“The public spaces in Iran’s built environment were gendered sites of domination and subordination, yet also terrains of resistance and emancipation. Tracing the massive western-oriented project of modernization of public spaces issued by the Shah of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi (1925-1941), this article contextualizes the gendered language used to advance modernization, and examines examples of women’s experiences in major cities including Tehran, Shiraz, Qazvin, Rasht, and Bushehr. During this period, modern architecture and planning movements in Iran mainly followed the discourse instigated by ciam [International Congresses of Modern Architecture]. Urban street plans with an orthogonal network of roads, streets, and wide boulevards were favored over the vernacular system of narrow, twisting, partly-roofed alleys, based on pedestrian movements. The modern movement also attempted to desegregate and 'democratize' public spaces through gender desegregation … This article addresses how, in a political climate of enormous contradictions, architectures were (re)configured and (re)appropriated as physical tools of resistance against the coloniality of modernization of the built environment and state power for one group of women, yet simultaneously, were (re)envisioned as an apparatus of confrontation with cultural traditionalism and patriarchal ideologies for another group of women.”