Fictions from the underground

Matthew Harle

City, 2015, vol. 19, issue 4, 444-462

Abstract: This paper discusses an unrealized urban plan from the 1960s that proposed to build a network of tunnel motorways and monorails underneath central London. By reframing this plan as a work of fiction, I want to underscore how literary geography perpetuates a limited tradition that merely focuses on fiction produced in or about the city, and not literature produced by or for the city. In the process of re-reading and, to an extent, reclaiming these plans from the National Archives, I argue that these abandoned visions provide an interesting text for literary geographers to access a genre of literature that bisects the built environment and fiction. The scope for this tactic is potentially vast, but a renewed look at unbuilt, unrealized or abandoned architectural texts and similar unconventional forms, would allow for literary scholars to perform a greater, more active role than before: from connecting their analysis directly to the built environment and the contemporary moment in urban space, to discovering new unbuilt works that disrupt established cultural narratives.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2015.1051724

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