(Reflection 4 of 5)
by Anna Tsomo
Sunny Stalter-Pace’s Underground Movements: Modern Culture on the New York City Subway is an apt representation of the subject on which it is written. Meandering, multifaceted yet somehow cohesive, the book is much like the New York City subway system. Through its well-developed perspectives, it allows readers to understand how fully the subway has influenced modern culture—not only literature, but the wider meaning of subway stories, and how they become truths. While that is the focus of the text, it also sheds light on how the subway divides and connects people.
Stalter-Pace claims that the subway system “reshaped consciousness” (1) of the city and its people, but the subway is not the only advancement that she credits as the source of change. The author emphasizes the general significance of technology on society, and the results are not always wholly positive. The subway’s predecessors like railroads and other forms of rapid transit allowed commuters to come from farther to work in the city, meaning laborers left their communities to instead contribute to the economy and workforce of the city. The building of elevated train tracks allowed the streets to be left more free, but it lessened the quality of the neighborhoods it was built in. There is always a give and take. In New York City, a place known for huge numbers of people living tightly together, any change will affect some portion of the population.
The infrastructure itself is not the only way inequality functions with transit systems. How people use those systems plays a large role. The experience of a subway rider moving through a neighborhood, often a “metonymic form of getting to know a culture” (18), shapes the way they understand and interact with that community. Walking through the city, commuters have an active, engaged experience. Driving, even though people are physically isolated from each other, there is the visual aspect of landmarks. On the train, there is only the muddled announcements of the conductor and the subway to orient oneself with. Sitting on the train is a passive experience, with an underground version of New York City.
However, Stalter-Pace also argues that the physical confinement of a subway car can foster connection: “In an era when life in the United States is more spatially dispersed and ideologically isolated, these subway stories remind us that transportation technology can bring us into contact with people who see the world differently.” (18) Everyday subway riders are so used to their routines on the train, that if their routine includes someone of a race, gender, class, or other identity that is different than theirs, they often don’t bat an eyelash. The population of a subway car is a microcosm of the city’s population, with its diversity, chaos, and uniqueness making it a true representative of New York City as a whole.
Questions:
Does the MTA service change with respect to the affluence of an area? How?
Does the existence of car services like Lyft and Uber make the subway less essential to NYC? Does it widen the class divide of commuters?
