Friction space and the re(dis)covery of urban roads

For the majority of cities worldwide, car-based mobility has begun to be replaced by alternative mobility modes. This process has augmented the lens for infrastructural topics, and placed infrastructure's latent potentiality at the forefront. Car-dependent infrastructure, however, persists in and conditions urbanism in many others. For such cities, the encounter of roads with the city and human-scale spaces raises critical ground in need of new strategies, particularly to mediate the relation between roads and their vicinities. This article, hereby, dwells on the interfacial relations and spaces betwixt urban roads and relational geographies, conceptualizing friction as a spatial notion. In this, the study departs from the conflicting presence of urban roads in Ankara. Dwelling on two Boulevards—Atatürk and Malazgirt—the article reflects on the obscured spatial, cultural, and social conditions caused by frictionless mobility strategies over time. It uncovers and accentuates the urgency of friction space strategies to claim infrastructural terrains and re(dis)cover severed or missing continuities (in Ankara).