A presentation, drawing on my book 'Vertical', exploring the politics of the urban subterranean. The wide-ranging discussion explores the subterranean as a source of class threats and insurrections; as a sanctuary; as a space of exploration; and as a site for tourism.

1. Subterranean
urban
poli.cs:
Insurgency,
sanctuary,
explora.on
and
tourism
Stephen
Graham
Newcastle
University

3. 1.
Introduc,on:
Urban
root
systems,
urban
imaginaries
“Imagine
grabbing
ManhaAan
by
the
Empire
State
Building
and
pulling
the
en.re
island
up
by
its
roots.
Imagine
shaking
it.
Imagine
millions
of
wires
and
hundreds
of
thousands
of
cables
freeing
themselves
from
the
great
hunks
of
rock
and
tons
of
musty
and
polluted
dirt.
Imagine
a
sewer
system
and
a
set
of
water
lines
three
.mes
as
long
as
the
Hudson
River.
Picture
mysterious
liAle
vaults
just
beneath
the
crust
of
the
sidewalk,
a
sweaty
grid
of
steam
pipes
103
miles
long,
a
turn-­‐of-­‐the-­‐eighteenth-­‐century
merchant
ship
bureau
under
Front
Street,
rusty
old
gas
lines
that
could
be
wrapped
twenty-­‐three
.mes
around
ManhaAan,
and
huge,
bomb-­‐proof
concrete
tubes
that
descend
almost
eighty
storeys
into
the
ground”
Robert
Sullivan
(1947)

4. Dialec.cs
of
above
and
below:
Gravity,
God,
language
and
the
body:
“What
is
denied,
rejected,
excluded
in
the
world
above
with
reference
to
people,
class,
race
or
gender
is
thereby
included
and
collected
within
the
underground
space”
Yi-­‐Jen
Chang
Common
in
the
history
of
the
rela.onships
between
people,
waste
and
social
class,
distance
downwards
towards
and
into
the
earth
was
widely
constructed
as
a
proxy
of
increasing
inhuman
abjec.on.
Distances
upwards,
by
contrast,
were
o[en
the
source
of
moral
and
social
quality
and
–
literally
–
uprightness
and
civiliza.on
–
in
the
face
of
nature’s
gravita.onal
degrada.ons.
‘Eleva.on’
thus
carried
with
it
parallel
no.ons
of
moral,
economic,
social,
theological
and
corporeal
superiority.
Ver.cal
bases
for
language
about
class,
wealth,
power,
happiness
and
moral
fitness
–
‘Underclass’;
‘Low’;
Sub-­‐human’
etc.
Also
obsession
with
standing
up
straight;
repression
of
‘lower’
as
opposed
to
higher
‘organs’
of
the
body
reaching
“its
limits
in
the
repression
of
the
common
abject
–
excrement,
putrefac.on,
dirt,
semen,
menses,
and
so
on”
Julian
Stallabrass

5. The
‘lower’
organs
of
the
body,
and
their
repulsive
func.ons,
thus
became
likened
to:
“the
city’s
‘low’
–
the
slum,
the
rag-­‐
picker,
the
pros.tute,
the
sewer
–
the
‘dirt’
which
is
‘down
there.’
In
other
words,
the
axis
of
the
body
is
transcoded
through
the
axis
of
the
city,
and
whilst
the
bodily
‘low’
is
forgoAen,
the
city’s
low
becomes
a
site
of
obsessive
preoccupa.on,
a
preoccupa.on
which
is
itself
in.mately
conceptualized
in
terms
of
discourses
of
the
body”
Julian
Stallybrass

6.
2.
“Hardly
worthy
of
life
on
the
surface”:
Subterranean
Classes
and
Insurrec.ons
Jabob
Riis’s
famous
exposé
of
the
lives
of
New
York’s
very
poor,
How
the
Other
Half
Lives
(1890)
focused
par.cularly
on
how,
as
in
many
great
ci.es
then
and
now,
“much
of
New
York’s
so-­‐called
ethnic
underworld
lived
and
slept
in
underground
spaces
Riis’s
deemed
basement
inhabitants
to
be
“cave
dwellers”
who’s
physical
descent
into
the
city’s
subsurface
paralleled
a
complete
moral
collapse
to
a
point
where,
as
geographer
Thomas
Heise
puts
it,
“they
were
hardly
worthy
of
life
on
the
surface”

7. Capitalist
urbaniza.on
and
the
basement
problem
Basements
“appear
again
immediately
somewhere
else
and
o[en
in
the
immediate
neighborhood!
The
breeding
places
of
disease,
the
infamous
holes
and
cellars
in
which
the
capitalist
mode
of
produc.on
confines
our
workers
night
a[er
night,
are
not
abolished;
they
are
merely
shi[ed
elsewhere!”
Friedrich
Engels

8. French
1960s
ac.vists,
the
Situa.onists,
working
to
undermine
corporate
capitalism
‘from
below,’
likened
their
work
and
that
of
similar
movements
to
that
of
an
‘old
mole’
burrowing
through
the
founda.ons
of
bourgeois
life
‘above’.
Sought
to
‘undermine’
or
‘dig
away
at’
capitalist
society
by
amplifying
what
they
called
the
‘irreducible
dissa.sfac.on
[which]
spreads
subterraneanly,
undermining
the
edifice
of
the
affluent
society“
Noted
in
1962
that
the
‘old
mole’
was
“s.ll
digging
away.”

9. Sewer
as
Urban
Underworld
“To
place
anything
in
the
sewer
is
to
define
it
as
a
waste
product
of
the
world
above
it”
David
L.
Park

10. Ver,cal
insurrec,on:
The
sewer
as
democra,c
otherworld
Pre-­‐Haussman
sewers
liAle
less
the
“conscience
of
the
city”
“are
no
more
false
appearance,
no
possible
plastering”,
he
stresses.
“The
filth
takes
off
its
shirt,
absolute
nakedness,
rout
of
illusions
and
of
mirages,
nothing
more
but
what
it
is
.
.
.
The
last
veil
is
rent.
A
sewer
is
a
cynic.
It
tells
all.”
"Crime,
intelligence,
social
protest,
liberty
of
conscience,”
Jean
Valjean
con.nues,
“the[,
all
that
human
laws
pursue
or
have
pursued,
have
hidden
in
this
hole".

11. Subterranean
Haussmaniza,on:
“Hygiene
is
the
modern
project’s
supreme
act”
Lahiji
and
Friedman,
Plumbing,

12. Ra,onalized
subterranean
engineering
as
moral
and
physical
ordering
“What
is
arguably
the
most
exci,ng
sequence
in
the
whole
of
nineteenth
century
French
fic,on”,
writes
historian
Christopher
Prendergast
(1992)
of
Les
Misérables,
“is
uVerly
unimaginable
in
the
sani,zed
and
regimented
sewers
of
the
Second
Empire.”

14. Hiding
the
Excretory
City

15. “One
Quick
Flush
and
You’re
Gone”:
Plumbing
-­‐
Shit
into
Sewage
“Plumbing,
with
every
sanitary
flush,
with
every
gleaming
knob
and
valve,
every
glint
of
the
surface
of
the
porcelain,
is
meant
to
allow
you
efficiently
to
forget
about
the
fact
of
your
personal
self.
One
quick
flush
and
you’re
gone”
Margaret
Morgan,
(2002)
Rose
George
(2011)
puts
it,
“the
success
of
city
sanita.on
is
evidenced
by
its
removal
from
conversa.on”
In
the
process,
in
many
ci.es,
the
human
act
of
exploi.ng
gravity
by
defeca.ng
ver.cally
down
into
the
sani.sed
toilet
in
the
modern
home
becomes
strangely
disconnected
from
the
sewers
that
lie
below
–
and
their
socionatures...

16. The
Sewer
Uncanny
and
Its
Limits
Freud,
(1919)
“the
uncanny
[‘unheimlich’
in
German]
is
that
class
of
the
frightening
which
leads
back
to
what
is
known
of
old
and
[is]
long
familiar...
which
has
become
alienated
from
it
only
through
the
process
of
repression.
With
the
sewer
rejected
and
pushed
away
from
the
contemporary
imagina.on,
so
the
argument
goes,
the
boundary
between
the
surface
of
the
city
and
the
subterranean
sewer
becomes
marked
as
the
horizontal
boundary
between
“the
irra.onal
and
ra.onal,
culture
and
nature,
the
invisible
and
visible”
(MaAhew
Gandy)
Sewers
thus
become
secret
sites
for
marginality,
haun.ng,
tyranny
and
monstrous
mythology.
As
marginalised
spaces
they
lurk
threateningly
in
opposi.on
to
the
ra.onalized
and
ordered
spaces
of
the
urban
surface.
This
boundary,
of
course,
is
extremely
permeable:
at
any
.me
what’s
down
below
can
rear
up
and
challenge
the
clean,
ra.onal,
bourgeois
city
above.

17. Mythical
sewer
monsters
“have
not
only
been
removed
from
the
world
above
but
transformed
by
that
removal,”
David
Pike
emphasises.
”Bloated
by
the
sewage
on
which
they
feed,
their
excess
size
reveals
the
paradoxical
fecundity
of
waste”

18. The
use
of
psychoanaly.cal
ideas
are
deeply
problema.c.
They
work
to
obscure
the
social
rela.ons
of
capitalism
and
urbanism
under
which
such
environments
are
manufactured,
maintained
and
restructured.
In
filling
the
‘lower’
city
with
an
endless
array
of
demons,
monsters
and
urban
myths,
these
ideas
work
to
make
the
lives
of
the
people
whose
working
lives
involve
the
movement
of
the
city’s
shit
even
less
visible
and
even
more
marginal
than
they
would
otherwise

19. Ver.cal
Cosmography
and
Human
Exploita.on
“From
the
head
came
the
Brahmins,
a
priestly
class,
who
are
the
most
pure.
From
the
arms
came
the
Kshatriyas,
the
warriors
and
rulers.
From
the
lower
limbs
were
born
the
Vaishyas,
the
traders.
And
from
the
feet
the
Sudras,
the
lowest
caste,
des,ned
to
serve
the
other
three”
Mari
Marcel
Thekaekara

20. The image cannot be displayed. Your computer may not have enough memory to open the image, or the image may have been corrupted. Restart your computer, and then open the file again. If the red x still appears, you may have to delete the image and then insert it again.

21. The
‘tunnelisa.on’
of
migra.on
“Just
as
every
wall
casts
a
shadow,’
architect
Bryan
Finoki
writes,
“so
too
does
each
inspire
its
own
mechanism
of
subversion
[].
The
wall
is
an
object
that
inadvertently
designs
its
own
nega.on”,
in
the
form
of
prolifera.ng
tunnel
systems.

24. 3.
Sanctuary
Subterranean
burrowing
would
progress
“to
such
an
extent
that
burial
would
be
accomplished
defini.vely,
and
the
earth
[becoming]
nothing
more
than
an
immense
glacis
exposed
to
nuclear
fire”
Virilio
1975

25. Donald
Heilig,
a
theorist
with
the
U.S.
Air
Force,
“our
[sic.]
enemies
will
be
forced
deeper
and
deeper
into
the
earth,
possibly
presen.ng
overwhelming
challenges
to
U.S.
Air
Force
strategists.“
Ver.cal
hegemony,
subterranean
burrowing

26. “It
is
.me
to
harness
these
technologies
for
military
purposes
and
use
them
to
find
and
map
the
caves
and
tunnels
used
by
our
adversaries”,
Greg
Duckworth
of
the
Special
Projects
Office
of
the
Pentagon’s
high-­‐tech
research
agency,
DARPA

27. Troglody.c
plutocrats
“Wander
the
streets
of
central
London
and
it
can
seem
that
everyone
aspires
to
live
like
hobbits”
Charlie
Ellingworth
Will
HuAon
rages
“at
the
phenomenon
of
young
people,
unable
to
afford
sky-­‐high
London
rents,
cramped
into
one
shared
room,
while
the
super-­‐rich
dig
down
under
their
homes
or
buy
the
house
next
door
to
expand
their
living
space.”

30. Urban
Underworlds,
Urban
Crises

31. “Living
[homeless]
on
the
street
is
very
physical,”
Marc
Singer,
one
New
York
tunnel
dweller,
said
in
2014.
“If
it
rains,
you
get
wet,
and
you
only
have
as
much
as
you
can
carry.
But
in
the
tunnels,
you
can
build
yourself
a
house.”
Cited
in
Sukhdev
Sandhu,
2014

32. Mixing
concern
and
voyeurism,
fascina.ng
with
horror,
mythology
with
social
reportage,
the
animalis.c
metaphors
central
of
Toth’s
book
have
been
widely
cri.cized
for
depoli.cising
the
subterranean
fate
of
the
vulnerable
and
poor
in
contemporary
America,
as
they
literally
sediment
down
into
the
ar.ficial
ground
and
tunnel
spaces
of
the
underground
city,
away
from
what
she
calls
the
‘top
side
world’.
Seville
Williams,
a
recovering
drug
addict
inhabi.ng
self-­‐built
houses
in
the
tunnels
under
track
100,
fully
100
meters
below
the
bustling
hub
of
Grand
Central
Sta.on
in
Mid-­‐Town
ManhaAan.
“It’s
the
decade
of
crack
and
homelessness…
It’s
the
decade
of
the
tunnels,”
Seville
lamented.
“People’ve
been
down
and
out
since
the
beginning
of
.me,
but
we’s
the
first
to
actually
live
in
tunnels.
There’s
been
nowhere
else
to
go.”

33. Urban
catophilia:.
‘Authen.c’
and
endlessly
accumula.ng
historical
material
culture:
‘Hidden
art
gallery
of
Paris’:
80,000
Parisian
‘catophiles’
per
year
Caroline
Archer
and
Alexandre
Parré

34. Doubly
Unknowable:
Subterranean
Securi.sa.on
“The
shadow
of
the
terror
aAacks
on
9/11,
spread
into
all
manner
of
subterranean
spaces”.
“the
crea.ve
anarchy
of
earlier
.mes..
largely
dissipated
as
security
has
.ghtened.
The
aAacks
have
had
a
profound
effect
on
New
York’s
underworld,
an
area
that
now
seems
rife
with
threats.
Here
in
an
uninhabited
realm,
dark
and
unfamiliar
to
most
New
Yorkers,
the
city
appears
par.cularly
vulnerable.”
Julia
Solis
“There
are
maps
of
gas
facili.es,
of
telecommunica.ons,
of
cables
and
of
sewers,”
writer
Peter
Ackroyd
notes
about
London.
“But
they
are
not
available
for
public
perusal.
The
dangers
of
sabotage
are
considered
to
be
too
great.
So
the
underworld
is
doubly
unknowable.
It
is
a
sequestered
and
forbidden
zone.”

35. “It
was
quite
surreal.
Amtrak
[the
train
company]
had
hollowed
out
the
space.
There
used
to
be
actual
pain.ngs
and
amazing
art
theatre,
but
they’d
painted
it
grey.
There
was
no
graffi.,
no
rats,
no
semblance
that
anyone
had
ever
lived
there.
It
was
quite
sani.sed
and
heavily
patrolled”
Marc
Singer
(2011),
maker
of
the
celebrated
Year
2000
documentary
Dark
Days
‘Splintering’
subterranean?
‘Hollowing
out’
for
premium,
securi.sed,
global
city
infrastructure

36. (4)
Explora.on
and
Appropria.on
“One
of
the
things
that’s
really
interes.ng
about
that
idea
of
exploring
I
think
is
opening
up
the
ver.cal
dimension
of
the
city”
Bradley
GarreA
Urban
explorers
direct
most
of
their
efforts
at
transgressing
the
liminal
boundaries
of
‘normal’
life
that
tend
to
confine
urbanites
to
the
surface-­‐city
(with
limited,
shepherded
movements,
of
course,
down
into
subway
trains,
along
subterranean
highways,
or
up
into
tourist
viewing
plaxorms).
With
the
planet
mapped
by
globe-­‐
straddling
satellites,
and
every
square
cen.meter
of
its
surface
territory
imageable
from
the
ver.cal
gaze
of
a
Google
Earth,
perhaps,
the
movement
suggests,
the
real
domains
for
explora.on
now
lie
just
above
and
just
below
the
extending
landscapes
of
the
world’s
ci.es?

37. 5.
“Moss-­‐grown
memory”:
Bunker
Tourism
Increasing
tendency
to
“travel
somewhere
not
for
museums
and
sunsets
but
for
ruins,
bombed-­‐out
terrain,
for
the
moss-­‐
grown
memory
of
torture
and
war”
Don
DeLillo,
Underworld.
Exploring
“ruins
of
the
twen.eth
century,
of
ideologies,
conflicts,
and
dreams
of
mastery
through
reinforced
concrete”
John
Beck

38. “You'll
want
to
browse
the
Museum
Store!”
Here
can
be
purchased
“Titan
II,
Civil
Defense
and
other
memorabilia”
including
“pocket
dosimeters
used
to
detect
radia.on,
rebar
salvaged
from
Titan
II
missile
sites,
and
replicas
of
an
actual
Titan
II
launch
key.”

39. Such
tensions
hint
at
the
wider
risk
that
the
rapid
growth
of
bunker
tourism
denies
their
origins
in
periods
of
deep
ideological
violence,
ruina.on
and
trauma.
The
dangers
here
are
that
their
presenta.on
as
tourist
aArac.ons
fails
to
communicate
what
1960s
avante
gardists
Situa.onist
Interna.onal
called
the
“urbanism
of
despair”
that
sustained
their
construc.on
in
the
first
place
However,
danger
of
aesthe.cising
and
depoli.cising
the
“urbanism
of
despair”
as
‘visitor
experience’?

40. Thank
you!
Steve.graham@ncl.ac.uk