My thesis advisor Brent Ryan recommended that I think about the train through the lens of its connection to urban environments and the overall concept of urbanity. It’s taken me some time clarify my thinking on these connections but I think I’m beginning to.
Density. This is a key, yet slippery, concept in urban studies & planning. Much has been written about how to define and its benefits and drawbacks in terms of sustainability, innovation, economics and equity. For my purposes, I’m thinking about the value of a space that brings a diverse group of people together for a diverse set of reasons and, by virtue of their forced proximity, encourages interaction.
Anonymity. Many people that I met felt comfortable opening up to me about incredibly personal details and I hypothesize that there’s a certain freedom passengers feel because we know we’re unlikely to see each other again. Likewise, as urban centers grow from small towns, anonymity becomes more and more of a defining factor (and was historically connected to fear-mongering around the turn of the 20th century about the loss of community and hometown values accompanying urban growth).
Spontaneity. Henri Lefebvre wrote about the ‘right to the city’, and the un-anticipatable and therefore emancipatory qualities of cities due to the complex interplay between the social and material environments. As Margaret Crawford writes about Lefebvre, this creates “political possibilities of a multiplicity of urban imaginaries, representations, and interventions”. The train is similar in this way, which provides a basis for the aspect of my project which will re-imagine new ways of sparking interaction through political, artistic, and tactical interventions.
Landscapes of Development. The landscape of the railroad is deeply intertwined with American imperialism, westward expansion, and capitalism. Again borrowing from Lefebvre, our conception of the urban / rural divide is overly simplistic. A more accurate conception of the urban landscape includes all land and development that provides for, trades with, and is impacted by urban nodes. This concept is also developed in “Implosions / Explosions”, edited and with an introduction by Neil Brenner.
Public (?) My thesis group and I are perplexed by the question of whether the train in the U.S. really is a public space—anyone can board (though you have to be able to pay the ticket price); on the other hand, the space is flexible (yet highly regulated), people use if for a variety of reasons (though it was built primarily for industrial purposes), and so on. Similar debates exist regarding privately owned public spaces, urban transit, coffee shops, libraries, and other urban public realm places.
I plan to explore these connections and more as the project moves forward.
