ancient cities

784 Subway
Bruegmann has argued, so complex has been the
pace and scale of postindustrial suburban sprawl
that older definitions of suburbanization have
been called into question. Perhaps the most accurate
catch-all term to understand this recent
sprawl is postsuburbanization: Urban dispersal
has moved beyond the classic city-to-suburb pattern
of the urban-industrial era prior to 1970,
while containing key social and environmental
characteristics of suburbs, notably a distance
from the urban core and a cultural preference for
materially prosperous, lower-density living.
See also Banlieue; Housing; Sprawl; Streetcars;
Transportation
Further Readings
Mark Clapson
Archer, John. 2005. Architecture and Suburbia: From
English Villa to American Dream House, 1690–2000.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bruegmann, Robert. 2005. Sprawl: A Compact History.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Clapson, Mark. 1998. Invincible Green Suburbs, Brave
New Towns: Social Change and Urban Dispersal in
Postwar England. Manchester, UK: Manchester
University Press.
Hayden, Dolores. 2003. Building Suburbia: Green Fields
and Suburban Growth, 1820–2000. New York:
Pantheon.
Jackson, Kenneth T. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier: The
Suburbanization of the United States. New York:
Oxford University Press.
King, Anthony D. 1995. The Bungalow: The Production
of a Global Culture. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Nicolaides, Becky M. and Andrew Wiese, eds. 2006. The
Suburbs Reader. New York: CRC Press.
Palen, J. John. 1995. The Suburbs. New York: McGraw-
Hill.
Silverstone, Roger, ed. 1997. Visions of Suburbia.
London: Routledge.
Su B w a y
The subway, also called the metro or underground,
is generally understood as an inner urban
and often subterranean or elevated passenger
railway system operating with high frequency.
Although mostly separated from other infrastructures,
the subway is embedded in the urban fabric
through its links with other systems of transportation
(buses, airports, railway, etc.). Beyond that,
no single and all-integrating definition of the subway
can be given, as they differ widely in techniques,
organization, form, and usage—making
each subway system unique.
Historical Background
At the end of the nineteenth century, the geography
of cities was drastically transformed by emergent
technologies. While elevators lifted cities
upward, increasing density as buildings became
taller, public transportation pushed cities outward,
increasing the amount of distance that commuters
could travel between home and work. Trolleys,
trams, and light rail had already replaced horsedrawn
carriages and opened up the rural peripheries
of cities to the development of satellite towns
and suburbs, but subways have become arguably the
dominant mode of transportation associated with
urban spaces over the past century. Subways, taken
as what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari would call
an assemblage comprising everything from the technical
infrastructure of the systems and the governmental
policies that regulate the financial and legal
operations of trains, even the everyday experiences
of passengers, can be understood as a first order
medium of integration, an essential and important
part of urban polity with a formative impact on the
shape and movements of the metropolis.
Seen as monumental public works and symbols
of engineering achievement, subways are large-scale
structures, the construction of which demands a
large amount of capital and a large workforce. Their
size and usage varies greatly; while London
Underground has more than 400 kilometers (about
250 miles) of track, the recently constructed Metro
Del Sol Amado in Maracaibo, Venezuela, is less than
four kilometers (almost two and a half miles) long.
Similarly, whereas the Moscow Metro, the first in
Russia, carries between 6 million and 10 million
people per day, newer trains in that country have a
much smaller capacity, such as the one in Kazan,
which has a maximum systemwide capacity of
6,000 passengers. Most subways were realized in