73 Urban Journeys

This project is part of Urban Mobilities; Locating Consumption of Ubiquitous Content, a larger research project originally conceived by Dr Nina Wakeford (INCITE) for a collaboration with INTEL Research Council. It is designed to research the relationship between mobility and experience of place, with particular reference to the use of digital content. In exploring the importance of place in the context of consuming digital information it involves a qualitative study of spaces in London in which people consume information.

73urbanjourneys.com builds upon this research by undertaking a qualitative ethnographic and observational study of the No.73 bus exploring its route, passengers, history and iconic place in the urban landscape. The use of a transport route as a way of sampling places in the city was inspired by François Maspero's Roissy Express; A Journey Through The Paris Suburbs, (1994).

The project resulted in a website and weblog about the No.73 Routemaster bus in London. The weblog looks at how digital content is consumed on the bus as well as uses technology to document the research and gather data. The experiment was both theoretical and methodological as it provided a means to elicit responses and explore the challenges of analysis.

Katrina Jungnickel