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Paper short abstract

Underground transportation is a feature of the metropolitan cities. Many smaller cities, however, also have their own virtual undergrounds which only exist as schemes and descriptions on the web pages and social media, which serve to (re)shape urban landscapes, both online and offline.

Paper long abstract

Underground transportation is a feature of the metropolitan cities. Many smaller cities, however, also have their own – virtual – undergrounds which only exist as schemes and descriptions on the web pages and social media (in Russia alone we have detected over 50 such subways, which became the material for the presented study). In these “imaginary undergrounds” the perception of the cityscape and its focal points is translated into a transportation scheme and then into a narrative which follows the framework of official descriptions of metro’s history and functions. Entangled in the complex network of institutional and vernacular narratives, they are used to make sense of otherwise dystopian cities with significant lack of transportation connectedness and structure them. Yet, ironical as they are, these non-existent undergrounds can become a very tangible source of local identity and pride, a tourist attraction (like in Valday, where gift shops sell entrance tokens for non-existent tube), unofficial symbols (as in Omsk), a “weapon of the geek” (Coleman 2013) and an argument in controversies between urban activists and city government. In the paper I'll show how various actors - local citizens, businesses, artists, urban administration, etc - use these virtual objects to challenge and (re) shape urban cultural and physical landscape.