the
city, meaning it is the topological centre of the city. This core is connected
to the rest of the city by sets of secondary cores in the north–south direc-
tion. The density of secondary cores around the east–west axis illustrates the
most important part of it: Azadi and Enghelab Streets [Figure 5]. Overall, this
analysis shows that in general the southern part of the city is more tied to the
core than the northern part of the city.

166
 The Spatial Logic of the Crowd

Reza Masoudi Nejad.

Figure 5: Map of Tehran: The highly integrated part of urban structure (global
integration) shaded in greyscale. The most integrated axis is rendered in red and
those axes of secondary importance appear in orange.

The idea of natural movement, as one of the main ideas in space syntax
theory, suggests that the integrated areas are the main attractions of urban
movement.35 Therefore, the pattern of integration in a city reveals the major
destinations for urban movement. The conventional modelling of urban
movement considers land use to be the main factor constituting urban flow.
However, space syntax studies make it evident that ‘the configuration
of the urban street network is in itself a major determinant of movement
flows’.36 These studies suggest that the more integrated parts of a city tend
to have shopping/commercial land use while peripheral parts – known as
segregated – are quiet areas that include residential places. The distribu-
tion of integration values in Tehran explains why the central and southern
parts of Tehran, shaded in warm colours, embrace retailing and commercial
activities [Figure 5]. The figure also depicts a crescent in the north of Tehran
with a relatively low integration value, rendered in cool colours, which is
predominantly residential.
The significance of the global integration of Tehran is that it clarifies
why major spontaneous crowds terminate at the east–west axis of Tehran,
anchored by Enghelab and Azadi Streets [Figures 4 and 5]. As this core is
topologically the centre of the city, it has the highest gravity for aggregate
urban movement. Therefore, spontaneous crowds more naturally gather
there. Azadi Square and Imam Hussein Square define the ends of this axial
core. As mentioned above, the density of secondary cores around this one
indicates that the middle of this axis is the most integrated part of it.37 In
fact, Enghelab Square is situated at the centre of this axis, both topologically
and geometrically; Ferdosi Square is also located within the most integrated
part of the east–west axis [Figure 6]. Furthermore, the primary/topological

167
Reza Masoudi Nejad

2012 DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, 2012 Google (6a, 6b, 6c and 6d); Reza Masoudi Nejad (6e).

Figures (clockwise from the top left and then below) 6a: Azadi Sqaure; 6b: Enghelab
Square; 6c: Ferdosi Square; 6d: Imam Hussein Squares; 6e: the highly integrated
part of the urban structure of Tehran.

168
 The Spatial Logic of the Crowd

significance of the axial core and its public spaces is multiplied by the symbolic
and historical importance that has accrued to these places since the revolu-
tion of 1979. Indeed, some may argue that the size and symbolic significance
of those places existed prior to their topological properties. Azadi Square is
symbolically the most important public space in Tehran and is also the largest.
However, Enghelab Square and the surrounding area were the heart of the
mass occurrence during the post-election protest. Moreover, although Imam
Hussein Square is much bigger than both Enghelab and Ferdosi Squares, it
was not as important as the other two located at the most integrated part of
the east–west axis. This suggests that the topological position of public spaces
primarily determines the likelihood of crowd occurrence. In other words, the
urban configuration is a hidden pattern that constitutes attractions for spon-
taneous mass accumulations.
Another important property of urban configuration is choice, called
between-ness in the general graph literature. While the integration of the
urban network captures the destination of urban flow, the choice of urban
structure reveals a pattern that shapes through-movement. In other words,
choice shows how likely it is that a segment would be passed through on
journeys from everywhere to everywhere.38 Figure 7 shows the distribution
of choice value in the street network of Tehran, illustrating the network
of routes that are most frequently traversed. This network is cored by
the east–west axis; the north part of the network is based on highways,

Reza Masoudi Nejad.

Figure 7: The configuration of Tehran based on choice value in the axial map of
the city. The axes are shaded from red (the highest choice value) to blue (the lowest
choice value). The important axes are rendered in a thicker line.

169
Reza Masoudi Nejad

Reza Masoudi Nejad.

Figures (clockwise from the top left) 8a: The highly integrated parts of the city. 8b: Routes that gain high choice
value. 8c: A comprehensive image of the configuration of Tehran.

including Jinah, Modarres and Hemmat; however, the network is more

dense and polarized in the south. In Figure 8, highly integrated parts of
Tehran are combined with the routes that gain high choice value; this
exhibits a comprehensive image of urban configuration upon which every-
day life in the city is based. Crowd effectiveness relates to the degree that
crowds and protest affect the urban configuration and alter everyday life,
pushing the city into an anti-structural status.

Claiming Public Space and Crowd Efficiency

The configuration of a city has a syntactical nature. While a change in
segregated parts has minimum influence, a change at the core of an
urban configuration affects the entire city, an effect that has a much larger
scale than its physical size. This idea is usually used to examine physical

170
 The Spatial Logic of the Crowd

interventions in cities; however, it also helps to articulate the effect of claiming

public spaces by protesters.
Throughout history, politicians have been in favour of reshaping cities in
order to practise, maintain and manifest their authority. The major change in
the city of Isfahan (Iran) during the Safavid era in the seventeenth century and
the drastic transformation of Paris by Baron Haussmann are only two exam-
ples of this. As Blake argues, when Shah Abbas relocated the capital of Iran to
Isfahan and built a new urban core in the city, it constituted ‘the creation of
a new imperial order’.39 Powerless people, however, could challenge authori-
ties by temporarily deforming the city, claiming public spaces and altering the
everyday life of the metropolis. The everyday tempo of city life could be inter-
rupted by official events as well. However, if disruptions occur without the
permission of the authorities, it is a protest that pushes the city into an anti-
structural status, a situation that governments usually call disorder.
I use the terms reshaping and deforming here to label two different ways of
manipulating a city. Reshaping implies a permanent physical change of the city;
deforming denotes elasticity and temporary alteration of urban conditions and
activities without reshaping the city. People, by claiming public space, deform
the city, pushing it from its everyday status into an anti-structural status.
Although the life of a city can be altered during protest/unrest, it will then
revert back to normal, though it may be based on a new power constitution.
However, people are not always able to push the city into an anti-structural
status or sustain it long enough to alter power relations. Riots, protests and
uprisings – regardless of what they are called, positive or negative – all involve
deforming the city to challenge a certain form of power relation. Therefore,
they can be called rites of deforming the city. Such rituals push the city into an
anti-structural status when power relations could be restructured; however,
the ritual has to be efficient to achieve such a status.
As discussed, Tilly has designed a formula for crowd efficiency, calcu-
lated on the basis of the Worthiness, Unity, Number and Commitment
(WUNC) of a crowd.40 Let me further suggest that the effectiveness of a
crowd generally depends on its ability to push the city into an anti-structural
status; in other words, the effectiveness depends on the ability to deform
the city. Obviously, this idea acknowledges Tilly’s WUNC, but it includes
other possible factors, including the topological position of the places that
crowds claim. As shown, public spaces such as Enghelab and Azadi Streets
at the heart of the urban configuration are not only natural places for crowds
to occur; claiming such places actually maximizes the effect of the protest.
Claims made here are also symbolically important, because taking over
Enghelab and Azadi Streets – where official demonstrations usually take
place – symbolically challenges the state’s authority over the city. What is
important, however, is whether people/protesters are able to claim such
a place for long enough. The ability of the people to deform the city and
push it into an anti-structural status depends on many factors, including the
social and political ability of protesters and authorities. The initial protests at
Azadi and Enghelab Streets and surrounding areas seriously pushed the city
to the threshold of change. But the state was able to claim the city back and
repel and suppress the protests.
The protests in Tehran continued, but crowds began gathering tactically
for short episodes in a number of other public spaces such as Haft-i Tir
Square and Vanak Square [Figure 9]. Although the protests were not limited
to these two squares, they typify places of unrest in the second phase of the

171
Reza Masoudi Nejad

2012 DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, 2012 Google (9a and 9b); Reza Masoudi Nejad (9c). The background image:
2012 TerraMetrics, Google.

Figures (clockwise from the top left) 9a: Haft-i Tir Square; 9b: Vanak Square; 9c: The typical locations of
protests in the second and third phases of post-election protests. The map shows highly integrated parts of the
city (in red) and routes that have a high choice value (in green). (1) Haft-i Tir Square, (2) Vanak Square, and
(3) Sa’adat-abad.

172
 The Spatial Logic of the Crowd

post-election protests. While crowds had also gathered in these places in the
first stage, the later protests were limited only to these places. In the second
stage the number of riot police and other semi-official forces increased and
they practised very harsh methods of suppression, significantly decreas-
ing the number of protestors. The crowds were spatially pushed back
and could only sustain their position for short sessions. As illustrated in
Figure 9, Vanak Square is located at Vali-Asr Street, which has a high choice
value. Yet it is not positioned in the core of the global integration of the city.
In fact, Vanak Square is an important urban node; nevertheless its signifi-
cance is limited to the northern part of the city, and so is the impact of claim-
ing it. Haft-i Tir Square, however, has a more important position in the city,
since it is located at a place where a route with a high choice value connects
to a densely integrated part of the city. Although Haft-i Tir Square is not as
important as Enghelab and Azadi Streets, it is still a very significant place and
has a major impact on the city at large. This square is an urban node, not a
long street like Azadi Street, and a few thousand protesters can occupy it.
Therefore it was a very effective place to claim when the number of protest-
ers was limited. However, as mentioned, the crowds were only sustained for
very short episodes. In short, the spatio-temporal effectiveness of protest was
moderated in this stage.
As protesters were faced with serious suppression and the streets became
too risky for even a silent gathering, people started using less risky forms
of protest, such as deliberately jamming highways. Moreover, whenever a
normal traffic jam occurred, people sounded their car horns simultaneously
as a collective performance manifesting their presence. A traffic jam is indeed
a usual situation in Tehran, but nonetheless it can be turned into a ritual if it
is deliberately created as a meaningful and symbolic act. While the protests
usually caused traffic to come to a standstill in any case, deliberately jamming
thoroughfares became another form of protest that took place on various
streets and highways – usually on routes with a high choice value [Figure 9].
What is interesting about this form of protest is that such a collective action
was manifested in highways and other car-dominant thoroughfares, which
are not supposed to be places for public actions. Furthermore, it was not an
exceptional example; a number of video clips were posted on the Internet
showing that crowds waiting for underground trains in the centre of Tehran
suddenly transformed the platform into a public place of protest for a short
time. These cases show that people are able not only to make a ritual/protest
out of a traffic jam but that they may also turn highways and underground
platforms into spaces for collective actions.
As civil unrest proceeded and the response of the authorities became
harsher, protests were further limited to peripheral/residential areas, stere-
otyped by Sa’adat-abad [Figure 9], and usually took place during the evening.
These predominantly residential areas are topologically segregated parts of
the city. Therefore, although a crowd occurrence in these parts of the city was
locally important, it did not affect the city at large. Protests continued, but
because they were fragmented in segregated parts of the city, their effect on
the city was minimized. After months of suppression, the protest was pushed
out of public spaces altogether and delimited to rooftops of residential build-
ings where people were chanting ‘God is great’ after dark. Thus, the sense of
collective action no longer appeared as a mass occurrence in a public space;
rather, it was the voice of people that created the space of protest. People could
not see each other; instead, the sense of being together was perceived as they

173
Reza Masoudi Nejad

heard each other. Chanting ‘God is great’ into the Tehran night was a surreal
sense and experience that was beautifully captured by Pietro Masturzo earning
him the 2009 World Press Photo of the Year award.41 People were unable to
claim major public spaces, but their chant took over the city, until eventually
riot police and semi-official forces silenced it. The state forces, therefore, were
able to end the protest and reverse the anti-structural status, the state of limi-
nality, which people in Tehran experienced when they challenged state author-
ity and established power relations. They were, however, unable to transform
preliminal power relations into new configurations; instead the state was able
to quash the uprising and restore its authority.

Conclusion
The intention of this article was to examine a very specific aspect of the 2009
protests in Tehran in preference to fully unfolding the sequence of the events
and their respective causes and effects. This study examined built spaces in order
to cast light on the spatial processes involved in the manifestation of crowds,
rather than regarding space as the cause, or even catalyst, of an uprising. In
so doing, I tried to shed light on an aspect of the protest that has not been
explored. The syntax of space makes it possible to capture the hidden pattern of
configuration, revealing a primary property of urban structure that is the major
attraction for spontaneous mass occurrences. By shifting from a symbolic to a
configurational paradigm, this study particularly contributes to the understand-
ing of spatially articulated spontaneous crowd occurrences in a city at large.
It is an approach that positions the protests, from processions to deliber-
ately jamming traffic, as rites aimed at ‘deforming’ the city. It suggests that
the efficiency of the rite generally depends on its ability to push the city into
an anti-structural status. Although this idea takes into account Tilly’s WUNC
equation, it particularly addresses the topological positioning of the ritual. The
study, which should be seen as an introduction to this field in the context of
Iran, shows that not only is the configuration of a city an active background
in the process of crowd occurrence but that the efficiency of a crowd depends
on its topological position within the city at large.  The case of post-election
protest in Iran demonstrates that the dynamic of protest efficiency is inevita-
bly linked to its spatial containment and suppression.
If the effect of a public space is to be defused, it is not enough to remove
the monument at its centre – whatever symbolic import this gesture may seem
to contain – as it is the topological position of the place itself that makes it an
important locus of contestation. Not surprisingly, the configurationally impor-
tant places in cities always become the crucial spaces for challenging or main-
taining authority, with a good chance that protesters may be killed therein, as
happened in Tehran’s Azadi Street; or that the place itself becomes a martyr,
as happened in Bahrain. This inevitably adds further symbolic significance to
such places and establishes them as crucial emblems for hibernating movements
aiming to keep the demand for change alive over a much longer period of time.

Acknowledgments
I would like to especially thank Dr Omid Rismanchian for generously giving
me the axial map of Tehran, which is used for the syntactical analyses in
this article. He constructed the map for his doctoral work, ‘Evidenced-based

174
 The Spatial Logic of the Crowd

Spatial Intervention for Regeneration of Deteriorating Urban Areas, a Case of

Study from Tehran, Iran’ (Ph.D dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2011).

Suggested Citation
Masoudi-Nejad, R. (2013). ‘The Spatial Logic of the Crowd: The Effectiveness
of Protest in Public Space’, International Journal of Islamic Architecture 2: 1,
pp. 157–178, doi: 10.1386/ijia.2.1.157_1

Contributor Details
Dr Reza Masoudi Nejad is an architect and urban morphologist; he received
his Ph.D. in Urban Regional Planning from The Bartlett, University College
London. His main research area is urban transformation with a specific
interest in the interaction between society and space through rituals. He
has carried out research on Muharram processions in Iran and India. After
completing his Ph.D., Dr Masoudi Nejad was a research fellow at the Max
Planck Institute (MPI-MMG) for two years and recently joined SOAS as a
Research Associate.
E-mail: r.masoudi@soas.ac.uk

Reza Masoudi Nejad has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

Endnotes

1. Eric Goldwyn, ‘The Limits of Cyber-Revolutions’, New York Magazine,

April 3, 2011, http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/cyber-revolutions-
2011-4/.

2. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (London:

Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969).

3. ‘Human Chain in Tehran in Support of Mir Hossein Mousavi – Part 1’,

CNN iReport, June 9, 2009, accessed April 28, 2012, http://ireport.cnn.com/
docs/DOC-268724.

4. Robert F. Worth and Nazila Fathi, ‘Huge Campaign Rallies Snarl Tehran’, New
York Times, June 9, 2009, sec. International/Middle East, http://www.nytimes.
com/2009/06/09/world/middleeast/09iran.html.

5. Robert F. Worth and Nazila Fathi, ‘Both Sides Claim Victory in Presidential
Election in Iran’, New York Times, June 13, 2009, sec. International/
Middle East, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/world/middleeast/
13iran.html.

6. Hamid Dabashi, The Green Movement in Iran (New Brunswick, N.J.

Transaction Publishers, 2011), 24.

175
Reza Masoudi Nejad

7. ‘Ahmadinejad Supporters Hold Unity Rally’, Press TV, June 16, 2009,
accessed April 28, 2012, http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/98258.html.

8. ‘Ayatollah Demands End to Protests’, BBC, June 19, 2009, sec. Middle
East, accessed April 28, 2012, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8108661.stm.

9. Turner, The Ritual Process.

10. Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1960). Liminal comes from the Latin limen, or ‘threshold’; see Fiona
Bowie, The Anthropology of Religion: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell,
2000), 163.

11. Victor Turner, The Drums of Affliction: A Study of Religious Processes Among
the Ndembu of Zambia (Oxford: Clarendon Press and International African
Institute, 1968); Turner, The Ritual Process.

12. Turner, The Ritual Process.

13. For example the post-election protest was called a ‘riot’ by the Iranian
state, while it was titled as an ‘uprising’ in the West.

14. See Mark Harrison, Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns,
1790–1835 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Gustave Le Bon,
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London: Ernest Benn, 1947); Elias
Canetti, Crowds and Power (London: Gollancz, 1962).

15. Robert A. Nye, Gustave Le Bon and the Origins of Crowd Psychology and
the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic, vol. 2, Sage Studies in
Twentieth Century History (London: Sage Publications, 1975).

16. Le Bon, The Crowd, 16.

17. Harrison, Crowds and History, 140–67.

18. Charles Tilly, ‘WUNC’, in Crowds, ed. Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew
Tiews (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 290.

19. Tilly, ‘WUNC’.

20. See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991);
Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and
Contradiction in Social Analysis (London: Macmillan, 1979); Edward W Soja,
‘The Spatiality of Social Life: Towards a Transformative Retheorisation’, in
Social Relations and Spatial Structures, ed. Derek Gregory and John Urry
(London: Macmillan, 1985), 90–127.

21. For example, see John A. Agnew, Place and Politics: The Geographical
Mediation of State and Society (Boston and London: Allen & Unwin, 1987);
Byron A. Miller and Deborah G. Martin, eds. ‘Space, Place, and Contentious

176
 The Spatial Logic of the Crowd

Politics’, Mobilization: An International Quarterly 8.2 (June 2003); J Auyero,

‘Spaces and Places as Sites and Objects of Politics’, in The Oxford Handbook
of Contextual Political Analysis, ed. Robert E Goodin and Charles Tilly, The
Oxford Handbooks of Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006), 564–78; Mike Zajko and Daniel Béland, ‘Space and Protest Policing
at International Summits’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
26.4 (2008): 719–35.

22. See Peter H. Levin, ‘The Use of Graphs to Decide the Optimum Layout of
Buildings’, Architects’ Journal 7 (October 1964): 809–14; Lionel March and
Philip Steadman, The Geometry of Environment: An Introduction to Spatial
Organization in Design (London: RIBA Publications, 1971); Lionel March
and Leslie Martin, eds. Urban Space and Structures (London: Cambridge
University Press, 1972); Stanford Anderson, Studies Toward an Ecological
Model of the Urban Environment (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1975).

23. Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson, The Social Logic of Space (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984).

24. Bill Hillier, Space is the Machine: A Configurational Theory of Architecture

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

25. Ibid., 23.

26. Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with
Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day,
2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1999), 87.

27. See Hillier and Hanson, The Social Logic of Space, 100–04; Bill Hillier, ‘The
Hidden Geometry of Deformed Grids: Or, Why Space Syntax Works,
When It Looks as Though It Shouldn’t’, Environment and Planning B:
Planning and Design 26.2 (1999): 175–76.

28. For more about axial and convex maps, see Hillier and Hanson, The Social
Logic of Space. For more about visual modelling based on the idea of isovist,
which is used in visual graph analyses (VGA), see Alasdair Turner, Maria
Doxa, David O’Sullivan and Allen Penn, ‘From Isovists to Visibility Graphs:
a Methodology for the Analysis of Architectural Space’, Environment and
Planning B: Planning and Design 28.1 (2001): 103–21. ‘Segment’ implies
both a new algorithm and a representative graph; for more on segments,
see Bill Hillier and Shinichi Iida, ‘Network and Psychological Effects in
Urban Movement’, in A.G. Cohn and D.M. Mark, eds. Proceedings of
Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2005, Ellicottsville, NY, USA, September
14–18, 2005, 475–90.

29. See Hillier and Hanson, The Social Logic of Space, 90–92.

30. For example, see Sergio Porta, Paolo Crucitti and Vito Latora, ‘The Network
Analysis of Urban Streets: A Primal Approach’, Environment and Planning
B: Planning and Design 33.5 (2006): 705–25; Xie Feng and David Levinson,
‘Measuring the Structure of Road Networks’, Geographical Analysis 39.3
(2007): 336–56.

177
Reza Masoudi Nejad

31. Alasdair Turner, ‘From Axial to Road-Centre Lines: a New Representation

for Space Syntax and a New Model of Route Choice for Transport Network
Analysis’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 34.3 (2007):
539–55.

32. Ali Madanipour, Tehran: The Making of a Metropolis, World Cities Series
(Chichester: John Wiley, 1998), 117–18.

33. See Mohsen Habibi and Bernard Hourcade, Atlas of Tehran Metropolis
(Tehran: Tehran Geographic Information Center (CNRS), 2005), accessed
September 3, 2012, http://www.irancarto.cnrs.fr.

34. Alain Bertaud, ‘Tehran Spatial Structure: Constraints and Opportunities for
Future Development’ National Land and Housing Organization, National
Housing Committee, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development,
Islamic Republic of Iran, Revised April 19, 2003, 30, accessed April 28,
2012, http://alain-bertaud.com/images/AB_Teheran_report_final_3.pdf.

35. Bill Hillier, A. Penn, J. Hanson, T. Grajewski and J. Xu, ‘Natural Movement:
Or, Configuration and Attraction in Urban Pedestrian Movement’,
Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 20.1 (1993): 29–66.

36. Hillier and Iida, ‘Network and Psychological Effects in Urban

Movement’, 553.

37. In this regard see Bill Hillier, ‘Centrality as a Process: Accounting for
Attraction Inequalities in Deformed Grids’, Urban Design International 4.3
(1999): 110–15.

38. See Turner, ‘From Axial to Road-Centre Lines’, 541.

39. Stephen P. Blake, ‘Fathpur Sikiri and Isfahan’, in Cities in the Pre-modern
Islamic World: The Urban Impact of State, Society and Religion, ed.
Amira K. Bennison and Alison L. Gascoigne, SOAS/Routledge Studies on
the Middle East (New York: Routledge, 2007), 152.

40. Tilly, ‘WUNC’.

41. To see the photo, visit: http://tiny.cc/upt5jw. Also see S. Manoukian,

‘Where is this Place? Crowds, Audio-vision, and Poetry in Postelection
Iran’, Public Culture 22. 2 (2010): 237–63.

178
Design in
Practice
Article
DESIGN IN PRACTICE
IJIA publishes Design in Practice articles that focus on the contemporary prac-
tice of architecture, urban planning and landscape design in the Islamic world,
which includes the Middle East, parts of Africa and Asia, and also more recent
migratory geographies. In these articles, the issues and complexities of the
day-to-day practice of architecture are studied from contextual, conceptual
and critical perspectives.