ancient cities

cooperation between various private or public and
private organizations, although today, the majority
of the subway systems are not profitable and have to
be subsidized, and most systems are owned and
operated by public institutions. Because of the
amount of labor required to construct and then
operate subway systems, public transportation
authorities are often some of the largest employers in
cities and organized worker unions have historically
been very influential in city politics.
The use of electrical motors in rail traffic first
appeared in London in 1890 and allowed for the
development of systems in other European cities
like Paris (1900) and Berlin (1902), U.S. cities like
Boston (1897) and New York (1904), and later to
Buenos Aires (1913), Toyko (1927), and Osaka
(1933), the only subways outside of Europe and
North America until 1957.
After World War II, with the increasing popularity
of automobile traffic, most subway systems
stagnated or declined, some even dismantled tram
lines to make place for cars. In the succeeding
years, new technological developments like rubber
tires and a returned interest in public
transportation in urban planning have resulted in
an exponential increase in subways implemented
worldwide, with more than 160 systems in operation
in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
The correlation between the development of
subway systems and the prevalence of Fordist
modes of capitalist production points to the
importance of subways in national and global
economies. In the past few decades, the majority of
new subway systems have emerged in the Asian
and South American cities where industrial and
service economies have been growing. Even in socalled
developed post-Fordist cities, such as those
in Europe and the United States, the subway exists
as a reminder of the always present articulation of
late capitalist modes of production with their predecessors.
Subways, predominantly used by the
lower and middle classes especially in most major
North American cities, depend greatly on Fordist
infrastructures—organizing and regulating mass
flows and movement and making the subway.
Cultural and Social Significance
In the context of the multiple histories of subway
authorities and diverse cities, the idea of the subway,
Subway
785
as a semiotic signifier, is just as meaningful to
everyday urban life as the material systems that the
term is used to identify. The subway has become
an attribute of the imaginary of metropolitan
areas, entering collective imaginations and discourses.
It found its way into culture through
music, films, literature, and art, which turned the
subway into an icon of modern urbanity. Notable
examples include Ezra Pound’s 1913 poem “In a
Station of the Metro,” the Duke Ellington
Orchestra’s signature 1939 song “Take the A
Train,” the 1974 Joseph Sargent film The Taking
of Pelham One Two Three, and the 2003 film
Café Lumière directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsen.
The noisiness of the city, its streets crowded
with carts, pedestrians, and trolley cars quickly
relaxed as traffic was displaced underground. The
city became quieter and cleaner, on its surface.
Subways not only change the fabric of the city
and modify practices and social interactions of its
dwellers, they also alter the experience and perception
of the city via processes of deterritorialization
and fragmentation, especially when moving
underground.
Unlike other forms of urban transportation, the
subway places passengers in the dark, submerged
underground where visual navigation reliant on
orientation toward familiar landmarks is suspended.
Passengers sit in stasis, paradoxically
immobile while moving quickly under the city. The
city is deterritorialized, and destination points are
fragmented in space, sprouting from the subway
like rhizomes throughout the city. Passengers must
learn to rely on other symbols of navigation, such
as subway maps, as well as their other senses,
whether they wish to avoid unpleasantly odorous
fellow passengers or attend to service changes as
announced over public address systems.
Subway passengers share an experience of
crowds, a high physical density and nearness of
strangers, anonymity and being exposed in a close
space, all attributes that have become representative
not just of the subway but of cities in general.
These experiences yield practices of isolation, like
reading the newspaper or listening to headphones,
which provide barriers to potentially unwanted
social interactions. Passengers often use personal
multimedia devices and books to regulate their
personal space, injecting the private sphere into the
public, a manifestation of Raymond Williams’s