The Underground: A Model Urban Space by Kieran Dyer

THE UNDERGROUND A MODEL URBAN SPACE

UNDERGROUND A MODEL URBAN SPACE

THE UNDERGROUND A MODEL URBAN SPACE

UNDERGROUND A MODEL URBAN SPACE A Retroactive Manifesto for the Underground

Kieran Dyer

CONTENTS Chapter 1.0

Introduction

Chapter 2.0

UNDERGROUND AS STREET

Chapter 3.0

UNDERGROUND AS ARCADE

Chapter 4.0

UNDERGROUND AS ART GALLERY

Chapter 5.0

UNDERGROUND AS COMMUNITY

119

Chapter 6.0 synthesis

129

CHAPTER 7.0 list OF ILLUSTRATIONS

137

CHAPTER 8.0 bibliography

145

Abbreviations TfL - Transport for London GLC - Great London Council WW2 - World War 2

THE UNDERGROUND A MODEL URBAN SPACE

PREFACE Quite arguably, the underground network could be described as one of the ‘great’ urban spaces. By which, I mean in terms of grandeur, social revolution and its ability to be flexible to changing human needs. Why might a piece of infrastructure like this be considered to produce a revolution? For all intents and purpose it is formed from a bunch of railway lines below ground. The following discourse will explore the London underground network, the ‘Tube’ and argue the vitality of this urban space in our modern world. The Underground network is an inherent part of the urban landscape of London, a statement which is true for many modern cities worldwide. In this crudest sense, the underground is a mechanism, a machine which works and should only work to transport passengers from ‘A’ to ‘B’. This of course is true and the Victorian engineers would marvel at the technological advancement and efficiency of the modern network. However in the same way that a street is not merely a place for the car, the underground is not merely a place for trains. We will begin with an introduction to the underground network and a brief history of its growth, decline and again growth. The discourse will continue with four primary chapters; The Underground as Street; The Underground as Arcade; The Underground as Art Gallery and The Underground as a Community. The argument will be formed using referenced material and personal observations. Finally, we will consider observations of day to day activities on the Tube and what this means for the future of the Underground.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.0 Introduction 1.1. Urban Space Tags: Organic, Urban Exploration, Jane Jacobs, Lefebvre, de Certeau, New York, Koolhaas In Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas declared the twentieth century as the century for the ‘Culture of Congestion’. In simplistic terms, this meant that cities had reached a critical point, a point where all human activities and interactions could occur within a city block. Koolhaas attributes the movement to a number of factors; most notably the popularisation of ‘skyscrapers’, the application of technology and layering of simultaneous activities. The theory remains current and similar themes occur in cities worldwide. London has seen a proliferation of high-rise developments since the redevelopment of Canary Wharf and the city is beginning to realise and benefit from the advantages of building tall as exemplified by New York. Unlike New York, London has developed over two millennia, it has a unique energy, a je ne sais quoi, and people that reside here understand the idiosyncrasies and the complexity of the city as an organism. Many theorists like Le Corbusier, McLuhan and Koolhaas readily compare the city with technology1. In Vers une Architecture (1923) Le Corbusier states his belief that a house is a “machine for living in” a quote which has become synonymous with the man. With advances in car technology during the twentieth century Le Corbusier started to reconsider the urban landscape, he believed ‘a city made for speed is made for success’2. In 1925, Corbusier’s Plan Voisin for Paris envisioned the destruction of large swathes of Paris on the North bank of the Seine. The city would be divided into twelve functional zones, at the centre stood twenty four high-rise towers; green belts would 1 (Koolhaas, 2001:11) Koolhaas proposes the concept of a programmable city. The Roman City Operating System 2 (Smith, 2012:528)

THE UNDERGROUND A MODEL URBAN SPACE

Fig 1. Koolhaas’ ‘Culture of Congestion’ as depicted by Madelon Vrisendorp

Fig 2. Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin

separate commercial, industrial and residential districts. The radical proposals could only work with utilising the car as the means for connecting the city. Le Corbusier saw Victorian cities as chaotic and dark, he was convinced that a rationally planned city using standard parts could offer a healthy, utopian urban masterpiece. Transportation has had a direct impact on the expanding metropolis; numerous developments built in the mid-twentieth century utilised Corbusier’s principals of urbanism and catered for the car as the mode of transport to connect the city. The result was disconnected soulless cities, perfect for driving past but not fit for people to live3. Rather than think of cities as a concession of concentric urban rings encircling the ‘central business district, the development of transport and communication technologies have assisted in the decentralisation of the city4. In The Overexposed City, Paul Virilio underlines the role of transport and communication technologies in this transformation:

“The popular expression ‘to go into the city’ which has replaced last century’s ‘to go to the city’, embodies an uncertainty regarding relations of opposites, as though we were no longer ever in front of the city but always inside it. If the metropolis still occupies a piece of ground, a geographical position, it no longer corresponds to the old division between city and country, nor to the opposition between centre and periphery. The localisation and the axiality of urban layout faded long ago. Suburbia was not singlehandedly responsible for this dissolution. The very opposition “intramural”/”extramural” was itself weakened by the revolution in transportation and the development of communication and telecommunications technologies, which resulted in the nebulous conurbation of the urban fringe.”5 3 (Gallagher, 2001, www.open.edu) 4 (McQuire, 2008:18) 5 (Virilio, 1991:12)

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Fig 3. The Social City as proposed by Ebenezer Howard in Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902)

Technological developments promoted the merger of disconnected metropolitan fringes into a single urban mass. In the twenty first century, cities are no longer defined by the highly concentrated and vertically stratified city of Lang’s Metropolis, but by the ex-centric sprawl of suburb, ’out-of-town’ shopping and motorway6. The Underground has fuelled the dissolution of the city centre, giving rise to a more complex network of multiple centres. Mumford highlighted this tendency in 1973 “We live in fact in an exploding universe of mechanical and electronic invention...This technological explosion has produced a similar explosion of the city itself: the city has burst open and scattered its complex organs over the entire landscape. The walled urban container indeed has not been merely broken open: it has also been largely demagnetised, with the result that we are witnessing a sort of devolution or urban power into a state of randomness and unpredictability.”7 Many theorists, Fishman, Ferrarotti, Boyer express concern over the dissolution of a definable centre to the city, generating a crisis of urban representation as what Lynch once called the ‘legible city’. However, others such as Sorkin, Soja and Koolhaas tend to theorise that cities will evolve into ‘a wholly new kind of city without a place attached to it’8. Recent developments in digital technologies have seen an abundance of metaphors which compare life of cities with the hardware and software of computers. The comparison becoming more apparent as digital technology weaves deeper into every aspect of our lives. This comparison at first may appear cold, inhumane and alien. Technology is often represented in popular culture as the ‘bad guy’, countless sci-fi films, such as the Matrix or I-robot demonstrate our suspicion of technology and 6 (McQuire, 2008:18) 7 (Ibid, 2008:19) 8 (Ibid, 2008:19-20)

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Fig 4. Image of the Matrix

the potential threat of enslaving ourselves to technology. The comparison originates from the Complexity Theory outlined by Warren Weaver in Science and Complexity in 19489. His theory sought to organise complexity, identifying patterns and order from the disorderly10. Weaver proposed that under the chaotic surface, an unsighted order or pattern could be found. Rather than observing the individual, it should be the connections, relationships and interactions that are studied to determine the systems and groups in place11. Jane Jacobs was one of the first to connect the ideas of complexity and the city. She instinctively understood the complexity of her neighbourhood in Greenwich Village. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities she sets out her observations proffers the chaotic streetscape as the genome of the metropolis. The city is a collection of complex spaces, whose infrastructural, economic and social components are strongly interrelated and therefore difficult to understand in isolation. In Mutations, Rem Koolhaas proposes the idea of the programmable city, called the Roman City Operating System (R/0S). As Weaver suggested in his research, a complex system starts with a simple collection of parts and thus Koolhaas strips the city to basic components to be arranged on a matrix. Koolhaas is not inferring that all cities are the same or should be arranged against a matrix. He is demonstrating that once a city is stripped back to the basic hardware, like all complex systems, the software will interact unexpectedly and thus we cannot accurately measure or predict the outcomes12. 9 (Weaver, 1948: 536) 10 (Hollis, 2013:313) 11 (Ibid, 2013:320) 12 (Ibid, 2013:341)

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Fig 5. Roman Operating System as proposed by Koolhaas

In A Unified theory for Urban Living, Bettencourt and West propose, all cities are essentially the same and all follow the same rules. It is population and size which determine the characteristics of most cities. Three main characteristics vary systematically with population; space required per capita shrinks; socio-economic activity accelerates and economic and social activities diversify13. Like a beehive, an anthill or the petals of a flower, the city generates its own complexity, emerging from within the connections, interactions and networks. The city should then be considered as an organism; it has its own special powers; and over time the whole becomes more powerful than the sum of its parts. The complex city cannot be defined by a catalogue of its elements14. From personal observations London is clearly as much about non-space between buildings as it is about the buildings. The city experience, the life and theatre of the city occurs in non-places. Thus to judge a city by its physical fabric alone is a mistake; this is not the genius of the metropolis. At the beginning of civilisation and during the creation of cities there has been a need to develop public space; a unanimous space for celebration and interaction, for commerce and trading and for control. The Victorians with the advancement of technology invented steam power which lead to the industrial revolution, the railway and steam trains. The power of stream connected our cities like never before and influenced the development of the industrial city. Technological advancements in electricity reshaped our cities, suddenly cities could consume more power, electric lights, escalators and lifts influenced the height of buildings and length of time people used the city. Technological advancements with the internal combustion 13â&#x20AC;&#x192; (Bettencourt and West, 2010: 912-13) 14â&#x20AC;&#x192; (Hollis, 2013: 356)

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Fig 6. Internal Complexity of a Beehive

engine produced more cars. This in turn reshaped our cities again. The Victorian ideal of public transport became outdated and unfashionable, the future was the car. Communities and slums were cleared to make way for new housing and larger roads to support private car owners. The city expanded outwards. The current technological advancement of digital technology and portable devices is again having an effect on our cities, we are now more connected, we have the ability to work remotely and our cities are intensifying development to cater for population explosions. As with the aftermath of an exploding bomb, the contraction force is drawing people back into the city. With increased building it is now more important than ever to ensure we have urban space for people to interact and participate with the city. The definition of urban space within a city is a difficult subject to approach, urban space is not only made from the materials and fabric of the city but the complex system of relationships and processes. As an approach to exploring the social aspects of urban space, we will consider Henri Lefebvre’s treatment of space, in Production of Space Lefebvre argues that the social production of space operates over three levels. Firstly, space is produced through the effect of spatial practice; the production and reproduction of space by routine activities and processes. The second level on which to think about the production of space is in terms of ‘representations of space’. These are the ordering conceptions of space related to formal ‘knowledge, to signs, to codes’, typical to the scientific, architectural and governmental ordering of space. Such representations of space are the stuff of maps, of plans, of systems and projects, frameworks which tend to rationalise the spaces within a city. Lefebvre’s third level is that of ‘representational

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space’, the most evocative and least defined category. Representational spaces are the spaces of imagination, embodiment and desire. They are tied to symbolic and artistic practices, subversive or clandestine designs, but are also spaces inhabited by ‘ordinary’ users15. Representational spaces refer to ‘space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols...the dominated – and hence passively experienced – space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate’16. This typology treats urban space as a product of practice, perception and imagination. In outlining the three modes of spatial production, Lefebvre tests the oppositions between objective and subjective spaces, structure and symbolism, real and discursive space17.

15 (Tonkiss, 2005:3) 16 (Lefebvre, 1991:39) 17 (Tonkiss, 2005:3)

1.2. The Underground Tags: Connections, Lines, Stations, Maps, Destinations There is one space within the city which has been overlooked and undervalued as a key public space...The Underground. The Underground was perhaps the first example of what French ethnologist Marc Augé has termed non-lieu: spaces such as the motorway, supermarket and airport lounge that are compelled to interpret their relation to the invisible landscapes they traverse through the media of signs, maps and verbal messages18. In psychogeography terms, the underground could be considered a non-place, a mediated space which only exists between ‘real destinations’. The Underground is a transitional form, linking the alienated space of production created by the Industrial Revolution to the fully virtual spaces of late Capitalism19. The significance of the cultural history of the Underground is largely overlooked, David Welsh suggests representation of the system has two main themes: firstly, the infernal, in which the subterranean railway was perceived as a form of hell, abyss or underworld into which London and its inhabitants were being drawn, and, secondly, the utopian, in which the underground helps to integrate the modern metropolis by offering new freedoms20. On an average day in London, at least 24 million journeys are taken. The bus, tube and light rail network cover a total sum of 3.5 billion miles in a year – approximately forty times the distance between the earth and sun. Furthermore, on average Londoners commute 50 minutes in each journey, therefore, Londoners can spend on average 9 hours a week on the system21. On this basis, the experience should be enjoyable; it 18 (Ashford, 2013:164) 19 (Ibid) 20 (Ashford, 2013:173) 21 (Hollis, 2013: 4177)

THE UNDERGROUND A MODEL URBAN SPACE

Fig 7. Edited Tube sign in the carriage depicting heaven and hell stops on the Central Line

Fig 8. Edited Tube sign in the carriage depicting the Central Line as Hell

should feel like a city street, a public square, a market or park. This following quote appeared in The Times in 1861:-

‘A subterranean railway under London was awfully suggestive of dark, noisome tunnels, buried many fathoms beyond the reach of light or life; passages inhabited by rats, soaked with sewer dripping, and poisoned by the escape of gas mains. It seemed an insult to common sense to suppose that people who could travel as cheaply to the city on the outside of a Paddington ‘bus would ever prefer, as a merely quicker medium, to be driven amid palpable darkness through the foul subsoil of London.’22 Two years later as the first line opened, tens of thousands of Londoners were choosing to travel each day through the ‘foul subsoil’. London was the first city to use railways for its public transport system, the idea was so original that it took nearly 40 years before another city tried to follow London’s example. In its first year, 11.8 million people used the Metropolitan Line which was four times the population of the capital. The underground opened up the city for many, its affordability had a huge democratic impact, for example, the cost of one trip on an omnibuses running along the streets above was similar in cost to a week’s travel underground. Bankers were as likely to travel underground as were workers and artisans and although three classes of fares were in place, some 70% of passengers travelled third class23. Whereas in Paris, Haussmann was redeveloping the face of Medieval Paris above ground, London was being transformed beneath its streets. The success of the Metropolitan line led to surge in investment and a number of lines opened over the next 40 years. 22 (Smith, 2012:3177) The Times ‘The Metropolitan Subterranean Railway’ 30 November 1861 pg.5 23 (Ibid, 2012: 3226-3228)

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Fig 9. Press release of Baker Street station when it opened in 1863

Fig 10. Press release of Baker Street station in 2013, a steam train marked the anniversary

The development linked many more peripheral main line stations with the city and began to offer connections within central London, most notably the District Line formed a circular route ‘that went nowhere’. This early development created much of the underground we see today. Furthermore, the underground had enticed property developers to speculate on open land on the outskirts and simultaneously created a new urban species: the commuter24. The Central Line was opened in 1900 and designed to accommodate 400 passengers, and today stations and trains often cope with 1300 passengers at peak times25. Therefore, it is not surprising that people often appear withdrawn, silent and glum in the cramped conditions, many opting for isolation with a book, kindle or newspaper acting to distract from the blatant invasion of personal space. You can observe on many occasions the strategic battle to acquire more space or a seat during the rush hour. Once achieved, most are relieved that they no longer have to worry about an invasion of privacy and a sense of pride fills their face for securing a seat, even if only for one stop. The success of the Underground is evident today, lines are continually upgraded, as advertised by numerous TfL posters at each station and new lines added, the new addition being the Crossrail link due for completion in 2018. Over one billion passenger journeys are made on the tube annually, this range from commuters, day-trippers and foreign tourists26. The underground is in essence a city within a city; it has developed organically and morphed into new factions over time. Companies and lines have been 24 (Smith, 2012:3266) 25 (Ibid, 2012:3295) 26 (Ibid, 2012:3301)

THE UNDERGROUND A MODEL URBAN SPACE

Fig 11. A Central Line Carriage on 24th January 2014 at 17:47pm, heading eastbound into London

Fig 12. A Central Line Carriage on 24th January 2014 at 17:48pm, heading eastbound into London

merged and separated, lines have readily switched and adopted new colours, as well as stations which have closed and switched names to satisfy public demand. The whole network is a forced amalgamation of people, companies, lines and stations which now supports the whole of London. The Underground has changed vastly over the last 150 years, it is easy to have a nostalgic view. But today the network is a different ‘animal’, of course it is treated as a business and there is a requirement to turn a profit. However in reality TfL generate more revenue from royalties than it ever will from the physical attributes of the tube27. It is unsurprising that many understand the psychogeography of London through Harry Becks schematic map of the Underground. Unlike Jacobs understanding of the city, Beck sought to rationalise and bring order to the city, as suggested by Lefebvre second law of space. The popularity of Becks ideas is evident; he created an identifiable graphic which has been exported worldwide creating order from chaos; from Tokyo, to Moscow, to New York. The underground has become a large part of London life; it is well respected and admired. The endurance of the stations and network can be seen on many of the escalators that run for 20 hours a day. Similar to what can be seen at the entrances to mosques in Istanbul, the metallic steps of the escalators have been worn down by a consistent pilgrimage of commuter and tourist as they stampede down the left hand side past others standing to the right. This is most evident at Angel Underground Station, the escalator steps are notably worn by footsteps on the left hand side. The platform is one of the deepest in the network, thus the escalators are the one of the 27 Attended a ‘Walking Tour of the Underground’ on January 21st 2014; the expert leading the tour expressed that more revenue was generated from Harry Beck’s maps and graphics and the marketing of such material

THE UNDERGROUND A MODEL URBAN SPACE

Fig 13. Worn step as evident at numerous Mosques in Istanbul

Fig 14. Worn escalator steps at Angel Underground Station, on the left hand side.

longest28, and it can be quite thrilling to run down as fast a possible. We are reminded by the power of human genius to overcome physical obstacles and the ingenuity to invent a solution. A solution so successful it is exported and replicated worldwide. In the same manner that Jacobs’ would describe the streetscape of London above ground. Hidden beneath the streets there is a ‘magnificent organism’ which has played a vital role in the city’s success and in the development of its institutions29. The Underground has shaped the way we view London and continues to adapt with shifts in the streets above and the culture of its people. The city and underground have a symbiotic relationship, just as a city street is a dynamic part of our cityscape, the underground witnesses the same interactions, connections and relationships between individuals and groups. The act of human interaction should seem simple on the underground, the anonymity of individuals should ease and encourage interactions and help to form loose connections. Every complex system; an anthill, beehive, underground network or city is built up from the inside: generated rather than fabricated. In other words, complex systems are created from the bottom up rather than the top down30. It is clear the Underground has helped to shape London as we know it, but which influences are now impacting the Underground.

28 Attended a ‘Walking Tour of the Underground’ on January 21st 2014; the expert leading the tour mentioned this fact whilst explaining the electrification of the line 29 (Smith, 2012: 3189) 30 (Hollis, 2013: 568)

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Fig 15. Alternative Tube Map – Concentric Circles and Straight Lines by Max Roberts

Fig 16. Alternative Tube Map – Return to a Geographical Representation by Mark Noad

CHAPTER 2

Underground AS STREET

2.0 STREET 2.3. The Underground as ‘Street’ Tags: Interaction, Destination, Bars, Cafes, Psychogeography, Dating, Jacobs, Whyte, Walking The street is an extremely common feature of our urban and rural landscape. We use them in everyday life, for walking, talking, exchanging, cursing, driving, loitering and refuge; the practices often referred to as mundane activities31. The street is second nature; we understand the activities and functions of a typical street and understand the difference between a rural street and city street and the suitability of such an environment for the activities outlined above. In the sixties, Jane Jacobs in The Life and Death of Great American Cities writes about the streetscape. She is one of the first to observe and understand how a street is used rather than trying to dictate how it should be used as many planners at the time were trying to implement. Jacobs proffers the chaotic streetscape as the genome of the metropolis. If this is so, the underground network running below the city streets should be thought of in the same respect32. To understand the ‘street’ within the context of a city there needs to be a fundamental understanding of psychogeography. Psychogeography is an ambiguous term but frequently used, as the name suggests it is the point at which psychology and geography collide, a means for exploring the behavioural impact of urban place. The term entered into general consciousness through the writings of Guy Debord in the 1950s. Debord’s oft-repeated definition of psychogeography describes ‘The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment. Consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals’.33 Unlike the handful of artistic forbearers to the term, such as, Blake, Defoe, Poe, de Quincey, Benjamin and Baudelaire; Debord removes 31 (de Certeau, 1984:xvii) ‘Mundane activities termed by de Certeau 32 (Hollis, 2013:334) 33 (Coverley, 2010:1147)

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Fig 17. Guy Debord’s Guide to Psychogeography 1956

the romantic notions of artistic practice and attempts to conduct experiments under scientific conditions and with scientific rigour to analyse the results. He believes the emotional and behavioural impact of urban space upon individual consciousness is to be carefully monitored and recorded, its results used to promote the construction of new urban environments that both reflect and facilitates the desires of the inhabitants of this future city34. Yet according to Debord, his definition is one with a ‘pleasing vagueness’35 and thus has been appropriated into a number of fields and is enjoying somewhat of a modern renaissance. An extract taken from A Road of One’s Own by Robert Macfarlane is an exercise for beginners to participate in psychogeography and search for new ways of apprehending our urban environment:

“Unfold a street map of London, place a glass, rim down, anywhere on the map, and draw round its edge. Pick up the map, go out into the city, and walk the circle, keeping as close as you can to the curve. Record the experience as you go, in whatever medium you favour: film, photograph, manuscript, tape. Catch the textual run-off of the street; the graffiti, the branded litter, the snatches of conversation. Cut for sign. Log the data-stream. Be alert to the happenstance of metaphors, watch for visual rhymes, coincidences, analogies, family resemblances, the changing moods of the street. Complete the circle, and the record ends. Walking makes for content; footage for footage.”36 In this manner, psychogeography seeks to overcome the ‘banalisation’ by which the everyday experience of our surroundings becomes one of drab monotony. Modern 34 (Coverley, 2010:1093) 35 (Coverley, 2010:63) 36 (Coverley, 2010:53)

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Fig 18. London Street map - area indicated around author’s workplace using Macfarlane’s exercise

life has been obscured behind an elaborate and spectacular array of commodities and our immersion in this world of rampant consumerism leaves us disconnected from the history and community that might give our lives meaning. Amidst this relentless and regimented monotony, street life has been suppressed and a new urban landscape emerges, a non-place dominated by technology and advertising whose endless reflective surfaces are devoid of individuality37. Chtcheglov prescribes a cure for this malaise by envisaging a new urban environment in which architecture reflects an emotional engagement with its inhabitants, offering the passion and desire to overcome the hypnotising effects of the modern commercial world but does not offer a way to implement his solution.38 In the mid 19th century, the Victorians ran with the novel idea of running a railway under London, to connect the west with the city. As well as implementing a new form of transport infrastructure, the creation of stations and platforms and the walkways between formed a new type of street. This street connected the surface with the platform below, rather than alienating the population, people were encouraged to use and explore the underground and use it as a means to explore the city. The irony is that as soon as you enter into The Underground, you become disconnected from the surface and the constraints of the built environment above. The underground has the potential to transport you to any destination. Descending into the Underground one is transported into Becks map, his ideal creation presents you with simple diagrams and minimal information to navigate from point A to point B. Based on an electric circuit diagram, the genius of Beckâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1932 map is that it did not try to represent real distances 37â&#x20AC;&#x192; (Coverley, 2010:1274) 38â&#x20AC;&#x192; (Coverley, 2010:1021)

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between stations. Instead this geoschematic map offers a simplified plan where nodes denote stations and lines the track39. In the Underground with a map in hand it is possible to navigate around London solely relying upon visual stimuli. In a basic sense many will understand the depiction of a red line and as lines cross an intersection is created, an intersection which allows the changing onto the other line or exiting via the station. It would seem to be more beneficial for users of the Underground to disregard any geo-directional notion. In a similar manner to using arrow keys on a keyboard, users elementally need to know whether to travel up, down, left or right. In this sense many have lost contact with the city, a survey conducted by TfL in 2006 revealed that most people understood London’s geography by the underground map, a spatially distorted view40. In 2009, TfL removed the capital’s river from the reissue of the tube map in an effort to make it streamlined and appear less cluttered, the move would seem logical as the river is not required for navigation as you enter the network. However, as Smith suggests, tourists arriving in a new city will orientate themselves around great public spaces, notable buildings and landmarks to help navigate an unfamiliar cityscape, the River Thames is arguably is the only landmark shown on the Tube map.41 Furthermore, the revision was met with outcry from Londoners and a campaign by Boris Johnson sought to reinstate the river in the following version. Firstly, this response signifies a concern over boundaries and a sense of place but also it would appear the vast majority of Londoners prefer to use this non-geographical map rather than a typical road map to navigate London. This offers evidence the abstract but ideal version of London’s geography is easier to 39 (Smith, 2012: 3248) 40 (Smith, 2012:1353) 41 (Smith, 2012:920)

use and more understandable and user friendly than a typical road map. The prevalent use of such a simplistic map should encourage the dormant Flâneur in us all. As the city becomes more decentralised, specific centres develop around tube stations which cater for specialised requirements, it signifies that Londoners and tourist understand the city through the Underground stations, or generally know the areas of London and the associated stations recognised for shopping, theatre or museums. In a similar manner to developing apps on a smart phone to cater for all aspects of life, be it social networking, geocaching or photography, Underground stations have developed similar specialism’s, stereotyped and developed as such. For example, the architecture of Canary Wharf is clean and sleek and the spaces large enough to support high capacities of commuting professionals at peak times. South Kensington is synonymous with culture being closely linked with museums along Exhibition Road and physically connected via a pedestrian tunnel. A simple facade subtlety melts into the streetscape and is delicately detailed with Doric columns, reminiscent of the same welcoming museum entrances found on Exhibition Road. Having not been a resident of London for long, I was surprised by the commotion voiced over the tube strikes for 3 days #tubestrike. Workers’ exercising their rights is admirable and the impact this had on society clearly demonstrates our dependability on the system and the potential power it has over our lives. A large proportion of society relies heavily upon the tube network for their daily commute, travelling between meetings and simply getting from A to B. The tube strike reminded Londoner’s what the city would be like without the Underground, which has obvious advantages and disadvantages. The tube network is structurally a part of the city that we cannot live without; both aspects of the city have a symbiotic relationship. However, in a scenario where the Underground network is subtracted from everyday life, we remember the 40

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Fig 19. Standard Tube Map

Fig 20. Standard Tube Map - Version issued in 2009 without the River Thames or Zones

world above and we start to wander the streets, we find our inner flâneur, we begin to explore, meander and lose ourselves. As we lose ourselves in new streets, in new areas, we begin to discover new aspects about the city that we live in and begin to appreciate our urban landscape more. Rather than incite tube strikes every month, it would seem sensible from this experience to at least travel to work in a different manner and explore new routes above and below ground to remind us of the spaces the city has to offer. During the strike, every mode of public transport was saturated, many opting to take to the streets, walking between places rather than travelling on bus or underground. As already noted, the tube map is a diagrammatic representation of London’s Underground, thus the location of stations are not geographically accurate, this is particularly true in zone 1, this area was enlarged by Beck for legibility. Over time, this has distorted the public’s perception of true distances in central London, and many found walking around in central London as easy as using the Underground. The event enabled people to come together in their dismay of the situation, people were obviously distress but many appeared to be at ease being able to talk to and help other passengers. This was also true for the online community, a twitter feed using hashtags #TfLStrike and #tubestrike alerted passengers to potential problems and delays and sought to effectively manage the situation. Interestingly, the first hashtag #TfLStrike, created by TfL as an ‘official’ hashtag did not trend as well as #tubestrike a tag created by the general public. In the street, people were running, cycling and talking, the streets were full of people, traffic and activity, the typical hustle and bustle one would normally expect in a large metropolitan area. This short period of activity was intense compared to a typical day; there was more electricity in the air as if stranded in the midst of a bazaar in Istanbul. In terms of psychogeography, as Coverley suggests catastrophe of any kind creates a sense of disorientation and in such moments ‘the city

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Fig 21. Crowds form at stations during the ‘Tube Strike’ in February 2014

Fig 22. People opt to walk rather than use the Underground network during the ‘Tube

is momentarily made strange, defamiliarised, as its inhabitants are granted a vision of the city as it might be, as heaven or hell’.42 Mark Granovetter, an American sociologist termed the phrase ‘weak links’ to help describe the loose connections we gain as part of our social network, be it old work colleagues; the ex-partner of your partner’s best friend, sales agent or university acquaintance who has just sent an invite request on LinkedIn43. Events such as the tube strike help to form ‘weak links’ within the city, for it is this power and intensity of the people that reinforce the city and from it will emerge a unique dynamism44. In addition to adapting the lessons learned from the street above into the Underground, the lessons from the strike suggest a balance is required between the walkability of cities and the use of public transport. Robin Dunbar roughly calculates most people can sustain a close network of up to 150 social relationships. Although many will have far larger numbers as evident on facebook and LinkedIn accounts. Weak links, he proposes, offer connections to a wider circle of people and places, to new ideas and the latest fashions. In 2011, a study of Twitter users showed that, despite the global nature of the social network, usage was predominantly urban and local. The results also showed that while social media is extremely good at collating weak ties, it was also used to enhance real-world connections rather than replace them. In effect, technology makes us more social, desiring closer real connections45. Many would assume the city to be unwelcoming and would exclude outsiders with a cold shoulder. Poets from Wordsworth to Baudelaire 42 (Coverley, 2010:399) 43 (Hollis, 2013: 372) 44 (Hollis, 2013:403) 45 (Hollis, 2013:3644)

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NORTHERN LINE - NORTH

NORTHERN LINE - SOUTH

London Bridge Station

Position 1

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London Bridge Exit Position 2 Position for observations Typical observed routes To exit/main station Jubilee Line Norther Line

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Fig 23. An extract from London Bridge Underground station - Urban form and pedestrian flow

have written of the sensation of being adrift within the city, the anonymity of being in a crowd. The following is an extract from Baudelaire’s The Painter of Modern Life:

“The crowd is his element, as the air is that of the birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for a passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heat of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to find oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet remain hidden from the world...”46 The city is in such flux that it becomes difficult to form meaningful relationships in the traditional sense. However, the complexity of the city offers more chances of making connections than anywhere else. It is the impersonal, superficial, transitory relationship that makes a city so unique and important. It is the abundance of these weak ties that bring people to the city, for it is the intensity of informal relationships that makes the city so special. However, this is not without consequences, social media can be used to start a revolution, but it can also be used to drive a riot. On 6 August 2011, riots started in Tottenham #TottenhamRiots started to trend on Twitter. On the BlackBerry messenger service a ‘ping message appeared saying ‘Start leaving ur yards n linking up with your niggas. Fuck da feds, bring your ballys and your bag trolleys, cars, vans, hammers the lot!” The message was a call to arms, in the following three days the service became the nervous system of the mob, connecting rioters and looters, sharing images and coordinating the rampage47. The organisers deliberately avoided the use of social media like Facebook and Twitter because they were aware that authorities monitor 46 (Coverley, 2010:699) 47 (Hollis, 2013:3652)

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Fig 24. Crowds and pedestrians instinctively flow in the direction of least friction

Fig 25. Large crowds self organise to ease the flow of pedestrians

these sites, whereas communication through the Blackberry are encrypted48. Six months before, protesters filled Tahrir Square and Twitter was again utilised, #jan25, #tahrir, #Egypt, it was used to discuss and organise protests against the Mubarak regime. Protesters decided on 25 January as the ‘Day of Revolts’ and started to use Facebook for people to stand up and march. On 11 February, social media continued to play a vital role encouraging people to stay strong, to coordinate marches to the TV station and the presidential palace; to circulate images and news, that evening Mubarak stepped down. On their Twitter feed, ManarMohsen wrote: ‘Who did this? We did, the people. Without guns. Without violence. Rather, with principles and persistence’.49 When it opened, the Underground was an instance success; the general public believed in the power and vision, they were excited by the prospect of technological development and social change. The stations developed as destinations in their own right and the platforms developed into underground streets with shops and even bars. A phenomenon that is impossible to replicate today with increased passenger numbers and over capacity on all lines. Not too far in the distant past, people were encouraged to linger and interact with one another forming small communities across the system. In 1933, Spiers and Pond operated 15 bars across Metropolitan stations. Only two survived into the 1980s; Pac-Mac’s Drinking Den on the eastbound Metropolitan Line platform of Liverpool Street station, after which it becomes an independent cafe, more suited for the morning crowd off to work. The other bar, The Hole in the Wall, was on the westbound platform at Sloane Square, which coincidentally closed at the same time as the smoking ban was introduced across the network. The bar was particularly popular with hard-drinking traders from the City who would stop off on their way back 48 (Savat, 2013:19) 49 (Hollis, 2013:3680)

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Fig 26. Spiers and Pond Bar at a newly refurbished Paddington (Praed Street) Underground Station

to the west London suburbs. ‘It was like a little community. The barmaid knew all their drinks, and where they lived. I remember her calling out as a train came in “Tel, it’s your Wimbledon!”50 It could be considered inappropriate to insinuate the activities suitable for the stations and on the platforms, in practical terms regulations and health and safety protocol are more stringent and make additional activities more difficult. However, whilst people merely wait for the next train there should be more than the occasional glance to the dot matrix for the countdown from “4 MINS” to “STAND BACK TRAIN APPROACHING”. The stations and platforms as they have been in the past should be in the present and future extensions of the street. Recently, TfL have announced a scheme to release empty retail premises for ‘pop-up’ shops in stations with high footfall, this will once again start to bring trade and commerce back into the network and will help to blur the boundary or street and underground51. Moscow’s underground is one of the busiest in the world carrying 9 million people a day, approximately 3 billion people a year. The first underground line opened in 1935 and the system became the pride of Stalin’s USSR. Unlike in London, the stations were designed as people’s palaces, fabulously decorated, with murals celebrating Russian prowess in sport, war and industry52. On the Underground, designers such as Leslie Green and Charles Holden were specifically selected by Frank Pick to give stations an identity and brand. The use of glazed tiles on underground platforms is now expected and it has become an identifiable finish. Many motifs used in the interior design pay homage to the activities and culture of the streets above, for example, a film celluloid pattern is used to distinguish Leicester Square platform. In addition, when the Jubilee 50 (Martin, 2012:39) 51 (Metro Travel News, 2014:49) 52 (Smith, 2012: 3301)

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Fig 27. Pop-Up retail units at London Old Street Station

Line opened at Green Park station in 1979, the transition between the Piccadilly line (Blue line) and Jubilee line (Grey line) was visually represented in the mosaic tiles, as one transverses the long walkway the concentration of coloured tiles changes from blue to grey or vice versa in correlation with proximity to the line53. In 1956, William H Whyte had written The Organisation Man, a devastating analysis which suggested the post-war generation had been encouraged into conformity, happy to exchange their own individuality to participate in the corporate dream which offered the banal ideal of secure life, materialism and the comforts of suburbia54. Concepts which are linked with the expansion of the Underground and London into Metro-Land, the new ‘garden city’ suburb which could offer the best of both worlds. The banalisation of modern life is shared by psychogeographers, Debord suggests ‘A mental disease has swept the planet: banalisation’55. The realm of the underground is far from ordinary, it may have increased the banalisation of our cityscape above ground but below ground is a fabulous warren of tunnels and lines, reminiscent of the medieval streets of London or the Arcades in Paris. In the Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin expresses the intoxication of walking the Arcades of Paris:

53 Attended a ‘Walking Tour of the Underground’ on January 21st 2014; the expert leading the tour pointed out this feature between the two lines, the change is so subtle it would be difficult to pick up the change without being told. 54 (Smith, 2012:1261) 55 (Coverley, 2010:1011)

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Fig 28. Film tile motif at Leicester Square Underground Station

Fig 29. Transitional mosaic tiles at Green Park Underground Station

“An intoxication comes over the man who walks long and aimlessly through the streets. With each step, the walk takes on greater momentum; ever weaker grow the temptations of shops, of bistros, of smiling women, ever more irresistible the magnetism of the next streetcorner, of a distant mass of foliage, of a street name. Then comes hunger. Our man wants nothing to do with the myriad possibilities offered to sate his appetite. Like an ascetic animal, he flits through unknown districts - until, utterly exhausted, he stumbles into his room, which receives him coldly and wears a strange air.” In the late fifties, Whyte began ‘the street life project’ to explore how people actually used urban space, the results were recorded in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces and City: Rediscovering the Centre. Both books suggested our lives were becoming increasingly mediated, we were less likely to interact and bump into one another, as a result, our urban spaces were failing to generate ‘weak links’. He generated a number of observations centring on the use of streets. Firstly, pedestrians usually walked on the right, a contradiction to the Underground rule to ‘stand on the right’ implemented on the escalators of the tube network, a slogan brought in to improve efficiency. A large proportion of pedestrians are people in pairs and threesomes; the most difficult to follow are pairs who walk uncertainly, veering from one side to the other and they take over two lanes to do the work of one. Men walk faster than women. Younger people walk somewhat faster than older people. People in groups walk slower than people alone. People carrying bags or suitcases walk about as fast as everyone else. People who walk on a moderate upgrade walk about as fast as those on the level. Pedestrians usually take the shortest route. Pedestrians often function most efficiently at the peak of rush hour flows. He also noted that most people stopped to talk to each other on 56

56 (Benjamin, 2002, 417)

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Fig 30. Investigating flows of pedestrian traffic at London Bridge Underground Station - Still image captured every 30 seconds for 5 minutes, allowing trains to arrive and depart from each platform

street corners in the centre of pedestrian flow, or right outside entrances. He deduced that people attract other people57. This is true on the Underground, along the length of a station platform; people will tend to congregate areas where people are already waiting although carriage doors are spaced every few metres. In observations, people also tend to stop and talk at the top and foot of staircases in the flow of pedestrian traffic. In the 1960s, Jane Jacobs suggests in her analysis of ‘streets and sidewalks’ that streets play an integral part of city structure, and the more interesting the streets, the more interesting the city. In addition, a ‘fundamental task of a cities streets and sidewalks’ is to keep a city safe and when city streets are free from ‘barbarism and free’ they are also safe58. It is suggested ‘a well used city street is apt to be a safe street’ therefore it is not policing but people, activity and interest which make a place feel safe. Jacobs proposes three qualities to produce successful neighbourhoods: Clear demarcation between public and private space, ‘eyes upon the street’, that of natural proprietors of the street and a continuous use to increase surveillance and induce people to watch the street59. A later study of high-rise estates in New York in the 1970s by Oscar Newman put forward the idea of ‘defensible space’; his hypothesis said that particular buildings or layouts could evoke either social or anti-social behaviour. Anti-social behaviour was more apparent in designs where there was no sense of ownership, no control or power over living space, or any surveillance over the immediate surroundings60. Jan Gehl has focused his career on improving the quality of urban life by re57 (Smith, 2012:1294-1305) 58 (Jacobs, 1993:37-38) 59 (Jacobs, 1993:44-45) 60 (Ravetz, 2001:189)

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Fig 31. Investigating flows of pedestrian traffic at London Bridge Underground Station - Still image captured every 30 seconds for 5 minutes, allowing trains to arrive and depart from each platform

orientating city design towards the pedestrian. Like Whyte, Gehl believes the city is a hypermobile world, a place for discourse, for bumping into strangers and old friends, for the exchange of information and goods, for informal and formal occasions61. An experiment in Stroget, Copenhagen proved that pedestrianisation helped to revitalise the life of the street, pavements were upgraded and fountains installed, cafes began to put tables out, performances were staged, shops changed window displays to attract the wandering browser. The experiment was successful as it did not dictate how people should behave and offered them a stage for their urban lives. The street developed its own complexity, to be regulated but open and evolving. It soon became apparent the streets were more than conduits for consumption but rather a large public forum. As well as the movement of people, Gehl remarked on the places that people lingered and stopped, many slowed in the front of gallery windows, the cinema board and shop displays. Most notably, people stopped for other people, the person dressed in costume to advertise a shop or service, to the juggling street performers and musicians. It was the human activity and vibrancy of place that became attractive62. The lessons learned from ‘the street’ in the experiments expressed above are true for the streets in the Underground, be it in the station or on the platform or somewhere in between. The life and activity we appreciate and admire on our city streets is present in the Underground. In observations of people using the space, people slow to read advertisements, wait around to purchase a coffee and listen to buskers. However, more can be done to explore ways the Underground can be used more successfully as an urban space, the relationship between streets above and below ground should appear seamless. 61 (Hollis, 2013:1357) 62 (Hollis, 2013:1352-1381)

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Fig 32. Large advertisement campaigns on station platforms

Fig 33. Smaller advertisement catch our attention on the escalators

CHAPTER 3

Underground AS ARCADE

3.0 ARCADE 3.4. The Underground as Arcade Tags: Mobile Technology, Gameplay, Tube Strike, Geoff Marshall, Chromaroma As you enter the Underground your senses are overwhelmed by the sights and sounds. The distinctive, almost nostalgic smell in the air, the rhythmic sound of train wheels over tracks, the sound of background commotion and chattering, the visual stimuli of the train headlights penetrating the darkness. Entering an arcade the sound of arcade games fill the air with upbeat music, lighting constantly flashes and flickers to grab your attention. Both are fantasy worlds in which you can lose yourself. According to Lefebvre in The Production of Space “(social) space is a (social) product” 63, the statement is obviously true but it reminds us how solid, how concrete, how sheerly objective the effects of social action - cities, streets, buildings - can be. Rather than consider space as an entity in time, urban space should be considered by the human processes which help to produce an urban space, the meanings, language and symbols. As the processes, the human interactions and activities evolve over time, so too will the spaces. Referring back to Lefebvre third level in the production of space; space is never static, it is formed from the memory, experience and imagination, thus in the social sense there is no such thing as empty space. Space is always and only produced as a complex of relationships and separations, presences and absences, ‘Haunted places’, as de Certeau defines it, ‘are the only ones people can live in’64. David L. Pike suggests the London Underground is the most salient example of new urban space, he integrates his account of the Underground with the conceptual notion of modern space provided by Lefebvre. He therefore situates the schematised Tube Map, perhaps the most prominent indication that the system is an ideal and abstract space, within the 63 (Lefebvre, 1991:26) 64 (Tonkiss, 2005:3)

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Fig 34. Typical view of an Amusement Arcade, colourful lights, music and playful sounds

Fig 35. Typical amusement rides

history of modernist reordering of urban space on the continent65. As a representational space the Underground is first and foremost a transportation hub, a means to get from A to B. However, underlying the ‘mundane activities’ of everyday life lays an invisible force users are interacting with. The use of urban space for playful activities is not a radical new idea, In Delirious New York, Koolhaas dedicates the first main chapter ‘Coney Island: The technology of the fantastic’ around the notion of spectacle and play, demonstrating the founding principle of play in an urban context. Without an urban context for technological developments to occur, to shift cultural expectations and allow for the notion of escapism, New York or for that matter any city worldwide would not be the same as it is today66. As with the technological jump to electricity and the development of Coney Island and the metropolis of New York, in the twenty first century digital technologies are changing the city around us. Modern technology offers an alternative way to rethink the city, the Internet, computing and ubiquitous data transform the places we live and work. Firstly, consider digital technology, as theorised by Lewis Mumford and Marshall McLuhan the ‘technology explosion’ has led to a breakdown of physical barriers, no longer is the general public restricted to the physical confines of urban space. The growing dislocation of ‘place’ from ‘space’ is examined by Castells in The Information City, which he defines in the terms of ‘the emergence of a space of flows which dominates the historically constructed space of places’67. Castells clearly recognised that information flows do not simply obliterate existing geographical and urban space, 65 (Ashford, 2013:193) 66 (Koolhaas, 1994:29) 67 (Castells, 1989:6)

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Fig 36. Coney Island at night, attracting a crowd of people (1905)

Fig 37. Coney Island at night (1905)

but are articulated with it in complex ways68. On the Underground, commuters and tourists are knowingly and unknowingly being used or using the space for fun, for spectacle, to play games. In that sense, the Underground can be defined as an arcade, labyrinth, handheld gaming device, smart phone and online community. According to a UN Agency Report, there are currently 6.8 billion mobile phone subscriptions for the world’s population, also if the findings and predictions are correct that number will have now surpassed the world population of 7.1 billion in 2014. The report also found that 2.7 billion people, almost 40% of the world’s population, are online69. In the UK, there are 82.7m mobile subscriptions, 94% of adults own a mobile phone and around two thirds of all mobile devices are smart phones70. In a sense the Underground network is a physical metaphor for the actions of a smart phone. Both mechanisms can be used for connection, communication, consumerism and culture. All aspects of everyday life are intertwined into our smart phones, in a similar manner; the tube network is intertwined into the city and satisfies our needs. Our day to day lives increasingly revolve around smart phones and being able to access digital technologies, technology is becoming more than ever before an extension of ourselves. A number of theorists have considered technology as an extension of man and not as a machine. In the fifth century, Aristotle discusses the idea that tools are an extension of the body and soul. In his work Grundrisse (1857), Marx suggests technology is a human means of self-extension and unlike Aristotle he distances technology from the natural 68 (McQuire, 2008:21) 69 (BBC News, 2013, www.bbc.co.uk) 70 (Ofgem, 2014, media.ofcom.org.uk)

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Fig 38. Convergence Culture and the extension of technology

realm “Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules. These are the products of human industry; the natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature”. Similar ideas were discussed in the early twentieth century in Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution (1911), where the philosopher notes that technology ‘reacts on the nature of being that constructs it’ insofar as it ‘confers on him...a richer organisation, being an artificial organ by which the natural organism is extended”71. Reinforced in the 1960s by McLuhan, he agreed that all technologies were considered extensions of our physical and nervous system to increase power and speed, however, he also believed there was a wider political and social agenda. The ideas explored here imply primitive extensions or detachable tools but can be applied to modern concepts of digital technologies. Overall, the core idea was the acceptance that technology could and would assist man in living.72 The digital world has enabled society to recreate their own lives online, creating self projections and personas that we wish to portray to one another and the rest of the global community. In a sense, we have become addicted to our own success; many people would admit their first action in the morning after waking is reaching for their phone to update, share, surf, tweet, post, watch, email or blog whilst lying in bed. This effectively blurs the definition between physical and virtual worlds more and more. As digital technologies become increasingly a part of ‘everyday’ life, younger generations feel more comfortable in the virtual world. The Underground offers the perfect location to disconnect from the virtual world, deep underground it is impossible to get a ‘3G’ let alone ‘4G’ signal, although Wi-Fi 71 (Lister et al, 2009:90) 72 (McLuhan, 1964:98)

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Fig 39. Wi-Fi available at 121 stations

is now available in 121 stations, according to self promoting advertisements. Rather than embracing the communication blackout and the opportunity to be free from the digital world, the opposite is true. In observations, passengers clutch the devices in their hands; even now on this commute to work I am guilty of the same action, typing notes of these observations. Rather than consider this as an addiction to technology, people are comforted by holding the device, a pocket size distraction. A smart phone, kindle or tablet is our electrical friend in our time of need, there is no chance of ever being alone, it will never reject you or reject your morning smile, it obeys your every commend and desire loyally, it is the perfect friend, companion and partner. In the 1960s, the Situationists proposed to construct a labyrinth at the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum which involved a three day dérive through the city, employing walkie-talkies to link drifters with the mobile radio truck of the ‘cartographic’ team’. The radical edge of such technological capabilities, which were the prerogative of the police or military, is now far less clear. Today, media projects which try to expand the social boundaries of interactive art, like those of the ‘Interactive City’ event fail to intervene into public space and emphasise technology rather than its social potential. There was a perception that, in a society of conspicuous consumption, with an emerging ‘experience economy’, the concept of play inherited from the Surrealists, the Letterists and the Situationists had lost its radical potential. Nevertheless, awareness that a project cannot be expected to single-handedly override historically sedimented urban hierarchies of race, ethnicity, gender and class should not mean abandoning all expectation73. Mobile Apps and interactive games in the public realm would not be possible without 73 (McQuire, 2008:149)

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the foundation of data. In 2010, Boris Johnson, London Mayor launched London Datastore hosting hundreds of sets of data from abandoned cars, to real time data from the tube system, to the expense details of government members. The demand for information was beyond every expectation and Londoners have used the data in numerous, sometimes unexpected, ways. The Datastore acts as a mechanism for transparency, it proves the government is open and accountable, establishing a sense of trust between the city and City Hall74. Although City Hall loses control of how the information is used, the act begins to breakdown physical barriers and blurs the boundaries between a top-down initiative and a bottom-up campaign, allowing anyone to access the data: hackers, activists, website designers, program coders or app entrepreneurs75. Utilising the Internet and the Datastore, a group called Marlark created an online game known as ‘Chromaroma’. Chromaroma is a formidable attempt to bring together the physical and virtual worlds of the Underground system in a relatable and playful manner. Chromaroma is an Oyster card based travel game which encourages participation, social interaction, exploration and dérive. The Oyster card operates to record every journey, every date and every time when entering and exiting a station. The data logged is mixed with a healthy curiosity for history, geography and storytelling to offer a web-based social game which encourages the exploration of the city. As you continue to build up data, the game maps out your journeys, you can select a home station and join one of four teams to begin your missions and start earning points76. Within the game, I have selected my home station as North Greenwich and joined the 74 (Hollis, 2013:796) London data store available at www.data.london.gov.uk 75 (Hollis, 2013:847) 76 (Kiss, 2010, www.theguardian.com)

‘Green Team’ I currently have 1266 points and ranked at 40. Once logged in, the game offers suggestions for personalised missions, new campaigns and ‘Today’s’ mission, all reward you and your team with valuable points77. One issue with the Underground and the idea of play is that it reminds people of going to work, and whereas the commuting life once generate semi-affectionate satire, such as in The Rebel, Tony Hancock takes to his seat on the morning commute and sighs ‘Journey number 6,833’78. That novelty has worn off for most as Toby Barnes, creator of Chromaroma explains ‘commuting can be quite dull, uncomfortable and a chore... we wanted to make the commute something to take you beyond that...Creating a framework that allows people to be a bit more dynamic, to go very slightly outside the realms of going from A to B – it’s amazing what you discover, the people you bump into and the things you see..., that’s when a little bit of magic happens’. As the game develops, there are plans to release the game globally to have international cities competing against one another. Gaming is now a common feature of our modern culture, since the development of early game consoles in the 1980s which brought the arcade into your living room. Barnes explains that Chromaroma is one more example of the gameification of everything. He believes that gameification is important, ‘it needs to be playful, about exploring things, a sense of achievement and building things. There are strong emotions you can have with an interactive game’.79 In an era in which public space is dominated by spectacular ‘brandscapes’ and pacified by the distributed technology of surveillance, new forms of public interactions 77 (Chromaroma, 2014, www.chromaroma.com) User: kdyer1 78 (Martin, 2012:257) 79 (Kiss, 2010, www.theguardian.com)

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Fig 40. Congested rush hour carriage, people opt for ear phones and digital technology

Fig 41. Carriage during the morning rush hour, passengers are engrossed in the newspaper and items of digital technology

facilitating qualities such as collective participation and unpredictable collaboration, as demonstrated by Chromaroma, hold increasing social importance80. We are social animals and, as a result, the city is the most natural place for us to be81. At this point in time, we are changing the way we communicate, using a number of mechanism, social networking is just one medium which has impacted how we communicate, coordinate and use public space, such as the Underground. The majority of Internet users will have access and use of Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter as well as interactive gaming sites such as Second Life which require us to adopt a persona we wish to publicise online. Whilst unable to participate in the physical world many find it easier to escape to the digital world. Digital technologies have become ubiquitous, mobile and scalable, generating new possibilities for social interaction in which information flows are increasingly able to act on and shape social activities as they occur82. Mitchell argues “In cities today, electronically propagated narratives flow constantly and increasingly densely. Theses narratives - superimposed, as they are, on real space in real time - act as feedback loops recursively transforming the very situations that produce them”. During the riots in 2011, the public-order division of the Metropolitan Police, CO11, set up a Twitter feed allowing them to give real-time information updates (@CO11metpolice), within days they had gained over 15,000 followers. The social network, therefore, was used as a highly effective communication tool, raising awareness of danger areas83. Mobile media also has the potential to alter the dynamic of public interactions among crowds 80 (McQuire, 2008:150) 81 (Hollis, 2013:1944) 82 (McQuire, 2008:146) 83 (Hollis, 2013:821)

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Fig 42. Observations from position 2 in London Bridge Underground Station, predominantly people keep to the right and take the shortest route available. Still image captured every 20 seconds reflecting the pace of passengers. Refer to map Fig. 23

of erstwhile strangers. Mitchell describes this form of social activity as electronic ‘swarms’, whilst more preferably Rheingold’s definition of ‘smart mobs’.84 Our ability to cooperate has allowed us to survive. Collaboration is the engine to complexity, connecting us with each other, strengthening our social bonds. An experiment in 2011, attempted to scientifically work out the collective behaviour of a large group of people walking down the street. The discoveries were unexpected: in each scenario the crowd quickly adopted the characteristics of a complex system and began to self organise. Almost from the outset two lanes started to form to allow for bodies to flow in opposite directions; where a bottleneck was encountered an unwritten rule of how to step to one side was adopted. When three or more people are walking together they often adopt a formation depending on their speed. If they are walking fast they usually adopt a penetrating shape, with one leader cutting ahead of the two wings. If the pace is slower and more relaxed, the group often forms a ‘U’ with the central figure hanging back85. This cooperation is evident in the Underground, more surprisingly this cooperation can still operate under rushed conditions. As Oscar Wilde declared, everyone in London always looked like they were late for a train, in the case of the tube he would probably be right, the nature of the place leads to rushing and surprisingly very rarely will you witness people colliding. Whilst walking to a platform or between platforms, heavy flows of traffic will self organise and accept which side to walk on, predominantly the side with the least friction and obstacles. In addition, each lane of traffic will divide into two lanes, like a motorway with a fast and slow lane, typically slower flows of people will drift to the outside lane, abutting the wall. In most countries in the west, we will instinctively move to the right; in Asia, to the left. 84 (McQuire, 2013:147) 85 (Hollis, 2013:1955)

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Fig 43. Observations from position 2 in London Bridge Underground Station, predominantly people keep to the right and take the shortest route available. Still image captured every 20 seconds reflecting the pace of passengers. Refer to map Fig. 23

Most of the time this causes manageable problems but at moments like the Olympics, when visitors from around the world congregate in one space, it can cause chaos86. In addition to offering a platform for digital playfulness, the London Underground is home to a number of physical games. One such game which has grown in popularity is obtaining the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to travel the entire underground network passing through each station, as represented by the latest published Tube map. The current record holder for the fastest time is Geoff Marshall, who completed the task in 16 hours, 20 minutes and 27 seconds87. On completion of Crossrail in 2018 the record will be reset, the underground lines will be revised and an updated tube map printed. People appropriate the space offered by the Underground to support their own interest. Working on the same concept of ‘Geocaching’, a game which combines psychogeography and mobile technology to form a real-world treasure hunt, there are thousands of ‘tags’, pieces or graffiti, stickers and smiley faces plastered around tube stations. These nuances remain hidden until one is discovered, typically appearing in an awkward place that would only receive a passing glance. A favourite position to place your tag is on the riser portion of the escalators, as the escalator treads in front ascend, the tag appears into view, human curiosity dictates a need to investigate the message, quite often appearing as a small guerrilla advert. In the same manner that people play a platform game such as Super Mario Brothers attempting to collect all the coins on the level, the hidden lives and extra achievements, people feel motivated to discover the ‘coins’ of the underground. As the game continues, more aspects of 86 (Ibid) 87 (Marshall, 2014, www.geofftech.co.uk)

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Fig 44. A selection of ‘tag’s discovered on the Underground, mainly found on escalators and within carriages

the Underground are discovered by the user, spurring the user on to keep discovering for the sense of reward. This is the same attraction Twitter uses to appeal to human behaviour, because it too is just another game to play, users will send out a ‘tweet’ with the hope and expectation their ‘tweet’ is commented upon or ‘re-tweeted’ by another user and subsequently they are eventually rewarded with followers, which is ultimately used as a measure of successfulness in the same way you are rewarded with points on a platform game. In addition to platform games, the notion of strategic play from the 1980s, in which the player is required to type a command in the hope for an outcome is harnessed in the day to day use of the Underground. Successful use of the Underground is centred on strategy and timing, adequate preparation and knowledge are required as well as the application of fast reactions and the ability to make fast decisions. Passengers whom need to improve their gameplay can access mobile apps to strategise, develop and create logistical routes across the city. TfL have developed Journey Planner an app which appears to be the most accurate tool to plan a route from one station to another, with a suggested ETA. Additionally other apps, such as Tube Exits help to determine the best place to board the train to ‘get a seat’ during rush hour or to easily alight at the chosen destination, in close proximity to the station exit. These apps put the passengers’ back in power of the Underground and offer a means of decision making and control of the space. In complete irony is, as passengers play arcade, platform or strategic games on their phones, they are playing the same games in the physical space of the Underground. In observations the most common game played is decision, dash, destination, a one player game in which the primary motivation is the compulsion to race against other 80

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Fig 45. Position of passengers after boarding at North Greenwich Station - spread out along an empty carriage

Fig 46. Position of passengers after Canary Wharf Station – more passengers, all comfortably sat

Fig 47. Position of passengers after Canada Water – more passengers, a few are required to stand, due to heavy items of luggage

passengers. The ‘decision’ relates to the route the player decides upon to reach the platform in good time, typically this will involve strategic weaving along walkways and fast decent on the left hand side of escalators avoiding distractions from advertisements and buskers. On reaching the platform, the ‘dash’ element of the game comes into play; if a train has just arrived at the platform, a sprint around exiting passengers is required to secure a place on the train. As the doors close, an alarm sounds as a caution, the upbeat ‘arcade’ sound has the opposite effect, invigorating the passenger to reach and slip through the closing gap as if they were playing Sonic the Hedgehog. Upon securing entry upon the first train, the player is rewarded with their ‘destination’. When growing up, most can relate to the joy and delights of playing children’s party games such as ‘pass the parcel’ and ‘musical chairs’. However, none would have expected the skills acquired at these parties to come in useful on our morning commute. The popularity of the Underground has led to overcrowding of the lines, particularly during the main hours for commuting. In observations, people tend to stand in strategic positions in the carriage; to acquire a seat, alight easily or to stand out of the way. Hardcore strategists usually have earphones plugged in ‘pretending’ to listen to music, giving an impression they are disconnected from the situation, in fact they are aware of the situation and playing the game. Generally, standing passengers will tactically search and seek out seated passengers who are most likely to leave at the next station and vacate their seat. Passengers will position themselves strategically within the confines of the carriage to access that seat before anyway else has the opportunity. As long as you can predict their movements correctly you will be rewarded with a cramped and uncomfortable seat but a seat nonetheless. You may not expect people to behave in this manner, but if you look carefully at their movements, their body language, you will see the subtleties of competitiveness shining through the calm 82

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Fig 48. Position of passengers after Bermondsey – more passengers, no seats available people are required to stand, entrances/exits becoming congested

Fig 49. Position of passengers after London Bridge – more passengers, no seats available people are required to stand, entrances/exits still congested

Fig 50. Position of passengers after Southwark – more passengers, no seats available people and animals are required to stand, entrances/exits still congested

and collected exterior. The typical tube carriage can be split into three distinct areas; using a traffic light system, permanent seats backing the carriage walls are classed to be located in the ‘green zone’ this area is the most desirable, particularly on longer journey’s. In front of the seats, the ‘amber zone’ is a transitional space, which is used as a strategic waiting area to enter the green zone. The ‘red zone’ is located in front of the doors, this area is in flux, it constantly changes with the boarding and alighting of passengers, it is unprotected, cramped and undesirable as a waiting area. Londoners’ are locked into the Tube, seasoned passengers accept the process and experience, as described above. In 1955, Sir John Eliot, Chairman of London Transport, on the subject of overcrowding observed: “They’re not crammed in. They cram themselves in.” 88 Urban exploration is a general term used to describe the exploration of forgotten or abandoned urban spaces, that has become a worldwide phenomenon. The abandoned or ‘ghost’ stations of the underground have become an attraction of great fascination with urban explorers, which seek out urban spaces for the thrill and sheer enjoyment of exploration89. Like the Flâneur in Paris exploring the medieval streets and arcades, modern urban explores scout out many of London’s attractions. Since the terrorist attacks in 2005, regular guided tours of the ghost stations have ceased, access is now only granted on special occasions, such as the 150 year anniversary of the network. The Old London Underground Company is one business which offers abandoned stations as venues for parties and corporate events90. This attempt to restrict access has encouraged more explorers to gain access to the warren of tunnels and abandoned ghost station and secret passages only few know about. To counter this perceived 88 (Martin, 2012:244) 89 (Martin, 2012:263) 90 (Ibid)

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Fig 51. Position of passengers after Waterloo – less passengers, no seats available, people standing have secured seat, dog acts as catalyst for people to interact, people standing at main entrance/exit

Fig 52. Position of passengers after Westminster – less passengers, seats available but people still standing for ease of exiting at next station

Fig 53. Position of passengers after Green Park – less passengers, numerous seats available, people are able to talk , few people standing to exit easily

‘attack’ security measures have been heightened, a reaction which itself has become a game of cat and mouse, but curiosity can get the better of most of us, a curiosity which easily develops into an obsession. The Underground network is as organic as the city, it has developed and grown over time, stations and lines have been amalgamated, renamed, adapted and added to countless times. This constant adaption and changing face of tube has created an underworld network full of holes and secret passages ready for exploration. Many of which could not be discovered without inside knowledge of the network. A knowledge which could only be secured by extensive research or obtaining inside knowledge from employees of the Underground, stories which would be handed down over time from employee to employee to reveal the hidden labyrinth that the public will never see. However, many of the secrets have been revealed and widely recorded and advertised through literature and online blogs which offer a diagnosis, a ‘How to’ guide to accessing this hidden world. Before even entering the tube, the player will enjoy the excitement of researching the route and the station, meticulously planning for every eventuality. On the night of exploration, the player will enjoy the thrill of being caught, the thrill of recording and photographing the abandoned station and the thrill of the chase. The premise of the game is one of cat and mouse, it’s the battle of ‘good’ vs. ‘evil’, the ‘everyday man’ vs. ‘authority’, ‘freedom’ vs. ‘barriers’. Urban exploration is of course dangerous and illegal and could lead to a security risk for the network. But the appeal of curiosity, the exploration of the unknown like an urban Indiana Jones is enough to persuade the most cautious participant. Many platform games encourage the players to interact with the game and to explore new worlds, one of the first in 1979 called

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Adventure, the player controlled a square avatar whose quest was to explore an open world environment for a hidden magical chalice, returning it to the yellow castle91. Although on the Underground no passenger is searching for a magical chalice, there are hidden treasures to discover. The Underground network is continually expanding, increasing the opportunity for gameplay throughout the urban space of London. Consequently, new ways of enticing us to participate in the game and interact with the network and other players are created. As we learn from digital gaming, there numerous ways of creating a game; strategy, platform, second life but essentially one key component of any game is the reward.

91â&#x20AC;&#x192; (Cline, 2011:4-5)

CHAPTER 4

Underground AS ART GALLERY

4.0 ART GALLERY 4.5. The Underground as Art Gallery Tags: Advertisement, Punk, Graffiti, Labyrinth, Poems, John Betjeman, Newspapers, Magazines, Tube Map Over the last 150 years, the Underground network, a single unified space has influenced material ranging from poetry, music-hall, literature, journalism, painting, poster art, sculpture, architecture, photography, pop music, mosaic and graffiti art92. In London: The Unique City Steen Eller Rasmussen writes “The moment you enter the London Underground you feel, though you may not be able to explain exactly how you feel it, that you are moving in an environment of order, of culture.”93 Some would consider this a true memorial to the work of Frank Pick. Pick saw the potential of design and implemented a ‘clear identity’, creating many of the features which have become recognisable as the ‘Tube’. Frank Pick was chief executive officer and vice chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board from its creation in 1933 until 1940. He had a strong personal interest in design and its use in public life. He steered the development of the Underground’s corporate identity by commissioning artists and designers to produce eye-catching commercial art, graphic design and modern architecture, establishing a highly recognisable brand, including the refinement of bull’s eye to roundel and Edward Johnston’s typeface, Underground Railway Block still used across the entire network.94

92 (Ashford, 2013:222) 93 (Martin, 2012:223) 94 (Martin, 2012:156-160)

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Fig 54. St James Park Underground Station in 1935 with six different London Transport posters, note the vending machines both sides and roundel branding at the base of the posters

London’s Underground has had a pervasive impact on the city’s culture, from popular music to poetry. Poets from Wordsworth to Baudelaire have written of the sensation of being adrift within the city, the anonymity of being in a crowd. Indeed, TfL have recognised and embraced the power of poetry on the underground. The French poet Arthur Rimbaud, who lived for fourteen months in London, wrote an evocative prose poem about a journey on the Metropolitan in 1874. The Metropolitan Line was extended north-west into the Buckinghamshire countryside in 1887, the new developments and ‘garden villages’ built became known as ‘Metroland’ in the early twentieth century. The suburban dream made possible by the Underground was immortalised by J.M. Richards, Julian Barnes and John Betjeman, two poems in particular include ‘Harrow on the Hill’ (1954) and ‘Metroland’ 197195.

95 (Smith, 2012:3236-3234)

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Harrow on the Hill by John Betjeman

When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley And electric trains are lighted after tea The poplars near the stadium are trembly With their tap and tap and whispering to me, Like the sound of little breakers Spreading out along the surf-line When the estuary’s filling With the sea. Then Harrow-on-the-Hill’s a rocky island And Harrow churchyard full of sailor’s graves And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing Is the level of the Wealdstone turned to waves And the rumble of the railway Is the thunder of the rollers As they gather for the plunging Into caves There’s a storm cloud to the westward over Kenton, There’s a line of harbour lights at Perivale, Is it rounding rough Pentire in a flood of sunset fire The little fleet of trawlers under sail? Can those boats be only roof tops As they stream along the skyline In a race for port and Padstow With the gale?96 96 (PoemHunter.com, 2012:34)

However, according to Ashford, other authors of the time held a different view, suggesting H.G. Well’s The Time Machine was a response, not to class segregation in the vertical city, but to the spatial fragmentation of intellectuals resulting from the centrifugal force exerted by the railways. The fable is an attack on the ideal of the underground garden suburb, on the conceptual space embodied by Metroland97. A crucial role for new media art in public space is the potential to avoid the filter of sites such as the Art Gallery, and thereby engage audiences who might never cross that threshold. This indicates the new function of art in the contemporary city: not as the belated response to an already existing social world, but as an integral part of the construction of social relationships98. In a similar manner to the vendors handing out daily newspapers and magazines to tube passenger every morning and evening, I have observed on a number occasions freelance artists handing out publications of their own work, poetry, art and writings. In the underground there is a history of poetry, a scheme called Poems on the Underground was launched in 1986 following an idea from American writer, Judith Chernwick, to expand the audience of poetry. The art project exhibits poets work in 3000 advertising spaces across London99. In 2012, TfL celebrated this relationship by publishing the collection of poems. Indeed, the popularity of poetry will not cease and TfL have chosen the medium to communicate their passenger announcements, an attempt to inform and ensure efficiency whilst using the system. Although it appears recent marketing campaign have not been as successful as other marketing campaigns which have become part of the Underground psyche and remind us to “Mind the Gap” or “Stand to the Right”. 97 (Ashford, 2013:277) 98 (McQuire, 2008:149) 99 (TfL, 2014, www.tfl.gov.uk)

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Fig 55. Parody of information advertisements which were recently published by TfL â&#x20AC;&#x201C; people are engaging with the artwork and appropriating the space

We can hear the beginning of the love affair between media and urban life in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin suggests “Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go travelling.”100 The Victorian Underground is the non-place of consumer capitalism in embryo. It is where the psychopathology of the nineteenth century railway carriage blurs into the heightened state of silence and isolation that remains such a notable characteristic of Tube travel in the twenty-first century. In each instance, the user is caught in an industrial process that mimics an environment for social interaction: and without the without the panoramic vision offered by the mainline railways, there is no obvious excuse to avoid eye contact with the passenger opposite. Instead early passengers were forced into those virtual spaces provided by advertising and the literature on sale at the station stalls101. During the first part of the twentieth century, mass media was centralised and the content was produced in highly capitalised industrial locations such as newspaper printworks or “Hollywood” Film Studios. In broadcast media, press and cinema distribution was tied to production, film studios owned cinema chains, newspapers owned fleets of distribution vans, the BBC and other broadcasters owned their own transmission stations and masts. Consumption was characterised by uniformity: cinema audiences watched the same film, readers read the same text in national newspapers 100 (Benjamin, 1936:20) 101 (Ashford, 2013:259)

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and everyone listened to the same radio station. Twentieth century mass media was characterised by the standardisation of content, distribution and production processes. In turn, this created the possibility for control and regulation, and a clear distinction between producer and consumer102. Benjamin argued the ability to mass produce and mass-circulate images would have a profoundly democratic impact. He argued that a new form of popular expertise would emerge, a culture in which people felt more authorised to offer judgement on sports teams or Hollywood movies rather than on artworks cloistered in museums103. A very forward thinking idea for the time, it soon became a reality in the commodityled culture of the mid-twentieth century that appealed to all walks of society. The same statement can be applied to explain our obsession with our information culture and digital technologies, it is fast becoming commonplace to have information at our fingertips, to know everything and be everywhere simultaneously. Free periodicals have been available since the introduction of the Omnibus to keep passengers entertained whilst waiting, so the Metro newspaper or Evening Standard available on the Underground today is not the brash innovation you might think104. The free daily newspaper has become a synonymous object of the Underground and one that looks to stay in midst of the digital revolution, aided partly by the lack of Internet connection as well as the sheer determination of the publishers. Newspaper and digital technologies have formed a partnership to help insulate the commuter even more from their external environment. 102 (Lister et al, 2009:32) 103 (Jenkins, 2006:234-5) 104 (Martin, 2012:18)

Commuters are no longer restricted to one media type, as well as being offered the opportunity to read a daily newspaper and magazine, many will read a book or Kindle, play on their smart phone or tablet. Generally, on the morning commute people are more alert, looking to exercise the brain, they are in search of information, listening, watching, waiting, and playing. Benjamin claimed that our traditional behaviour towards works of art had transformed into a new form in which quantity had been transmuted into quality and the greatly increased audience had produced a change in the mode of participation. Although others objected to this mass experience, one such critic Duhamel referred to movies as “a pastime for helots, a diversion for the uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries..., a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence..., which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope”. Indicating the masses would rather seek distraction from reality instead of viewing it as a piece of art which demands concentration105. Indeed McLuhan compares media to a “juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind”.106 On the Underground, the sense of place and culture coupled with the liberation of information and technology, people view media intelligently as a piece of art, fully absorbing themselves in the work in order to offer an informed judgement on meaning and an interpretation of semiotics. Advertisement is a large part of the Undergrounds story and TfL continues to generate revenue from renting advertising space to external companies. Poster advertisements reached a peak at the beginning of the twentieth century through to the war, although 105 (Benjamin, 1936:23) 106 (McLuhan, 1964:19)

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Fig 56. Placement of WH Smith & Sons on the platform of St James Park. Roundel to the left of the shop and advertisements below

Fig 57. Underground ‘branding’ appropriated to offer useful information. Note the numerous advertisements stretching up the escalator to grab passenger’s attention

many considered them the graffiti of the time107. George Gissing’s in his novel In the Year of Jubilee writes about the advertisements on the Underground at Kings Cross ‘High and Low, on every available yard of wall, advertisements clamoured to the eye: theatres, journals, soaps, medicines, concerts, furniture, wines, prayer-meetings – all the produce and refuse of civilisation announced in staring letters, in daubed effigies, base, paltry, grotesque’. Similarly, in Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying, the impoverished poet and former advertising copywriter Gordon Comstock, reflects on the advertisements in the Underground stations: ‘all modern commerce is a swindle’108. By the time of publishing, Pick had implemented standardisation of advertisements in stations and on platforms, bringing about rationalisation and order. In a simple move, Pick had introduced culture to the station; he treated each advertisement as a piece of art giving it a boarder and room to breathe as typically found in any art gallery. Today, Picks ‘set of rules’ continue to be implemented across the network, advertisements are printed on standard size sheets, equally spaced apart and the subject matter has to be appropriate to the Underground and deemed not to undermine the ‘brand’. Jean Baudrillard was a theoretician obsessed with popular culture and consumer dominated culture. In his early work, most notably Le système des objets, he uses semiology to analyse the consumer society. To Baudrillard consumption is not merely “a frenzy of buying a profusion of commodities, a function of enjoyment, liberating of needs, fulfilment of self, affluence or consumption of objects. Consumption is an order of significations in a panoply of objects; a system, or code, of signs; the manipulation of objects as signs; a communication system; a system of exchange; a morality, that is a system of ideological values; a social function; a structural organisation; a collective 107 (Martin, 2012:161) 108 (Martin, 2012:40)

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phenomenon; isolating and individualising; an unconscious constraint on people, both from the sign system and from the socio-economic political system; and social logic”.109 Essentially consumerism is a coded system of signs that coerce individuals into using that system and individuals use the system as an important communicative tool. The system can extend from goods and services to virtually anything else, as Baudrillard states ‘anything can become a consumer culture’.110 For Guy Debord consumer culture and the commodification of every aspect of life culminates in the production of an immense accumulation of spectacles. Instead of participating in life experiences, people buy access to images and virtual excursions, becoming trapped in a cycle of endlessly contemplating the spectacles and simulations of life. A consumption of a “counterfeit life” filled with manufactured and fabricated pseudo- needs111. In later work, Baudrillard’s position is closer to that of McLuhan, which proclaims the total dominance of the sign, and of code as the primary organising principle of the social entity112. In Simulations, his theories demonstrate that much of our world comprises simulacra; images, objects and ideas that are all copies of something that has never existed and he demonstrates that simulacra are all around us in popular culture, from Disney to television adverts and religious iconography113. Nikolaus Pevsner would write in Studies in Art, Architecture and Design that ‘no exhibition of modern painting, no lecturing, no school teaching, can have had anything like so wide an effect on the educatable masses.’ This was a particular reference to the posters of 1930-40, which would become increasingly confident and modernistic. They highlight 109 (Baudrillard, 1970:15) 110 (Ibid) 111 (Matrix, 2006:17) 112 (Gere, 2008:160) 113 (Spiller, 2002:13)

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the technical dynamism of the Underground, using imagery redolent of the Futurists, and much use of the words ‘Power’ and ‘Speed’114. The Playgoer Travels Underground (1930), by Charles Pears, shows an upmarket couple arriving at a restaurant for a late dinner, he is dressed in his dinner jacket and she in her fur stole, the image gives the impression they had travelled by chauffeur-driven car, and the deep bow of the waiter suggests the same. The semiotics employed show the Underground as decadent, playful and a bad influence. A poster in 1938 by Marc Severin asked the subversive question ‘Why go Home?’ Another poster ordered, ‘Play between 6 and 12’. The aim in both cases was to help stagger the rush hour, the cultural impact of which can be felt into the 21st Century, many opting to enjoy what London has to offer rather than an evening in front of the television. The number of self-promoting posters published by the Underground has declined since the 1940s; the development of colour photography undermined the effectiveness of the poster. Today, other channels such as digital and radio advertising are employed to reach wider masses115. Marshall McLuhan published his first book The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, an examination of the detrimental effects of advertising on a gullible and powerless audience116. Much of McLuhan’s work examined the semiotics of our popular culture and he anticipated the power of digital technologies to enhance an audience’s interactivity with information as a whole, transforming us all from voyeurs to participants117. “We live today in the Age of Information and Communication because electric media instantly and constantly create a total field of interacting 114 (Martin, 2012:162) 115 (Martin, 2012:163) 116 (Creeber and Martin, 2009:15) 117 (Ibid)

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Fig 58. Branding and identity motifs created by Pick, on display at London Transport Museum

Fig 59. ‘Why go Home?’ Poster campaign by Marc Severin 1938

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events in which all men participate”.118 Interactive advertisements have become commonplace on station platforms and within carriages. At the very least, advertisements promote a website which allows the customer to find out about the product or company. Posters may also include a ‘QR’ Barcode which can be scanned with a smart phone, or advertising a competition, or using a twitter hashtag or offering an exclusive discount code. Companies continue to find ways for customers to participate by harnessing the power of digital technologies. Recently the Metro advertised a competition in which passengers were encouraged to ‘share’ their high and low moments on their commute to work, using Twitter as a platform with the hashtags #metrohigh and #metrolow119. We are influenced into sharing our personal experiences, used in the promotion of the media and the Underground for the chance to win an iPad, a technological and materialistic reward for personal enjoyment. Furthermore, in the game of Twitter, another follower could be secured through the sharing of an experience but the real winner is unashamed capitalism. As explored in Koolhaas’ Culture of Congestion theory in Delirious New York, and the capitalist landscape of ‘Bigness’ in S,M,L,XL. Koolhaas advocates the use of digital and electronic media in the engagement of architecture, claiming it can be empowering. Our current popular culture promotes this belief as well, as can be seen in the upswing of urban sited sitcoms and the ubiquitous use of urban landscapes in advertisements from car manufacturers and technology giants. This suggests the city in the twenty first century is again part of the zeitgeist and is no longer something to escape but 118 (McLuhan, 1964:270) 119 (Metro, 2014, www.metro.co.uk)

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Fig 60. Information leaflets produced on the country to encourage people to use public transport for more than ‘commuting’, displayed at London Transport Museum

Fig 61. Promotional leaflets produced for sport event, encouraging people to use public transport, displayed at London Transport Museum

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something to which we should remain connected120. In the 1930s, London Transport commissioned leading artists such as Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to design a series of posters for the Underground. As well as acting for self promotion, the posters might be read as an exercise in education. Passengers could be informed of one-off entertainments: Trooping the Colour, Derby Day, the Third Test Match at The Oval, with the nearest tube stations listed. Occasionally passengers could be bluntly instructed to move into a new garden suburb of ‘Metroland’. More often, passengers were encouraged to live life to the full, explore London and as Pick suggests, the poster campaign was to ‘persuade people to make journeys it had not occurred to them to make’. The proliferation of printed posters offers a rich catalogue of cultural history and artwork attributed to the early twentieth century, due to their popularity the artwork is well respected and sought after121. Becks colour coded map of the Underground has too become a design classic. Based on an electrical circuit diagram, the genius of Harry Beck’s map is that it did not try to represent the real distances between stations. The artwork has since been replicated by underground systems around the world from Sydney to St Petersburg122. Indeed representations of the Underground have been so successful as a graphic, it has been extracted and distilled as a representational devices for other forms of media. A reimagining of the tube map in the style of Super Mario Bros is characteristic of the fandom for both ‘brands’ of media and begins to blur the definition between the physical and virtual world. 120 (Murphy, 2006:33) 121 (Martin, 2012:161) 122 (Smith, 2013:3242)

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Fig 62. The Underground map in the style of Super Mario Bros, a demonstration of gameification in popular culture

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As well as displaying works of art, the impact of the Underground on society has prompted artists to use it as the primary subject. Walter Sickerts’ Queen’s Road (Bayswater) Station (1916) is one of the first paintings whose theme is the Underground. It depicts a seated figure waiting for a train beneath a sign for Whiteleys. During the war years, the Underground served as a shelter for many Londoners, providing some safety and comfort from the falling German bombs. Henry Moore was one person who sought refuge during this time; he produced a group of drawings and created the Shelter Sketchbooks. The sketches are highly influenced by their subject, the people, the sketches are course, but also subtle, ghostly but bright and above all, humane123. The Underground as ‘Art Gallery’ continues today as a platform for new artists. Since 2000, the ‘Art on the Underground’ programme has had the primary objective to transform stations in galleries and display ‘young and inspiring’ artists. The mission statement on the website states the ‘Art on the Underground’ programme will ‘provide a world class programme of contemporary art that enriches the Tube environment and our customers’ journey experience; and continues the long-standing tradition that excellent art and design is at the core of London Underground’s identity and services’.124 In addition to the formal side of art on the Underground, the network is a canvas for informal artists. French street artist JR began his career when he found a camera on the Paris Metro and began to place large black and white portraits around the city to question people’s assumptions about their place in society125. On the Underground, there is the art of discovery, as well as urban exploration which aims to discover ghost 123 (Martin, 2012:228) 124 (TfL, 2014, art.tfl.gov.uk) 125 (Hollis, 2012:524)

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Fig 63. Walter Sickert – Queen’s Road (Bayswater) Station 1916

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stations, historical facts and forgotten stories, there is a revolution of discovery linked to the punk era, graffiti and archaism. The rewriting of a space constituted by signs was literalised from the 1960s through the medium of graffiti. Persons inspired by the Situationist International are shown to have introduced the first political graffiti to the network, believing that the ‘faith of graffiti’, the circulation of the artist’s brand through the system can produce social space within non-place. Initially supported by GLC, the radical potential of this art seems to have remained dormant until Thatcher began to install her programme for the regeneration of the capital. As a result in the 1980s, the mediated spaces of the Tube-network became the battlefield for an unprecedented form of semiotic warfare, which inspired writers such as Hanif Kureishi, Alan Moore, Barabara Vine and John Healy to situate fictional resistance to various totalitarian blueprints for the capital in the London Underground126. Young writers, poets, graphic artists and graffiti artists still understand the power of the Underground and use this to their advantage to become known. Some will hand out published works, whilst other prefer the guerrilla approach, placing pieces of graffiti in stations, on platforms, lines and escalators. This act is twofold, offering the artist a platform to be discovered and another for passengers to discover the artwork; it becomes another game on the Underground. The innovation of digital technologies and software provides amateur photographers and filmmaker an easy opportunity to record and edit photograph and video. YouTube is the best known and largest platform for online video, it allows users to upload and share videos, receive comments and gain followers. One video in particular manipulates what would appear to be a mundane ticket barrier at Canary Wharf station 126 (Ashford, 2013:285-297)

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Fig 64. Film poster from V for Vendetta, adapted from Alan Mooreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s graphic novel of the same title

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against the backing track of Song 2 by Blur127. Digital technologies have had the same democratic impact as printing reproduction and film in the early twentieth century, offering everyone an equal opportunity, but it is only the individual who can turn an idea into artwork. Under the ‘Art for the Underground’ banner and in celebration of the 150th anniversary is Mark Wallinger’s Labyrinth project. The art project is a large scale installation of 270 individual pieces of artwork hidden across each of the 270 underground stations and designed to be a permanent feature. The Labyrinth art project spans the tradition of exhibiting artwork in the Underground with the notion of exploration, play and discovery. Wallinger sees “the commission as a unique opportunity to explore the potential of the Underground as a whole”128. Wallinger was keen to explore his personal relationship with the Underground and the idea of being transported in an imaginative and spiritual sense. The idea gave rise to the labyrinth, an ancient symbol which represents the idea of a spiritual journey. On the floor of Chartres Cathedral lies a 13th century example of a labyrinth, visitors are invited to walk the circuitous path as a form of pilgrimage. For Wallinger, the labyrinth is a fitting analogy for the millions of journeys that are made across the Underground network every day129. Each piece of artwork bears its own unique circular labyrinth, rendered in bold black, white and red graphics. The artworks are produced in vitreous enamel, a material used 127 (Ames, 2014, www.youtube.com) 128 (Wallinger, 2013, art.tfl.gov.uk) 129 (Ibid)

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Ealing Broadway

North Acton

East Acton

Harrow and Wealdstone

Regents Park

Oxford Circus

London Bridge

Canary Wharf

North Greenwich

Fig 65. Labyrinth artworks collected by the author to date, the challenge will continue to collect all 270 pieces of artwork across the Underground network Tower Hill

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for signs throughout London Underground, including the Tube’s roundel logo, whose circular nature the labyrinth design also echoes. Positioned at the entrance of each labyrinth is a red X. This simple mark, drawing on the language of maps, is a cue to enter the pathway. The tactile quality of the artwork’s surface invites the viewer to trace the route and to understand the labyrinth as a single meandering path into the centre and back out again, a route reminiscent of each passenger’s journey130. At an early stage in its history, the labyrinth became associated with the Greek legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. However, the fact that Theseus required the assistance of Ariadne’s skein of thread to navigate the complex passageways of the Minotaur’s lair would suggest that it was in fact a maze, which has numerous pathways instead of just one, and is essentially a puzzle. This myth is one of the many references drawn upon in this work by Wallinger. He comments: ‘Mostly we go about our business, journeying to work on the Tube and return home along a prescribed route. The seeming chaos of the rush hour is really just the mass of individuals following the thread of their lives home.’131 Each of Wallinger’s Labyrinth artworks bears a different number, written in the artist’s hand. For the collector or the train-spotter in us, there is something appealing in this cryptic element of the work. Although the numbers resonate with the tradition of editioned artworks, such as prints made in series, in fact they relate to the ordering system that allocates each artwork to its particular station. This numbering scheme brings an internal logic to this vast collection of artworks that is directly connected to a real, albeit highly unusual, Tube journey. They refer to the order of stations visited

130 (Ibid) 131 (Ibid)

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Shepherdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bush

White City

Holland Park

Notting Hill Gate

Queensway

Lancaster Gate

Marble Arch

Bond Street

Tottenham Court Road

Fig 66. Labyrinth artworks collected by the author to date, the challenge will continue to collect all 270 pieces of artwork across the Underground network Holburn

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in the Guinness World Record ‘Tube Challenge’ 2009, the record for the fastest time taken to pass through every single station on the London Underground network.132 As a personal challenge, using Marshall and the Chromaroma game as inspiration, I have attempted to see as many Labyrinth artworks as possible; a challenge more difficult than it first appears. Throughout the last 3 months of travel on the Underground it has been possible to view just over 10% of the artwork, equating to 29 labyrinths, mainly concentrated in Zone 1. On 25th January, I travelled the Central Line for 6 hours and collected 17 of the labyrinths from Bank station to Ealing Broadway. As I continue to travel around London I will continue to collect and record the Labyrinth artwork. To support the ‘collector’ or ‘train spotter’ TfL have created a useful website and app for the labyrinth project and Tube challenge. The website allows the player to research all the plaques exhibited at each station, leave comments for other players and to ‘mark off’ the collected pieces using the unique numbering system. The art project is a real celebration of art and gameplay on the tube.

132 (Ibid)

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Chancery Lane

St. Paul’s

Bank

King’s Cross

Camden Town

Edgware

Barbican

Moorgate

Old Street

Fig 67. Labyrinth artworks collected by the author to date, the challenge will continue to collect all 270 pieces of artwork across the Underground network Angel

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CHAPTER 5

Underground AS COMMUNITY

5.0 COMMUNITY 5.6. The Underground as Community

Tags: Jane Jacobs, Group behaviour, Jenkins, Participation Community is an important distinction in an urban environment, as populations increase and become more diverse, the idea of community needs to be redefined. Community may be many things: a shared space, a way of behaving, as well as people; yet the process of belonging is more than anyone of these things alone. It is an ecology that combines place, people and the way they interact133. In accordance with Jane Jacobs’s findings in her neighbourhood on Hudson Street, a community is formed through a combination of the routines and relationships that accumulate over time, mixed together with the more immediate connections made in the moment. A community is not a family with its strong ties and obligations but an evolving, turbulent network of weak links, familiar faces and rehearsed rituals134. People are locked into the use of the underground, locked into the routine of their journey to and from their place of work. This rehearsed daily routine with other ‘weak links’ on their own rehearsed paths are the beginnings of the sense of community that Jacobs alludes to. Hollis suggests that density too is a key factor of community; a balance must be sought between privacy and space, as overcrowding can be a key problem in forming a community135, which could be considered a problem in creating a sense of community on the Underground. 133 (Hollis, 2013:2936) 134 (Hollis, 2013:1973) 135 (Hollis, 2013:1979)

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Fig 68. Families take refuge in Piccadilly Underground Station during the Blitz

Fig 69. Groups of people line the platform walls in anticipation of the nightly air raids, polite notices ask people to refrain from blocking the platform during hours of operation

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During the World Wars, the Underground provided Londoners with shelter from falling bombs. During the First World War Londoners were encouraged by Pick to think of the tubes as a civilised place of refuge, a home from home, ‘Where it is Warm and Bright’, as a poster of 1924 stated. The government tried to resist using the Underground in this manner during the Second World War as they alleged it was a sign of cowardice. When the Blitz began, the pressure mounted with people besieging the stations. Coming together in this manner instilled a sense of community among the sheltering passengers, food, drink, home comforts and entertainment were organised to reinforce this sense of community and collectiveness136. Ashford comments that Moore’s sketches exploit religious imagery, transforming the sleeping children who embodied national unease at the threatened erasure of the individual into a metaphor that possessed the power to transmute even the space of non-place into the cradle for a redemptive and radical future.137 Digital technologies have been utilised to reinforce ‘weak links’ and help to connect people. However, on the Underground the opposite is true and the use of mobile technology creates isolation in one of the most crowded places in the country. In observations, many are guilty of it, looking over the shoulder of the person standing or sat down, reading their text, book, newspaper or playing a game. This could be considered human curiosity but actually it is seeking the opportunity for conversation, the search for a common interest to share, interact and connect with on a personal level.

136 (Martin, 2012:224) 137 (Ashford, 2013:279)

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Fig 70. Volunteers serve refreshments to sheltering Londoners, creating a home from home

Fig 71. Medical Aid Centre at Notting Hill Gate, implementing community services within Underground stations

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In conjunction with collaboration and crowd theory is the ‘broken window theory’ which examines the relationship between disorder within a community and crime ‘One broken window is a signal that no one cares, so breaking more windows costs nothing...“untended” behaviour also leads to a breakdown of community controls’138. The Underground’s community of passengers and workers are subject to this theory too. Commuters are offered a free paper every day of the week; a ‘Metro’ in the morning and ‘Evening Standard’ in the evening, polite advertisements in trains and stations request people take the papers and dispose of them responsibly. This will rarely occur, typically as soon as one paper appears at the back of a chair or stuffed down the side of a seat, more papers are discarded in a matter of minutes and by the time the train reaches its destination, a pile of rubbish has formed. People witness the action of an individual’s behaviour and accept that ‘one more won’t hurt’. To manage the situation attendants clear the trains on arrival at their destination to discourage this behaviour and to keep intact the sense of community. This is supported by experiments in Holland concerning graffiti which suggest that allowing one tag to remain on a wall often leads in time to the complete surface being covered. In some cases, a disorderly environment increased the likelihood of criminal behaviour by nearly 50 per cent.139 In addition to crowd theory and collective behaviour, there is a term known as ‘collective intelligence’. The fact is, we no longer “live in a society that uses digital archives, we live in an information society that is a digital archive”140. It is shaped just as much by the decisions made by teenagers in their bedrooms, as it is by decisions made in the boardroom. A discussion list online, a blog or a Wikipedia article, function 138 (Hollis, 2013:2167) 139 (Hollis, 2013:2190) 140 (Brouwer and Mulder, 2003:6)

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Fig 72. Discarded Metro newspapers at High Barnet Station on the Northern Line

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according to collective intelligence, that is to say the group as a whole put together their knowledge in a more complex way in comparison to an individual141. As Felix Guattari has suggested, “today’s information and communication machines do not merely convey representational contexts, but also contribute to the fabrication of new assemblages of enunciation, individual and collective”142. Pierre Lévy claims his model of collective intelligence as an “achievable utopian” and he believes a new political power will emerge to operate alongside or directly challenge the hegemony of the nation-state or the economic capacity of corporate capitalism. As a result, Levy sees collective intelligence as central in restoring democratic citizenship143. The success story of collective intelligence is Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia written collaboratively and working in two hundred languages, adhocracy principles have been embraced by the open-source movement to produce and manage knowledge. Wikipedia contains more than 1.6 million articles and receives around 60 million hits every day. The critics of Wikipedia worry the encyclopaedia is full of inaccurate information, however, the Wikipedia community at its best functions as a self correcting machine so incorrect information is revised by other readers144. A set of politics and ethics on knowledge sharing encourage users to take their obligations seriously as part of a community, there is a shared expectation of what constitutes good citizenship. Mass media tended to use tight control over intellectual property, to restrict interpretations, and create an official version. Whereas, online communities and fans envision a world in which we participate in the creation and circulation of 141 (HCDMediaGroup, 2009, www.youtube.com) 142 (Matrix, 2006:15) 143 (Jenkins, 2006:29) 144 (Jenkins, 2006:266)

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popular culture145. The concept of participation and collective intelligence was nicely summed up by Marshall Sella: “With the aid of the Internet, the loftiest dream for television is being realised: an odd brand of interactivity. Television began as a one-way street winding from producers to consumers but that street is now becoming two-way. A man with one machine (a TV) is doomed to isolation, but a man with two machines (a TV and a computer) can belong to a community”146. Using the same metaphor it could be argued that the potential of the Internet would open up an infinite amount of roads feeding information in and out. Once computers are linked together in a ‘networked society’ the routing of information could occur in all manner of ways, creating a rhizomatic system that is uncentred, in continuous motion, and forever changing, connecting and realigning.147 In order to form a true community on the underground, passengers need to feel part of and will need to participate in a democratic rule of urban space. The proliferation of digital technologies seems an obvious way to approach passengers of the network, something more than mere advertising. TfL are currently missing the opportunity to engage, the company should take more advantage of the fandom for the system to bring about a popular culture revolution, sharing experiences, ideas and obligations.

145 (Jenkins, 2006:267) 146 (Jenkins, 2006:256) 147 (Spiller, 2002:13)

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CHAPTER 6

SYNTHESIS

6.0 SYNTHESIS 6.7. Conclusion

In The Subterranean Railway Christian Wolmar writes: “There is a paradox about the Underground. The miraculous system created by pioneers is largely disliked and reviled by today’s regular users”.148 A large proportion of people would agree, as the system has developed and the city expanded, the Underground has developed to accommodate the commuter but the urban space offered by the underground is under utilised. There is no single published work devoted to charting the emergence of abstract space in the London Underground, or to exploring how this conceived space is turned into lived space by its users, as forecast by Lefebvre, or to recounting the clandestine means through which Londoners have attempted to rewrite the functional cartography imposed upon the capital149. This essay through the examination of the street, a typical urban space, the arcade, a space for play, the art gallery, a space for culture and the community, a space for people demonstrates the importance of the Underground as a ‘lived’ urban space for all sections of society. Jacobs asked people to look again at the city, and enquired how we might improve what we have in hand rather than rip up the street and start again from scratch. The vitality of the city is signified by the people and the life on the streets, as a result it is the streets, parks and public spaces of the city, where people come together which become important150. Arguably, the Underground could be considered the single most important urban space in the city of London and thus it is the success of this space which signifies the success of the city. In comparing the Underground network to the 148 (Martin, 2012:257) 149 (Ashford, 2013:205) 150 (Hollis, 2013:1254)

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‘street’, studies associated with the street and personal observations, the criteria which form the definition of a street remain true in the sense of the Underground network. The Underground has the ability to be more than a conduit for consumerism but rather a platform for a large public forum. Both McLuhan and Virilio, along with many other commentators on urbanism, believe that the information revolution is the backbone of a major structural transformation in the world’s shared culture. They argue that information is the basic structural commodity in a globally-linked economic system, as information is the twenty first century equivalent of gold bullion; there is nothing more valuable in the contemporary economy. The development of the ‘information society’, rather than erode the threedimensional city has precisely done the opposite, the value attached to information has only served to develop even more an indelible link between power and the urban realm151. Gaming could be considered too simple of a defining factor or unrelated to the physical urban space of the Underground. However, it acts as an indicator to the increased popularity of digital technologies and ubiquitous gaming across all platforms. As a metaphor, the physical make up of the Underground is a fitting representation of our networked lives, uncentred rhizomic lines connecting specialised destinations in infinite ways. As urban society intensifies, the connection between the Underground, digital technologies, gaming and information will grow ever stronger. In the future, this power will need to be harnessed for the success of the network.

151 (Barley, 2000:91-92)

131

New media platforms have consistently contributed to the formation of new modes of perception and knowledge, as well as the production of new forms and sites of social action. Digital networks in the present function at an increased speed and ubiquity, media is no longer bound by physical space but is mobile and pervasive. The hierarchy of classical urban space has given way to a more radically ‘open’ spatial ensemble, one which is open to reinterpretation. The Underground and its unique surroundings have acted as a continuous gallery beneath London’s streets for artists to exhibit artwork to the masses. Landmark figures behind the Underground such as Stanley, Pick and Beck have operated to inspire artists to produce works of art for the Underground. The popularisation of the network has introduced design and culture to the Underground, through strong graphics, typeface, textiles, interior design and architecture. The cultural impact of the Underground can be measured by the response of journalists, novelists, artists and poets. The entirety of ‘art on the underground’ has embraced and reinforced the cultural geography of the Underground and helped to generate a cultural following, phenomena linked to what Henry Jenkins describes as ‘Convergence Culture’. The physical attributes of convergence culture is described by the term ‘transmedia’, in which the story or project is spread across a variety of media platforms in a complementary way, so each platform contributes its most advantageous characteristic. As a result, individuals who wish to fully immersive themselves in the experience must interact with all the content and become active participants in the process.152

152 (HCDMediaGroup, 2009, www.youtube.com)

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Technology can be utilised to help generate a sense of community on the Underground, the emphasis here is on digital communities, collective thought and fandom which will protect the interest of the Underground and its passengers. It becomes more difficult to translate this digital community into a physical one, but this can be achieved through the idea of play and culture as demonstrated by Chromaroma and the Labyrinth art project. Forming a sense of community on the tube could be problematic if persistent issues arise with overcrowding as suggested by Hollis. Therefore, to instil a sense of community on the Underground presently and in the future, the system will need to cope with increased capacity and explore ways to increase efficiency. Already TfL have introduced new technologies; automated signalling systems and aerospace technology to help increase frequency, efficiency and capacity. These measures will only increase the success of the system incrementally, at some point in the future, the entire system will need to be integrated into the urban landscape more seamlessly, widened and upgraded to cope with changing face of urban life, the expanding city and human progress. Established by Lefebvre, social space can be categorised in a spatial triad of ‘perceived’, ‘conceived’ and ‘lived’ space. The first category is, first and foremost a product of the individual resulting from common and routine spatial practices. The second category is the conceptual space of the professional; a scientist, planner, artist: those representations of space which are produced by those who identify what is perceived

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and lived with what is conceived. The third category is space as directly lived through images and symbols by its users, the passively dominated spaces which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. As discussed, the underground could be considered as the most salient example of ‘conceived space as it has been inextricably intertwined with the rise of global capitalism. Also, the Underground is indeed a ‘lived’ space, adapted and influenced by its users on a daily basis.153 This essay has set out to understanding the Underground through four components of urban space; urban structure, play, culture and people. The four categories argue the Underground has been in the past and will continue to operate as an extremely success urban space. For that reason, the Underground is indeed a model urban space.

153 (Ashford, 2013:186)

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Fig 73. The Undergound will continue to attract passengers

Fig 74. The Undergound will continue to transport passengers

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CHAPTER 7

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

7.0 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1 Koolhaas’ ‘Culture of Congestion’ as depicted by Madelon Vrisendorp (Koolhaas, 1994:295)

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Figure 2 Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin (Koolhaas, 1994:256)

Figure 3 The Social City as proposed by Ebenezer Howard in Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902) (Fishman, 1982: 117)

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Figure 4 Image of the Matrix (Andre, 2011, www.psxextreme.com)

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Figure 5 Roman Operating System as proposed by Koolhaas (Koolhaas, 2001:11)

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Figure 6 Internal Complexity of a Beehive (BBKA, 2014, www.bbka.org.uk)

Figure 7 Edited Tube sign in the carriage depicting heaven and hell stops on the Central Line (Selden, 2014, elitedaily.com)

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Figure 8 Edited Tube sign in the carriage depicting the Central Line as Hell (Selden, 2014, elitedaily.com)

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Figure 9 Press release of Baker Street station when it opened in 1863 (Mansfield, 2012, www.ianvisits.co.uk)

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Figure 10 Press release of Baker Street station in 2013, a steam train marked the anniversary (Brown, 2014, www.dailymail.co.uk)

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Figure 11 A Central Line Carriage on 24th January 2014 at 17:47pm, heading eastbound into London (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 12 A Central Line Carriage on 24th January 2014 at 17:48pm, heading eastbound into London (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 13 Worn step as evident at numerous Mosques in Istanbul (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 14 Worn escalator steps at Angel Underground Station, on the left hand side 138

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(Authors own photograph) Figure 15 Alternative Tube Map – Concentric Circles and Straight Lines by Max Roberts (Brown, 2013: www.londonist.com)

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Figure 16 Alternative Tube Map – Return to a Geographical Representation by Mark Noad (Noad, 2012, www.londontubemap.com)

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Figure 17 Guy Debord’s Guide to Psychogeography 1956 (Spiller, 2006:45)

Figure 18 London Street map - area indicated around author’s workplace using Macfarlane’s exercise (Authors own)

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Figure 19 Standard Tube Map (TfL, 2014, tfl.gov.uk)

◊ Figure 20 Standard Tube Map - Version issued in 2009 without the River Thames or Zones (Gollner, 2009, blog.alex4d.com)

Figure 21 Crowds form at stations during the ‘Tube Strike’ in February 2014 (BBC, 2014, www.bbc.co.uk)

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Figure 22 People opt to walk rather than use the Underground network during the ‘Tube Strike’ (BBC, 2014, www.bbc.co.uk)

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Figure 23 An extract from London Bridge Underground station - Urban form and pedestrian flow (Authors own)

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Figure 24 Crowds and pedestrians instinctively flow in the direction of least friction (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 25 Large crowds self organise to ease the flow of pedestrians (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 26 Spiers and Pond Bar at a newly refurbished Paddington (Praed Street) Underground Station (London Transport Museum, 2014, www.pickmix.co.uk)

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Figure 27 Pop-Up retail units at London Old Street Station (Metro Travel News, 2014, 49)

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Figure 28 Film tile motif at Leicester Square Underground Station (London Transport Museum, 2014, www.pickmix.co.uk)

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Figure 29 Transitional mosaic tiles at Green Park Underground Station (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 30 Investigating flows of pedestrian traffic at London Bridge Underground Station - Still image captured every 30 seconds for 5 minutes, allowing trains to arrive and depart from each platform (Authors own photographs)

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Figure 31 Investigating flows of pedestrian traffic at London Bridge Underground Station - Still image captured every 30 seconds for 5 minutes, allowing trains to arrive and depart from each platform (Authors own photographs)

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Figure 32 Large advertisement campaigns on station platforms (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 33 Smaller advertisement catch our attention on the escalators (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 34 Typical view of an Amusement Arcade, colourful lights, music and playful sounds (Glazzard, 2006, em.wikipedia.org)

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Figure 35 Typical amusement rides (Top, Travel Lists, 2012, toptravellists.net)

Figure 36 Coney Island at night, attracting a crowd of people (1905) (Shorpy, 2014, www.shorpy.com)

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Figure 37 Coney Island at night (1905) (Shorpy, 2014, www.shorpy.com)

Figure 38 Convergence Culture and the extension of technology (Authors own montage)

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Figure 39¬ Wi-Fi available at 121 stations (Authors own photograph)

Figure 40 Congested rush hour carriage, people opt for ear phones and digital technology (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 41 Carriage during the morning rush hour, passengers are engrossed in the newspaper and items of digital technology (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 42 Observations from position 2 in London Bridge Underground Station, predominantly people keep to the right and take the shortest route available. Still image captured every 20 seconds reflecting the pace of passengers. Refer to map Fig. 23 (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 43 Observations from position 2 in London Bridge Underground Station, predominantly people keep to the right and take the shortest route available. Still image captured every 20 seconds reflecting the pace of passengers. Refer to map Fig. 23 (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 44 A selection of ‘tag’s discovered on the Underground, mainly found on escalators and within carriages (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 45 Position of passengers after boarding at North Greenwich Station - spread out along an empty carriage (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 46 Position of passengers after Canary Wharf Station – more passengers, all comfortably sat (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 47 Position of passengers after Canada Water – more passengers, a few are required to stand, due to heavy items of luggage (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 48 Position of passengers after Bermondsey – more passengers, no seats available people are required to stand, entrances/exits becoming congested (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 49 Position of passengers after London Bridge – more passengers, no seats available people are required to stand, entrances/exits still congested (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 50 Position of passengers after Southwark – more passengers, no seats available people and animals are required to stand, entrances/exits still congested (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 51 Position of passengers after Waterloo – less passengers, no seats available, people standing have secured a seat, dog acts as a catalyst for people to interact, people still standing at main entrance/exit (Authors own photograph)

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141

Figure 52 Position of passengers after Westminster – less passengers, seats available but people still standing for ease of exiting at next station (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 53 Position of passengers after Green Park – less passengers, numerous seats available, people are able to talk , few people standing to exit easily (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 54 St James Park Underground Station in 1935 with six different London Transport posters; note the vending machines both side and roundel branding at the base of the posters (London Transport Museum, 2014, www.pickmix.co.uk)

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Figure 55 Parody of information advertisements which were recently published by TfL – people are engaging with the artwork and appropriating the space (Timeout London, 2012, now.her.this.timeout.com)

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Figure 56 Placement of WH Smith & Sons on the platform of St James Park. Roundel to the left of the shop and advertisements below (London Transport Museum, 2014, www.pickmix.co.uk)

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Figure 57 Underground ‘branding’ appropriated to offer useful information. Note the numerous advertisements stretching up the escalator to grab passenger’s attention (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 58 Branding and identity motifs created by Pick, on display at London Transport Museum (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 59 ‘Why go Home?’ poster campaign by Marc Severin 1938 (London Transport Museum, 2014, www.pickmix.co.uk)

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Figure 60 Information leaflets produced on the country to encourage people to use public transport for more than ‘commuting’, displayed at London Transport Museum (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 61 Promotional leaflets produced for sport event, encouraging people to use public transport, displayed at London Transport Museum (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 62 The Underground map in the style of Super Mario Bros, a demonstration of gameification in popular culture (Nicholas, 2013, londonist.com)

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Figure 63 Walter Sickert – Queen’s Road (Bayswater) Station 1916 (The Samuel Courtauld Trust, 2014, www.bbc.co.uk)

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Figure 64 Film poster from V for Vendetta, adapted from Alan Moore’s graphic novel of the same title (PS3Extreme, 2014, ps3extreme.com)¬¬

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Figure 65 Labyrinth artworks collected by the author to date, the challenge will continue to collect all 270 pieces of artwork across the Underground network (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 66 Labyrinth artworks collected by the author to date, the challenge will continue to collect all 270 pieces of artwork across the Underground network (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 67 Labyrinth artworks collected by the author to date, the challenge will continue to collect all 270 pieces of artwork across the Underground network (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 68 Families take refuge in Piccadilly Underground Station during the Blitz (London Transport Museum, 2014, www.pickmix.co.uk)

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Figure 69 Groups of people line the platform walls in anticipation of the nightly air raids, polite notices ask people to refrain from blocking the platform during hours of operation (London Transport Museum, 2014, www.pickmix.co.uk)

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Figure 70 Volunteers serve refreshments to sheltering Londoners, creating a home from home (London Transport Museum, 2014, www.pickmix.co.uk)

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Figure 71 Medical Aid Centre at Notting Hill Gate, implementing community services within Underground stations (London Transport Museum, 2014, www.pickmix.co.uk)

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Figure 72 Discarded Metro newspapers at High Barnet Station on the Northern Line (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 73 The Undergound will continue to attract passengers (Authors own photograph)

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Figure 74 The Undergound will continue to transport passengers (Authors own photograph)

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CHAPTER 8

Bibliography

8.0 Bibliography 8.8. The Underground Ashford, D (2013) London Underground: A Cultural Geography (Kindle Edition) Liverpool: Liverpool University Press

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Martin, A (2012) Underground, Overground: A Passenger’s History of the Tube (Kindle Edition) London: Profile Books Ltd.

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Metro Travel News (2014) ‘Shops to pop-up at a station near you’, Metro, 19 March 2014, p.49

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Moore, M (2009) River Thames restored to London Tube Map by Boris Johnson [Online] Available from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/6201988/ River-Thames-restored-to-London-Tube-map-by-Boris-Johnson.html (Accessed 31st March 2014)

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PoemHunter.com (2012) John Betjeman – 54 Poems [Online] Available from http:// www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/john_betjeman_2012_5.pdf (Accessed 31st March 2014)

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The Samuel Courtauld Trust (2014) Your Paintings: Queen’s Road Station, Bayswater [Online] Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/queensroad-station-bayswater-207469 (Accessed 31st March 2014)

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8.9. Urban Space Barley, N (ed.) (2000) Breathing Cities: the architecture of movement. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhauser

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Bettencourt, L and West, G (2010) “A Unified Theory of Urban Living”. Nature, Volume 467, p. 912-13

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Hollis, L (2013) Cities are Good for you: The Genius of the Metropolis (Kindle Edition) London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

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Koolhaas, R (1994) Delirious New York A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: The Monacelli Press

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Koolhass, R (2001) Mutations. New York: ACTAR

Murphy, A (2006) “The Seattle Central Library: Civic Architecture in the Age of Media”. Places Volume 18, No. 2, p. 30-7

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Ravetz, A (2001) Council Housing and Culture: The History of a Social Experiment. London: Routledge

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Smith, P D (2012) City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age (Kindle Edition) London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

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Barthes, R (1957) Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers (2009). London: Vintage Books.

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Baudrillard, J (1970) The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. Translated by Chris Turner (1998) London. Sage Publications Ltd.

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Baudrillard, J (1981) Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser (1994). USA. The University of Michigan.

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Benjamin, W (1936) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction [Online] Available from: http://anthropology.uwo.ca/stchristian/course%20files/benjamin_ work%20of%20art.pdf [Accessed 20 April 2011]

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Benjamin, W (2002) The Arcades Project. Cambridge: Harvard University Press

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Castells, M (1989) The Information City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-Regional Process. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing

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Coverley, M (2010) Psychogeography. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials

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de Certeau, M (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Los Angeles: University of California Press

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Graham, S and Marvin, S (1996) Telecommunications and the City. London: Routledge

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Jacobs, J (1993) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Modern Library Edition. New York: Random House.

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Jenkins, H (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

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Lefebvre, H (1991) The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd

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Matrix, S (2006) Cyber Pop Digital Lifestyles and Commodity Culture. Oxon, Routledge.

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McLuhan, M and Powers, B (1989) The Global Village Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century. New York: Oxford University Press

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McQuire, S (2008) The Media City, Media, Architecture and Urban Space. London: SAGE Publications

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Mitchell, W (2004) Me++ The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Massachusetts: MIT Press

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Savat, D (2013) Uncoding the Digital. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan

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Tonkiss, F (2005) Space, the City and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press

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Virilio, P (1991) The Lost Dimension (trans. D Moshenberg). New York: Semiotexte

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Cline, E (2011) Ready Player One. London: Random House

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8.12. Websites Ames, R (2014) “Jubilee Line Ticket Barrier Sings Blur’s Song 2 #WooHoo [Online] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cc12dU1u0Y (Accessed 10th April 2104)

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Andre (2011) The Matrix Has You [Online] Available from: www.psxextreme.com/ ps3-wallpapers/770.html [Date Accessed 4 April 2011]

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BBC News (2013) “Mobiles ‘to outnumber people next year’, says UN agency” [Online] Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22464368 (Accessed 12th April 2014)

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BBKA (2014) Gallery – View Images [Online] Available from http://www.bbka.org.uk/ gallery/view_images.php?pg=1&pg=0 (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Brown, L (2013) Steam train returns to London Underground for the first time in a century to mark 150 years since the Tube was opened [Online] Available from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2249372/Steam-train-returns-LondonUnderground-time-century-mark-150-years-Tube-opened.html (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Brown, M (2013) Alternative Tube Maps: Straight Lines And Circles [Online] Available from http://londonist.com/2013/01/alternative-tube-maps-straight-lines-andcircles.php/ (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Chromaroma (2014) Dashboard for Season 19: kdyer1 [Online] Avaialble from http:// www.chromaroma.com/players/kdyer1 (Accessed 3rd March 2014)

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Glazzard, P (2006) Teddy’s Amusements, Withernsea [Online] Available from http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Teddy’s_Amusements,_Withernsea_-_geograph.org.uk__215695.jpg (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Gollner, A (2009) September 2009: The Thames and zones vanish [Online] Available from http://blog.alex4d.com/londons-tube-map/ (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Kiss, J (2010) Chromaroma: The Makeover London Community has been Waiting for [Online] Available from http://www.theguardian.com/media/pda/2010/nov/30/ chromaroma-oyster-transport-gaming (Accessed 8th March 2014)

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London Transport Museum (2014) Pick and Mix [Online] Available from http://www. pickmix.co.uk/ (Accessed 27 April 2014)

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Mansfield, I (2012) How the World’s first Underground Railway was Built [Online] Available from http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2012/12/28/how-the-worlds-firstunderground-railway-was-built/ (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Marshall, G (2014) Tube Challenge [Online] Available from http://www.geofftech. co.uk/tube/index.html (Accessed 28th February 2014)

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Metro (2014) “#Metrohigh and #Metrolow – Festive in the city” [Online] Available from http://metro.co.uk/2013/08/27/metros-made-for-the-city-metrohigh-andmetrolow-3939151/ (Accessed 25th April 2014)

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Nicholas, D (2013) The London Underground Map, Super Mario Style [Online] Available from http://londonist.com/2013/03/the-london-underground-mapsuper-mario-style.php (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Ofgem (2014) Facts and Figures: UK Coimmunications 2013 fact sheet [Online] Available from http://media.ofcom.org.uk/facts/ (Accessed 12th April 2014)

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PS3 Extreme (2014) V for Vendetta Wallpaper [Online] Available from http://www. psxextreme.com/ps3-wallpapers/160.html (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Selden, A (2014) These Edited Signs in The London Underground are Beyond Epic [Online] Available from http://elitedaily.com/envision/these-edited-signs-in-thelondon-underground-are-beyond-epic-photos/ (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Shorpy (2014) Coney Island Gallery [Online] Available from http://www.shorpy. com/Coney-Island-photo-gallery (Date Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Timeout London (2012) Don’t be a twat: parody posters tackle anti-social commuters [Online] Available from http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2014/04/02/dont-be-atwat-parody-posters-tackle-anti-social-commuters/ (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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Top Travel List (2012) Coney Island, Amusement Park [Online] Available from http:// toptravellists.net/coney-island-amusement-new-york-city-united-states.html (Date Accessed 27th April 2014)

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TfL (2013) Art on the Underground [Online] Available from http://art.tfl.gov.uk/ (Accessed 28th February 2014)

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TfL (2014) Standard Tube Map [Online] Available from http://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/ static/cms/documents/standard-tube-map.pdf (Accessed 27th April 2014)

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TfL (2013) Underground Poems [Online] Available from http://www.tfl.gov.uk/ corporate/projectsandschemes/2437.aspx (Accessed 28th February 2014)

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Wallinger, M (2013) Labyrinth – Mark Wallinger Available from http://art.tfl.gov.uk/ labyrinth/ (Accessed Various)

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