ancient cities

786 Surveillance
mobile privatization, in order to gain control over
their experiences of travel.
Despite the common desire of subway passengers,
the subway is a site of often overwhelming
influence by external stimulation, with beggars,
buskers, and solicitors moving throughout systems
peddling their trades, accumulating micro and
niche economies that often exist under the radar of
authorities. Perhaps due to the difficulty of surveillance
in enclosed underground spaces, practices of
subversion that undermine rules and regulations,
like graffiti, scratchitti, fare beating, and petty
crimes—as well as serious crimes like harassment
or violence—are commonly associated with subways.
Public infrastructures of transit have also
become targets of terrorist attacks, as in Tokyo
(1995) and London (2005). The subway has
always been designed and operated in relationship
to the potential dangers of city life. The subway
systems in Berlin and London were used as bomb
shelters and base hospitals during World War II.
All of these factors have helped promote the
image of the subway as a space of fear and danger,
leading to the implementation by police and security
staff of countermeasures like camera surveillance
and bag checks. Recently, the use of
aesthetics like light and cleanness to provoke a
feeling of security have become more widespread,
leading to increased ridership and a greater appearance
of (if not actual) safety.
Passengers’ practices and perceptions are also
partially constituted, often unwittingly, through
administrative techniques such as the design of
vehicle and station interiors, sign systems, and
payment technologies. Aesthetics can also be used
as a strategy of exclusion, creating spaces that are
more favorable to certain groups of people and
aimed for the displacement of others, such as the
homeless and beggars, both of whom populate
subway systems for warmth and shelter.
Whereas most subway systems use rational,
purist, and functional interior designs, some systems,
like in Eastern Europe or the United States,
implement decorative and artistic elements, from
mosaics and frescos to sound installations and
sculptures. In Western Europe, the implementation
of public art in the subway system has been promoted—intending
to counter the gracelessness,
interchangeability, and anonymity of the system’s
stations and vehicles.
No other urban infrastructure of transit has
changed the fabric of the city as much as the subway.
With now more than 25 new systems in construction
and development, mainly in South America
and Asia, the subway is still and will be in the future
a dominant way organizing inner-urban mobility
while having a high impact on the economics and
politics of cities as well as on the behaviors, social
relations, and practices of its inhabitants.
Stefan Höhne and Bill Boyer
See also Journey to Work; Streetcars; Transportation
Further Readings
Augé, Marc. 2002. In the Metro. Translated by Tom
Conley. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bobrick, Benson. 1994. Labyrinth of Iron: Subways in
History, Myth, Art, Technology, and War. New York:
Henry Holt.
Brooks, Michael W. 1997. Subway City: Riding the
Trains, Reading New York. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press.
Fitzpatrick, Tracy. 2009. Art and the Subway: New York
Underground. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University
Press.
Hood, Clifton. 2004. 722 Miles: The Building of the
Subways and How They Transformed New York.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Vuchic, Vukan R. 2007. Urban Transit: Systems and
Technology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Su r v e i l l a n c e
Surveillance, the systematic collection of information
for purposes of control, is a key mode of
social and spatial urban ordering. From their
foundation, cities have been locations for surveillance,
but it was only with the modern period that
surveillance came to infiltrate many practices of
urban management from factories to policing.
Now, in cities dominated by neoliberal economics,
risk management, and multiple fears, increasingly
technologically sophisticated surveillance,
from biometric closed circuit television (CCTV) to
geodemographic profiling, produces new forms of
urban division.