Call for Papers for T2M's Mexico City Conference 2016
Panel Organizer: Robin Kellermann
Discussant: TBA
Organizing flow and friction: Evolution and prospects of passenger routing.
When engineers and architects were assigned to build the first railway stations in the 1830s, they were not able to draw on previous experiences of how to handle huge passenger volumes in cramped confines. As architectural historian Caroll Meeks affirmed, “neither of the two preceding modes of transportation – the canal and the century-old turnpike system – had developed special buildings for the use of passengers“ (Meeks 1956, 27).
Despite many operational aspects were established through innovative adaptation of the stagecoach system, the first railway stations however resembled a virgin soil of experimentation. Having faced the instant need of constructing stations as highly functional and multifarious ensembles for both managing the routing as well as the punctual impediment of flows, the railway age set the initial starting point for a long history of finding spatial, operational and technological solutions for the problems of handling ever growing passenger volumes. As a result, passenger buildings across all transport modes have formed paradigmatic spaces for the organization of flow and friction, materialized most impressively in today’s airports.
Exploring the inner politics and operational procedures of “moorings”, the panel aims at using flow and friction as analytical lenses for understanding the co-evolution of operators’ ambitions and passengers’ experiences/needs at transportation hubs. The panel therefore invites empirical as well as theoretical and methodological contributions that highlight (historically) shifting strategies of handling flows and friction at stations, stops or airports, taking into account the various technologies, infrastructures and spatial arrangements such as waiting rooms, queuing, signing or security systems.
How e.g. passengers were (and are) grouped, assisted or classified across the various transport contexts? Who may flow and who faces friction? Can we, in retrospect, speak of national traditions or typologies of handling huge passenger volumes? What factors triggered the homogenization of operational procedures? Moreover, what are possible future prospects or legal limitations in organizing flows and friction at the background of increasing security demands?
I am looking forward to receiving your ideas and meeting you in Mexico!
Please send your proposals (including title, author’s name, affiliation, brief abstract and a short biography) until 30 March 2016 or contact me for further questions:
Best wishes, Robin Kellermann
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