Art in transit: Mobility, aesthetics and urban development

Abstract

High-profile architecture and design, alongside integrated arts and cultural programming are now ubiquitous features of public transit networks. This article considers how and why transit-based arts and cultural programmes are proliferating globally as well as the impact of these programmes on transit and urban dynamics. Through critically analysing the discourses surrounding different transit art initiatives and the institutional structures which support them, this article shows how transit art is used today for varied – and often contradictory – ends. Based on this, it argues that we should not uncritically celebrate the rise of transit art as an unmitigated civic good. Rather, we must situate the rise of transit art within a political and aesthetic economy in which art has become ‘expedient’, and contend with the way transit art is implicated in elite, exclusionary and unsustainable processes of urbanisation.