Moving Public Spaces: Two Bus-Based Experiments: What a London Bus Route and a Frankfurt Tram Reveal About Jewish–Muslim Encounters on the Move

Sociologist Arndt Emmerich takes two ordinary pieces of transport infrastructure seriously as political spaces: the 310 bus that London’s mayor introduced to link the Jewish communities of Stamford Hill and Golders Green, and the Tel Aviv-themed tram that runs through Frankfurt’s predominantly Muslim Bahnhofsviertel. One is a security measure, the other a memory statement, and both push their passengers into an unavoidable proximity. Against the headline story of Jewish–Muslim antagonism, he asks what actually happens in these moving public spaces: reified difference, managed indifference, or unexpected solidarity.