The logistical governance of vertical commuting in the central business district
研究了悉尼中央商务区如何通过地下铁路规划、地面导航和电梯技术等计算实践，引导通勤者在多层立体城市中流动，揭示了专家如何通过追踪和计算人群节奏来最大化城市建筑空间的价值。
The centre of major cities is a focus of commuting patterns, and this article sets out how major cities use calculative practices to guide commuters through a complex, multiplanar, volumetric city. It examines how public transport officials, consultants, city planners and property developers interact to move commuters through inter-locking public and private spaces on a journey between underground, surface and high-rise commercial structures. Using a case study of Sydney’s central business district, it presents three areas where the governance of this movement can be observed. First, it considers how underground rail planning has adopted new modes of organising capacity, especially in terms of the use of behavioural psychology in organising platform and escalator crowd behaviour. Second, the article discusses navigation at ground level, where rail commuters emerge onto the pavement to continue their journey. Urban planners, along with specialists in wayfinding and people movement, calculate capacity and make behavioural interventions to influence movement up, down and across surfaces. Third, it explores the relationship between elevator technology, vertical people flow analysis and the floorplate design of offices. The article’s contribution is in its conceptual and empirical illustration of how the rhythms of urban crowds are tracked, calculated and structured by a range of experts; in turn, we can see how these experts have emerged as significant agents in maximising the ability to extract value from the built volume of cities.