Janet Vertesi in Mind The Gap: The ‘Tube Map’ as London’s User Interface (PDF). The whole thing is well worth a read. (Hat tip: the Human Transit blog.)
An interesting article, though by by framing the tubemap in terms of use, rather than by design, does not explain how this geography and spatial conception arose, and what it’s point was. The artificial destorting of space in the tube map had an economic rationale - by equalising space between stations, the map made distances in the middle of London seem far apart (thereby encouraging intra-Zone 1 journeys), and journeys from the suburbs to the middle seem short - ‘just ten stops’). Coupled with the other mainstay of Underground design, the poster, commuters, female shoppers, train and bus users were drawn to the Tube, leading to path dependencies to this day. It’ll be interesting to see what lasting effect, if any, the strikes at the moment will have on Londoners’ mobilities and spatial conceptions.
