Super-tall and Ultra-deep: The Cultural Politics of the Elevator

Abstract

Entire libraries can be filled with volumes exploring the cultures, politics and geographies of the largely horizontal mobilities and transportation infrastructures that are intrinsic to urban modernity (highways, railways, subways, public transit and so on). And yet the recent ‘mobilities turn’ has almost completely neglected the cultural geographies and politics of vertical transportation within and between the buildings of vertically-structured cityscapes. Attempting to rectify this neglect, this article seeks, first, to bring elevator travel centrally into discussions about the cultural politics of urban space and, second, to connect elevator urbanism to the even more neglected worlds of elevator-based descent in ultra-deep mining. The article addresses, in turn: the historical emergence of elevator urbanism; the cultural significance of the elevator as spectacle; the global ‘race’ in elevator speed; shifts towards the ‘splintering’ of elevator experiences; experiments with new mobility systems which blend elevators and automobiles; problems of vertical abandonment; and, finally, the neglected vertical politics of elevator-based ‘ultra-deep’ mining.