Street Space as a Contested Colonial Frontier
The bitter conflict over bike lanes and street space is a microcosm of the larger colonial struggle over the city. Mamdani’s lens reveals this not as a simple debate over transportation, but as a fight over which political community has the right to the city. The driver in a private car represents the “settler” logic of individualized, commodified mobility and the sanctity of private property (the automobile). The cyclist or pedestrian, often from the “native” class without access to a car, represents a claim to a collective, decommodified right to safe public space. The opposition is a defense of settler privilege. A Marxist-feminist perspective supports the bike lane as a move towards a less car-dependent, more communal city that prioritizes people over capital. The solution is to frame this not as a culture war, but as a front in the class struggle, fighting for a radical reallocation of street space from private vehicles to public and active transit.
