Article ID: CBB222042130

Unruly Tramscapes: Literary Mobilities and 1930s London Tramway Closure Events (2022)

unapi

This article reappraises tramway closures in 1930s London by reading enthusiast memoirs of the events surrounding them. Literary representations in forms such as the novel and poetry of urban public transport experience often overlook experiences in peripheral urban zones and on modes such as the tramway which had a chiefly working-class ridership. Building a perspective around London's tramscapes, and by practicing Deep Locational Criticism as part of a characteristically “humanities” mode, temporally focused, in mobility studies, the article reveals contestations including acts of disorder surrounding the closure events, deploying those in a rereading of mid-twentieth-century British history more broadly. The 1930s North London suburbs emerge through a reading of George Atkins's account of 1938 closure events as sites of carnivalesque disorder and other bottom-up transport-focused activity, including the formation of enthusiast groups. This group of practices opposed the extremely top-down transport planning of the post-1933 London Passenger Transport Board's management.

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Associated with

Article Margherita Cisani; Laura Lo Presti; Lynne Pearce; Giada Peterle; Chiara Rabbiosi (2022) Introduction - Unruly Landscapes: Mobility, Transience, and Transformation. Transfers (pp. 3-8). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB222042130/

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Authors & Contributors
Flonneau, Mathieu
Zylstra, Geoff D.
Errázuriz, Tomás
Passalacqua, Arnaud
Nadine Lind
Peltomaa, Juha
Journals
Technology and Culture
The Journal of Transport History
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
Transfers
Publishers
Routledge
Amsterdam University Press
Edinburgh University Press
Island Press
The MIT Press
University of Nebraska Press
Concepts
Land transportation
Urban transportation
Mobility
Technology and society
Automobiles
Users of technology
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
20th century, early
Places
London (England)
Great Britain
Paris (France)
United States
Berlin (Germany)
France
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