Code of the Passenger and Situational Sociability in Public Transport in Tbilisi

The chapter focuses on the urban social life in public transport in Tbilisi and analyses how the interaction of humans, built environment, technologies, and urban spaces forms a set of informal rules and practices governing interpersonal behavior. The “code of the passenger”, buying a ticket for a fellow passenger as a way of expressing respect or pleasure to meet someone, is an urban everyday practice internalised and followed by generations in Georgia. Tradition is challenged by introducing new sensor payments in public transport. The code of the passenger that had managed to stand up to socio-economic and cultural challenges has eventually yielded to technological progress. Additionally, smartization of the city challenges certain groups of society to adapt to the system. The study illuminates how urban dwellers endeavor to “domesticate technologies”, overcome inequality, and navigate in a new reality—primarily with the help of strangers. People in transport in Georgia violate the norms of anonymity and “civil inattention” and perform sociability. The study argues that situational sociability makes urban spaces a more civil and trust-inducing environment and overcomes the strangeness and technological dominance of the space.