Listening to the Tube Map: Rhythm and the Historiography of Urban Map Use

Abstract

This paper is in two parts. In the first half I consider the challenge posed by the recent performative turn in critical cartography to the urban historical geographer. If maps come into being only within the diverse moments of their use, then how can we compensate for the absence of such events within the historical archive? Building on Tim Ingold's work, I suggest that one approach is to make an analogy between printed maps and musical scores, as decentred technologies whose instructions for performance are always mediated by environmental contingencies and the historical particularities of their performers. Returning a map to its original setting and ‘listening’ to the rhythms inscribed within it might enable us to uncover the specific spatial practices it once sought to produce. I then consolidate this approach via a study of Harry Beck's 1933 map of the London Underground. By locating it within the rhythmic dynamics of interwar London, I uncover the Tube Map's covert cybernetic impulse; in gesturing towards its own redundancy, it proffered a mode of cartographic practice that might impel the user toward an environmental docility that accorded with the dynamics of monopoly capitalism. Beck's map thus stands revealed as a watershed technology within attempts to orchestrate 20th-century urban life.

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Sacred Rhythms and Political Frequencies: Reading Lefebvre in an Urban House of Prayer

“…Other studies have applied rhythm analysis to assess the spatial effects of commodification dynamics as they materialize in advertisement (Cronin ), tourism (Edensor and Holloway ), commercial consumerism (Hubbard and Lilley ; Degen ), and nightclub culture (Shaw ). Some works have used rhythm analysis to investigate how recording techniques, such as photography (Simpson ) and cartography (Hornsey ), enable a better understanding of placemaking strategies. Rhythm analysis has also been employed to study physical changes in the city through urban regeneration (Hubbard and Lilley ), ruination (Batuman ), gentrification (Kern ), and abandonment (Gibas ).…”

The Emergence of Sound Art: Opening the Cages of Sound

“…The parallelism between map and score is also used to reflect on new relationships between cartography, history, interpretation, and power. For example, Richard Hornsey (, 675–693) suggests using urban maps in a manner similar to the use of a musical score.…”