Verticality

The history of urban design and urban planning is often conceptualized through a tension between top-down and bottom-up realizations of power. This binary is then mapped onto two ideal-type figures: the planner, with his privileged visuality from atop the skyscraper, and the flaneur, with his tactile and tactical routes through the streetscape. This article argues that the top-down/bottom-up dichotomy misses a fundamental location of power in spatial production: the mezzanine. The mezzanine is the strata of urban space located just above street level, but far below the perches of the planner's eye. The article explores four mediations that occur on the mezzanine level: connectivity (utility poles, telephone wires, the grid), the management of mobility (traffic signs and signals), navigation (street signs, address systems), and surveillance (CCTV, street lights, eyes on the street). It argues that studies of material infrastructure located at the mezzanine complicate the top-down/bottom-up distinction.

Urban verticality is often discussed in terms of superlative structures like skyscrapers and in relation to equations of height with forms of power, privilege and prestige. As a counterpoint, this thesis employs the idea of ‘ordinary verticalities’ to examine quotidian elevated spaces.In particular, the elevated public spaces of Singapore’s public housing estates are examined. It asks two broad questions: How does verticality transform public spaces and publicness in Singapore? What can be theorised differently about vertical public spaces? Through examining Singapore’s urban history and four representative vertical spaces, and by also using a ‘fully volumetric' lens, it reveals that vertical public spaces are caught between paradigms of the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘spectacular’; they are thrown into a constant tension between fulfilling ideals of publicness and the ineluctably privileged and exclusive positions of height. Vertical public spaces are constituted by the vexed relations between the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘spectacular’; the inclusive and the exclusive; and the high-rise and the low-ground. Vertical publicness and spaces are reconfigured by these tensions - some spaces constitute a heightened, exclusivity, and hold ‘disciplined’ publicness, while others grant credence back to the ground and are contingent upon and relational to the ground-level realities. Singapore’s case has shown that new theorisations that are attendant to verticality needs to be formulated to arrest the thus far inchoate, confused and messy notion of vertical public spaces.

A partire dall’analisi de Le città invisibili la relazione si propone di mettere in luce alcuni tratti peculiari di “verticalità” e di analizzare quali siano i significati che questa assume nell’architettura delle città. La verticalità è individuata come spazio privilegiato di polarizzazione di elementi opposti anche in altre opere della produzione calviniana che saranno brevemente passate in rassegna nell’ultima parte della relazione.

Nakh-Daghestanian languages have encountered growing interest from typologists and linguists from other subdiscplines, and more and more languages from the Nakh-Daghestanian language family are being studied. This paper provides a grammatical overview of the hitherto undescribed Sanzhi Dargwa, followed by a detailed analysis of the grammaticalized expression of spatial elevation in Sanzhi. Spatial elevation, a topic that has not received substantial attention in Caucasian linguistics, manifests itself across different parts of speech in Sanzhi Dargwa and related languages. In Sanzhi, elevation is a deictic category in partial opposition with participant-oriented deixis / horizontally-oriented directional deixis. This paper treats the spatial uses of demonstratives, spatial preverbs and spatial cases that express elevation as well as the semantic extension of this spatial category into other, non-spatial domains. It further compares the Sanzhi data to other Caucasian and non-Caucasian languages and makes suggestions for investigating elevation as a subcategory within a broader category of topographical deixis.

In her essay "In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Verticality," artist and theorist Hito Steyerl traces the historical shift in visual perspective from the linear to the vertical throughout the last century.  Vertical perspective, she argues, is a view from above that exacerbates the distance between subject and object and, thereby, turns perspective into a "one-way gaze of superiors onto inferiors, a looking down from high to low." Steyerl analyzes paintings and new technologies that, she argues, are central to the acceleration of the predominance of vertical perspective.  Using Steyerl's proposition as a point of departure, I argue that a reorientation from vertical perspective to immersive perception can help shift the political, ethical, and social values of our time.  I am interested particularly in immersive forms of perception as achieved through contemporary, participatory artworks that empower horizontal, democratic systems as well as the production of subjectivity.  Blurring the boundaries between art and life, these artworks facilitate an environment in which traditional roles of immobile and observational spectatorship are exchanged for activated, rhizomatic forms of thinking.  This immersive form of perception offers a position of resistance to the damaging perspective of verticality.  Through multisensory perception and multi-perspectival viewpoints, immersive perception effectively eliminates the dichotomies of perspective: up/down, inside/out, subject/object.  In this thesis, I argue that participatory artworks should be reconsidered as models of resistance to the damaging, predominant perspective of verticality and contend that they have the power to create possibilities for plurality, collective power, and community.

French abstract:  Chez l’homme, la perception de la pesanteur et la notion de verticalité résultent de l’interaction de plusieurs capteurs sensoriels : les récepteurs vestibulaires – spécialisés dans la détection des déplacements statiques et des accélérations linéaires et angulaires –, les propriocepteurs musculaires et articulaires et les capteurs visuels. L’ensemble de ces informations sensorielles informe le système nerveux central sur la position de la tête par rapport au tronc et aux membres, et au-delà, sur la stature et le déplacement de l’organisme par rapport au vecteur gravitationnel. Sur un plan conceptuel, des similitudes apparaissent entre le mode de fabrication d’une étoffe à l’aide d’un métier à tisser vertical et le mode d’acquisition de l’information vestibulaire, responsable de la notion de verticalité chez l’homme. Le tissage d’un textile par les Mésopotamiens ainsi que l’acquisition et le traitement d’une information vestibulaire emploient, en effet, un même élément moteur : la force de gravité terrestre.

English abstract:  In man, a feeling of gravity and verticality results from the interaction of several sensors: the vestibular receptors, which are dedicated to static displacement and linear accelaration sensing, the articular and muscular proprioceptors and, finally, the visual sensors. This set of sensory information not only informs the central nervous system of the head position in relation to the trunk and limbs, but also of body stature and displacement in relation to gravitational vector. Conceptually, there are similarities between the weaving of cloth on a vertical loom and the acquisition and processing of vestibular information, which allow us to perceive verticality. Indeed, both the Mesopotamian weaving process and vestibular acquisition and processing use the same driving force: earth’s gravity.

Der Begriff des Kontradispositivs wird in der vorliegenden Studie zur Beschreibung zeichnerischer Verfahren und Diskurse im Zeitraum von 1955 bis 1975 gebraucht. Als Kontradispositive lässt sich eine dekonstruktive Zeichenpraxis beschreiben, die an den Paradigmen ihrer eigenen Geschichte und Technik ansetzt, indem sie die Theorie der Zeichnung zu Ende denkt und sie als eine Kunst der Entgrenzung fortschreibt. Philosophische Exkurse und kunsthistorische Einzelstudien zu Linie und Grund, Geste und Spur, Blindheit, Händigkeit und Aleatorik ›ergrenzen‹ die Möglichkeiten zeichnerischer Medialität und eröffnen gleichzeitig einen kritischen Blick auf Allegorien und Adaptionen ihrer Entgrenzungsgeschichte nach 1975.

Ausgezeichnet mit dem Wolfgang-Ratjen-Preis 2018 des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte in München.

This paper explores the phenomenon of vertical informality, an under-studied form of informal housing at large scale, and the role of developers within vertical informality. We investigate the case of vertical informality in Kufr Aqab, East Jerusalem, where developers have constructed multiple high-rise apartment buildings with thousands of inhabited apartments without land registration, zoning or building permits. We investigate the conditions for the formation of vertical informality in Kufr Aqab and explore the developers' perspectives and risks, including land ownership, finance, reputation and professional ethics, and construction standards. Drawing from the case study and interviews with local developers, as well as literature on informality, we define vertical informality as (i) developer-built high-rise or mid-rise housing for sale or for rent, that (ii) lacks formal registration and bank-financing, and (iii) does not comply with formal planning and building codes. Some aspects of vertical informality are unique to Kufr Aqab, relating mainly to the geopolitical status of contested East Jerusalem. Other aspects are significant worldwide, shedding light on the role of the real estate developers in informal housing. We conclude with directions for future research.

A growing body of work has highlighted the centrality of verticality to the making of contemporary urbanism, pushing scholars to begin conceptualising inequality, politics, and planning as multi-scalar in nature. This paper builds off these interventions to argue that verticality should be understood as a fragile and unstable achievement, a fra-gility heightened when the oft-taken for granted workings of the state and private sector, which enable the appearance of verticality as a seamless achievement, fail. Drawing on research conducted in Luanda, Angola, this paper explores how residents, planners , and real estate developers discuss the difficulties of maintaining the experience, materiality, and imaginations of verticality as embodied in the architectural form of the high-rise. The paper shows that in the context of ongoing urban decay and the seeming abnegation of most state responsibility for provision, urban residents are forced to engage in the production of a DIY verticality-constantly patching and repairing buildings to keep them viable, actions which in turn pull them into relationships of privatized belonging with the city. As such, the paper argues that the material politics of the high-rise in Luanda both highlights the fragility at the heart of verticality as well as the shifting forms of privatized belonging immanent to this fragility.

La reflexión sobre la ciudad vertical contemporánea parece carecer de un soporte
teórico que sea capaz de afrontar la densidad, la verticalidad y la complejidad
siguiendo un modelo que ponga al habitante en el centro. Los desarrollos urbanísticos,
principalmente en ciudades asiáticas, son impulsados por un mercado
inmobiliario al alza que construye para especular y no para habitar. Por otro lado,
los planificadores, sobrepasados por las urgencias a las que son sometidos,
proyectan entornos que siguen los principios de una Carta de Atenas, publicada
hace ya casi ochenta años. Es el momento de preguntarnos por una alternativa
que sea capaz de abordar la ciudad como un organismo de múltiples capas y
dimensiones, que proponga organizar la ciudad en altura de forma más libre, más
rica y más espontánea. Este ensayo pretende rescatar los experimentos de las
vanguardias de los años sesenta para encontrar estrategias de crecimiento en altura
más humanas. De lo contrario, conceptos como comunidad, cohesión social
y tejido urbano irán desapareciendo de nuestras ciudades, perdiendo el mayor
valor que tenemos como sociedad: lo colectivo.


The reflection on the contemporary vertical city seems to lack theoretical support
that is capable of dealing with density, verticality and complexity following a model
that puts the inhabitant in the center. Urban developments, mainly in Asian cities,
are driven by a rising real estate market that builds to speculate and not to inhabit.
On the other hand, the planners, surpassed by the urgencies to which they are
subjected, project environments that follow the principles of an Athens Charter,
published almost eighty years ago. It is time to ask about an alternative that is
capable of addressing the city as an organism of multiple layers and dimensions,
which proposes to organize the city in height more freely, richer and more spontaneously.
This essay aims to rescue the experiments of the avant-garde of the
sixties to find more human growth strategies in height. Otherwise, concepts such
as community, social cohesion and urban fabric will disappear from our cities,
losing the greatest value we have as a society: the collective.

Since the 1950s, views of Earth from above have been critiqued for provoking detachment from and decontextualization of human, terrestrial concerns. These critiques thus establish Earth’s enveloping atmosphere as the ultimate context for meaningful and grounded accounts of humanness, and outer space as a site for abstract, generalizable knowledge. But in outer space, the explanatory work done by “context” is put in question, because spacefaring humans must attend to basic and constantly shifting conditions for life that lie beyond “context” on Earth, including breathing. Attention to humans in real and speculative space environments reveals context as a naturalizing device that establishes universal nature/culture distinctions through recourse to grounding terrestrial ontologies. [objectivity, comparison, relativism, outer space, verticality, horizontality, exploration]

Este artículo describe la vida interna de un peronismo del interior del país a través del seguimiento de las dinámicas de sus principales actores políticos, provenientes del radicalismo y allegados al mundo sindical vernáculo. Mediante el análisis de conflictos y acuerdos en torno a momentos electorales y de disputa partidaria en la provincia de Mendoza, se constata cómo fue transformándose el peronismo en un espacio local entre 1945 y 1955. El principal aporte del trabajo es su llamado de atención para pensar a los actores como partícipes activos de la configuración de disputas y soluciones situadas que los involucraron. Se sostiene que si el peronismo fue con el tiempo adoptando modalidades más enrevesadas de lidiar con los problemas internos fue también como consecuencia de conveniencias y acomodamientos de los propios actores provinciales que coyuntural y parcialmente se beneficiaban de esas resoluciones en una variedad de situaciones que requieren ser esclarecidas en cada caso. Se trabaja a partir del análisis documental de prensa gráfica, desde una perspectiva de historia pragmática sobre las fuentes, es decir, desde un enfoque que las considera, ante todo, como una reivindicación en el presente de la acción que les dio origen.
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This article describes Peronism´s internal life in the interior of the country by following the dynamics of the most important political actors coming from radicalism and coming from the vernacular trade union world in a local space. Through the analysis of conflicts and agreements around electoral moments and partisan disputes in the province of Mendoza, it verifies how Peronism transformed in a local space between 1945 and 1955. The main contribution of the research is its call for attention to think actors as active participants in the configuration of disputes and situated solutions involving them. It is argued that if Peronism adopted more complicated ways of dealing with internal problems throughout time, it was also as a consequence of the conveniences and adjustments of the provincial actors themselves, who temporarily and partially benefited from these resolutions in a variety of situations which need to be specifically investigated. These conclusions are obtained through the documentary analysis of graphic local press, from a pragmatic history perspective of the sources, that is, from an approach that considers them, above all, as a present vindication of the action giving rise to them.
***
Este artigo descreve a vida interna de um peronismo no interior do país monitorando a dinâmica de seus principais atores políticos, oriundos do radicalismo e próximos ao mundo sindical vernáculo. Por meio da análise dos conflitos e acordos em torno dos momentos eleitorais e da disputa partidária na província de Mendoza, verifica-se como o peronismo foi se transformando em um espaço local entre 1945 e 1955. A principal contribuição do trabalho é a chamada de atenção para pensar aos atores como participantes ativos na configuração das disputas e soluções situadas que os envolveram. Argumenta-se que, se o peronismo ao longo do tempo adotou formas mais complicadas de lidar com os problemas internos, isso foi também uma consequência da conveniência e acomodação dos próprios atores provinciais, que temporariamente e parcialmente se beneficiaram dessas resoluções em uma variedade de situações que precisam ser esclarecidas em cada caso. Trabalha-se a partir da análise documental da imprensa gráfica, de uma perspectiva da história pragmática das fontes, ou seja, de uma abordagem que as considera, antes de tudo, como uma reivindicação no presente da ação que lhes deu origem.

Este trabajo examina las relaciones entre imaginarios
urbanos y tecnoespacio en Lima contemporánea, a
través de un viaje por lahipe,realidad, analizando foros
y portales especializados como skscraperpage.com y la
galería digital 3D de Google Earh, instancias virtuales,
a través de las cuales, podemos rastrear el proceso de
construcción de un lugar denominado Lima y de su
centralidad. Nos interesa explorar particularmente las
nuevas cartografías del imaginario urbano de Lima,
enfocadas en el paisaje urbano vertical (sklin.e), que
privilegia lo panorámico y lo ascendente, junto a la
densidad de la edilicia construida, como un epítome
de modernidad y de articulación de Lima con el
escenario global, proceso que involucra a buena parte
de las ciudades capitales latinoamericanas.
This paper examines the relationshíp between urban
imaginaries aíd techn.ospace in contemporary Lima,
analyzing forums and specialized webpages, such as
skscrperpage.com and Google Earh digital galleiy,
virtual spaces that permit us trace the process of
construccion of a space named Lima and its centrality.
We will explore specially the new cartographies of
urban imaginaries around the vertical skscraper
and the urban density of Lima, elements valued as
a epitome of modernity, showing furthermore, the
leve! of connection of Lima city with the global space,
process that includes many latinamerican cities.

In this paper, we look at the role that public space may take on in the redevelopment of suburban high-risebuildings in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). We are interested in what role public space playsin the imaginary and how different forms of public participation in planning processes are beneficial to theoutcome of the redesign of high-rise buildings who are in need of repair and retrofitting due to their age andtheir social stigmatization. These suburban high-rises offer insight into newly proliferating forms of public space,and speak to the need for more diverse and specific physical, social and political articulations of public space.We find that by examining public space through the lens of verticality we are able to see how different planninginterventions, urban development processes, spatial contexts and competing imaginaries produce very differentand often hybrid forms. We base our findings upon selected planning and policy documents, media reports anddiscour...

This paper examines the practices and epistemic dimensions relating to subterranean space that led to a new three‐dimensional understanding of the terrain, its scientific investigation, and its political acquisition as territory. Although caves had been explored by upright descent since the 18th century, improved techniques for surveying, mapping, and exploring deep shafts established speleology (“cave study”) as a scientific discipline. As political interest in the military and economic uses of caves was growing, national cave cadasters, state‐owned speleological research institutes, and legal regulations evolved accordingly. This development resulted in a vertical concept of territory in Europe during World War I and the interwar period. Especially in archeology and prehistory—so‐called “national” sciences—politics and scholarly research became resources for each other, with both, in their respective ways, being committed to the natural and cultural underground heritage.

As an attempt to critically engage with the contemporary visual experience, this short essay explores the horizontal, vertical, and virtual viewpoints. Its main purpose is to question the virtual realm as a place where technology allows for various visual experiences including new, digital and oblique perspectives on both horizontality and verticality.

The challenge of disorderly growth and lack of planning, resulting from the processes of urban occupation in many Brazilian cities, the need to build environmentally healthy, balanced and sustainable urban spaces has arisen, as an attempt to guarantee protection of the anthropic and natural environment and the quality of life for current citizens, without compromising future generations. Academic and governmental discussions cover social, environmental and economic aspects and problems established in the urban environment in order to plan sustainable cities. Therefore, the creation of a sustainability indicator becomes an important tool to measure and understand the aspects and processes of the built environment in cities in order to contribute to the planning and actions of the various actors involved. The study presents the study for the construction of the Density, Verticality and Urban Sustainability Indicator (DVSI) for vertical condominiums in the municipality of Campo Grande, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Developed with the purpose of finding an ideal indicator of housing with quality in the public space and private condominiums. Researches were developed within the density, verticality and sustainability aspects, establishing parameters indicated by area professionals (urban planners, teachers, researchers and builders) who established different weights among the items surveyed. The variables chosen are divided into 10 items for "outside the condominium" and 10 for "inside the condominium".' The study concludes that from the integrated analysis of some existing condominiums in the city of Campo Grande, Brazil, it was possible to verify their conditions in the face of the various variables of the DVSI. Thus allowing obtaining a tool to assist in the planning process, and decision-making in the implementation of condominiums in urban areas, based on the concepts of verticality, density and sustainability.

This article introduces and develops the concept of "antagonistic landscapes" on the basis of fieldwork conducted in the Israeli settlement Efrat in the occupied West Bank and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem campus on Mount Scopus. The concept refers to the ways in which powerful actors antagonize "unwanted" communities by means of the physicality of the landscape. Both fieldwork sites, built on hills, use higher ground to tower over, yet overlook, the presence of "unwanted" Palestinian communities in the valleys below, thereby constituting pro-totypically antagonistic landscapes. That said, as expressions of utopian dreams, antagonistic landscapes require the erasure of what already exists. But, Palestinians continue to lay claim to the landscape. As a consequence then, these dreams remain utopian since by simply persisting and refusing to be entirely effaced the antagonized inscribe themselves into the fabric of the landscape. Antagonistic landscapes thus display both the dreams that the antagonizers hoped to realize, and the narratives of those whom they failed to replace.

In a study about (day)dreaming we searched for ways of doing research where we could jointly explore the becoming of life and important matters through our experiences of dreaming. Inspired by Bachelard’s book The Poetics of Space, in which he emphasized the importance of small, intimate spaces for poetic moments to occur, we bought a caravan. Through this inquiry into a new spatiotemporality we experienced how the caravan offers a rupture from the mundane ongoingness enabling us to reconnect to the moment, the place, each other and ourselves. What may be seen as self-evident, but it was not for us, is the recognition that in developing research practices for studying dreaming, we had to first start dreaming ourselves.

Spirituality is often perceived as a synonym for religion. In this article, I would like to point to some alternative definitions of spirituality grounded in Max Scheler’s philosophical anthropology. Scheler states that the essence of a human being is not exhausted by practical intelligence, as though it was the culmination of a gradational anthropology. The distinctive principle characterizing the human way of being, is “the spirit” (der Geist). At the centre of its various manifestations is a person, with its freedom, its “openness to the world.” Spirituality can therefore become a symbol of searching for the meaning of life. Thus, the spiritual dimension (also called the vertical dimension, in the light of “deep” ideas and “high” ideals) of human life, represents an area for the development of our potential. The paper outlines this understanding of spirituality, and explores in particular its connection with sport and education.

Perception of the visual vertical is strongly based on our ability to match visual inflow with vestibular, proprioceptive, tactile, and even visceral information that contributes to maintaining an internal representation of the vertical. An important cortical region implicated in multisensory integration is the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), which also is involved in higher order forms of body- and space-related cognition. To test whether this region integrates body-related multisensory information necessary for establishing the subjective visual vertical, we combined a psychophysical task (the rod-and-frame test) with transient inhibition of the rTPJ via continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS). A Gabor patch visual detection task was used as a control visual task. cTBS of early visual cortex (V1–V3) was used to test whether early visual cortices played any role in verticality estimation. We show that inhibition of rTPJ activity selectively impairs the ability to evaluate ...

In this paper, we offer a conceptual and methodological intervention that demonstrates how multi-sensory ethnography might enrich critical analysis of vertical urban transformation. Through the lens of two sites in Peckham, southeast London – a multi-storey car park and an ex-industrial warehouse complex – recently remade as leisure and retail spaces, we examine how processes and practices by which these spaces at height are designed and curated reproduce social and spatial inequalities. As we argue, in retraining the vantage point of research on verticality through attention to other senses – which we label here as non-ocular vistas – new perspectives and texture are brought to understandings of place-making, that address how power functions through the erection of physical, symbolic and sensory exclusions, and how sensorial clashes makes visible contestations over space in a changing urban environment. In this way, our contribution: (1) privileges a multi-sensory perspective in understanding how power is reproduced in and through the vertical transformation of the city; (2) intervenes in research on verticality to centre the concept of non-ocular vistas; and (3) offers a methodological innovation that make visible the subtle affects that manifest the politics of exclusion within spaces at height

Despite its prevalence in a range of works over a range of time periods, the physical act of falling as a literary device has received limited critical attention. Previous work either focuses on metaphorical falls, lacks a systematic theory from which to draw, or concentrates solely on 9/11 fiction, thereby failing to consider the diversity of images of falling and their potential for meaning outside of the nexus of one particular historic event. 
This papers address the gap in the critical field by bringing together disparate theories about falling, verticality, heights, and lightness and heaviness to clarify the theoretical concerns at work when examining fictional portrayals of physical falling across a variety of novels. Drawing on critics such as Gaston Bachelard, Steven Connor, Cathy Caruth, Eleanor Kaufman, Aimee Pozorski, and Peter Sloterdijk, I argue that descriptions of falling in the novel provide an apt space where authors explore the liminal dimensions of characters whose identities straddle the border between two or more social, political, or existential realms.
Through theoretical discussion and practical application, I champion the fall, as air is for Stephen Connor, the house is for Gaston Bachelard, and spheres are for Peter Sloterdijk, as a useful tool for examining human experience in the modern age through the lens of contemporary literature. Falling occupies a liminal space which relies on the co-occurrence of opposites, including weight and weightlessness, control and lack thereof, and life and death. It embodies the vertigo of human experience, in which our perceptions do not necessarily accurately describe the world, and in which emotions, issues of identity, and a lack of understanding of the human mind cloud any cogent understanding of the self and the universe. Using Adam Roberts’s On, Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl, and Ali Smith’s Hotel World as case studies, I argue that by depicting verticality, which necessarily exhibits the tension of multiple possibilities and meanings, authors are able to elevate the tensions and meanings behind their respective works as a whole; the liminal space of the fall allows for deeper exploration of liminal states, such the transitionary stages of philosophical enlightenment, the confusing in-between of multiracial identity, and the experience of distortions in the regular flow of time.

Crossrail is Europe's largest infrastructure project, a new high-speed subway route being built underneath central London. The system comprises a complex subterranean network of tunnels, ventilation shafts, caverns and junctions insinuated – burrowed – within the dense meshwork of infrastructure already entangled beneath the streets of London (Victorian sewers, the London Underground network, gas pipes, electricity and fibre optic cables). In Deleuze and Guattari's terminology, infrastructure comprises an archetypally "striated space", wherein flows are channelled and harnessed by the State. Although urban infrastructure networks shape urban life perhaps to a greater degree than ever, such systems are almost entirely invisible, rendering opaque the 'social relations and power mechanisms that are scripted in and enacted through these flows' (Kaika and Swyngedouw, 2000: 121). However, these hidden spaces are rarely unequivocal, and their functions are seldom totalising. The Crossrail megaproject literally comprises a series of holes bored through the urban subsurface – yet to what extent can this infrastructural rhizome be described as a "holey space" in the Deleuzoguattarian sense? A conception of the city as porous facilitates an understanding of how alternative uses, meanings and counter-narratives can emerge from holes in the existing order. As Crossrail's reterritorialisation of London continues apace, how are we to make sense of this transformation? Based on ongoing research, this paper considers what kinds of literally and figuratively subterranean practices and imaginaries might emerge from this most peculiar of spaces.