ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the image of the palimpsest leads astray. It suggests an all-too comfortable synchronicity of erased or disappeared parts of the urban condition with presently existing ones, when it is their convoluted co-existence that arguably requires analytical labour. The chapter addresses some of these articulations with the help of case studies arising from within the world of urban railway spaces—especially urban spaces associated with disused railways. Its aim is to broaden the approach to urban development and politics and to add to the vocabulary of urban change. The chapter explores pieces of railway infrastructures in major Western cities with a view to analyse key transformative processes at the utopian/dystopian interface. Infrastructural spaces are everywhere but are mostly taken for granted unless or until they malfunction. They provide the glue, rather than the nodes, required for urban life to function: they link, fill, connect and facilitate.
