On New Year’s Eve, two metro stations in Bucharest were briefly transformed into celebration spaces. Many Nepalese citizens gathered there to mark the transition between years, chanting the name of their home country and creating a lively atmosphere. This event raised a question for me: why did they choose the metro as their place of celebration? More specifically, what made these spaces seem suitable for such an event?

Unlike traditional public places, which carry a collective identity and facilitate human interactions, the metro is an impersonal space characterized by anonymity and detachment. You know your destination, you put on your headphones and head toward the nearest stairs. You validate your travel card and descend quickly. You wait on the platform, surrounded by people you do not know and most likely will never see again. Yet, for a brief moment, you share the same space with them. The metro is a clear example of what Marc Augé calls a non-place. As he puts it, “If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which can not be defined as relational, or historical, concerned with identity will be a non-place.” (1995: 77-78).

Non-places are designed for efficiency rather than social interaction. Unlike public squares or residential neighbourhoods, which encourage the establishment of interhuman relationships and complex social exchanges, these spaces are meant to reduce interaction. Minimal gestures and standardized routines – to better serve the various mechanisms of capital. Bauman emphasizes that in such spaces, behavioural norms are simplified into basic rules of usage: “Non-places do not require a mastery of the sophisticated and hard-to-study art of civility, since they reduce behaviour in public to a few simple and easy-to-grasp precepts. Because of that simplification, they are not schools of civility either” (Bauman 2000: 102). The metro is specifically designed to keep each person isolated in their journeys.

However, when entering the metro, you are inevitably forced to share the same space and to a degree interact with those around you. Of course, there’s always the option to crack up the volume of your music and glue your gaze to the phone. In other words to develop what Georg Simmel calls a blasé response – a defence mechanism against the overstimulation characteristic of urban life, through which we attempt to create an invisible barrier between ourselves and others (1971: 329-330). A metro station is a microcosm of urban behaviour, where strategies of self-isolation reflect psychological adaptation to the city’s fast pace: “The incessant bombardment of incompatible stimuli upon individuals ultimately exhausts their mental energies and renders them incapable of response to every new occurrence” (Karp et al. 2015: 25).

On New Year’s Eve, for a few moments at least, the Titan and Piața Unirii metro stations transcended their status as non-places. Each person there noticed one another and interacted specifically. This sudden transformation highlights the idea that space is not a static framework but a continuous process of formation and reformation, shaped by the presences and relationships that intersect within it: “If space is rather a simultaneity of stories-so-far, then places are collections of those stories, articulations within the wider power geometries of space. Their character will be a product of these intersections within that wider setting, and of what is made of them” (Massey 2005: 130). The metro stations became meeting places where, in a sense, spontaneous communities took shape, and social interactions flourished. The individuals present, both those who came there with this specific goal in mind and also those who just happened to pass through those places, found themselves in a shared setting, temporarily engaged in a new type of social dynamic. In Massey’s terms, the metro became a space of throwntogetherness, where the diversity of individuals generated an authentic moment of cohesion.

For the Nepalese community in Bucharest, the metro stations became places of collective celebration – a temporary substitute for familiar spaces of their home country. Depending on the context and the human interactions taking place within it, even seemingly impersonal spaces can become places of belonging and collective expression.

Nigel Thrift emphasizes that urban spaces are not just neutral backdrops but terrains of politics and affect. The way cities are designed – from architecture and lighting to the layout of public spaces – influences emotions, behaviours, and social responses: “Increasingly, urban spaces and times are being designed to invoke affective response according to practical and theoretical knowledge, that have been derived from and coded by a host of sources” (Thrift 2008: 187).

Urban spaces shape collective reactions. The metro has often been a site of protests and social change. For example, strikes by public transport workers can have a significant impact on the city, demonstrating the interdependence of infrastructure, economy, and (by extension) society in general.

The metro is a social and political space where the rhythm of urban life, interactions, and inequalities manifest. But like all spaces, it too is malleable and capable of being redefined and reconfigured according to the social, cultural, and identity-based needs of the communities that use them. This temporary re-signification of the metro shows that even non-places are not necessarily static or immutable. The meanings inscribed on the metro by the structures of capitalism can, to some extent, be short-circuited in certain conditions. Throwntogetherness can be viewed as a glitch in the program. A halt. A pause.