ancient cities

94 Buses
Postmodern critics argue that the link between
military spaces and military bunkers—which, in
the modern period, physically positioned military–
urban affairs, social behavior, cultural rites, and
archaeological customs—has disappeared in contemporary
societies. Virilio, for example, discussing
the currently prevailing “orbitalization” of
militarization and information, suggests that
urban meaning has vanished from military bunkers,
and thus from the city, which has itself disappeared
and dispersed in the postmodernized
logic of militarized spaces of orbitalization. This
corroborates Mike Gane’s belief that Virilio’s allegiance
to the concept of military bunkers as
involving genuine inertia and a feeling of imprisonment
adds up to little more than an unresolved
dilemma or a plea for a new kind of resistance
that has no means. Alternatively, Gane proposes a
model of urban living influenced by Jean
Baudrillard’s analyses of simulation founded on
spaces subject to reversibility.
Yet John Schofield asserts that sensitivity to military
bunkers can offer an essential anchor in material
culture and a stable approach to modern warfare.
He perceives military bunkers as archaeological sites
and theoretical objects that can extend the methodologies
of contemporary archaeology. Challenging
established archaeological principles, Schofield travels
beyond recent conflict to an accelerated field of
research that deals simultaneously with historical
events, material remains, heritage, and human catastrophe.
Such an intense combination evokes a global
awareness of political events, military actions, and
military bunkers. Schofield’s investigation into these
issues in theoretical terms and in essays on military
culture and archaeological literatures, history, and
anthropology gracefully combine sociological discussion
and concrete case studies of military bunkers
as heritage management practice.
See also Urban Archaeology; Urban Semiotics
Further Readings
John Armitage
Gane, Mike. 2000. “Paul Virilio’s Bunker Theorizing.”
Pp. 85–102 in Paul Virilio: From Modernism to
Hypermodernism and Beyond, edited by J. Armitage.
London: Sage.
Schofield, John. 2005. Combat Archaeology: Material
Culture and Modern Conflict. London: Duckworth.
Virilio, Paul. 1994. Bunker Archaeology. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton Architectural Press.
Bu S e S
Buses are often seen as a cheap, dirty, inconvenient,
and unreliable mode of transport, used only
by those who have no other option. Yet Transport
for London estimates that around 6 million bus
journeys are made in London every day, with
buses the fastest-growing mode of transport in the
city. While light rail or metro systems typically
exist only in the largest cities or in cities that have
experienced extended periods of socialist government,
bus riding is a feature of urban life globally
and has been for some time: Early bus services
were horse drawn, with the first proliferation of
“omnibuses” occurring in European cities in the
1830s. Bus links remain important to residents in
marginal communities, banlieues, suburbs, or
slums, representing connections to city centers
and providing opportunities for employment.
Their very banality, however, as a taken-forgranted
aspect of everyday life, has meant that
they have often escaped the attention of urban
researchers. Despite this, buses are vital parts of
urban infrastructure, can expose inequalities in
urban governance, and can reveal the practices
involved in everyday urban mobilities.
Buses as Urban Infrastructure
Buses represent the cheapest form of urban transport
infrastructure development for cities. They
cost the least to instigate and maintain, and they
are able to collect fares from a far greater number
of locations than is their major current competitor,
light rail. Despite this, they tend to be less popular
than larger infrastructural projects among city governments.
This is partially due to their disadvantages:
They tend to have lower capacities, can be
more uncomfortable, and are more susceptible to
disruption from roadwork and traffic problems
than are other forms of public transportation. They
also have a negative image that contributes to their
avoidance by some city governments, who find that