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Situationist Theses on Traffic

by Guy Debord

Published in Internationale

Situationniste #3, 1959

1

A mistake made by all the cityplanners is to consider the privateautomobile (and its by-products, suchas the motorcycle) as essentially ameans of transportation. In reality, itis the most notable material symbol of the notion of happiness thatdeveloped capitalism tends to spreadthroughout the society. The

automobile is at the center of thisgeneral propaganda, both as supremegood of an alienated life and asessential product of the capitalistmarket: It is generally being said thisyear that American economicprosperity is soon going to depend onthe success of the slogan "Two carsper family."

2

Commuting time, as Le Corbusierrightly noted, is a surplus labor whichcorrespondingly reduces the amountof "free" time.

3

We must replace travel as an adjunctto work with travel as a pleasure.

4

 To want to redesign architecture toaccord with the needs of the presentmassive and parasitical existence of private automobiles reflects the mostunrealistic misapprehension of wherethe real problems lie. Instead,architecture must be transformed toaccord with the whole development of the society, criticizing all thetransitory values linked to obsoleteforms of social relationships (in thefirst rank of which is the family).

5

Even if, during a transitional period,we temporarily accept a rigid divisionbetween work zones and residencezones, we must at least envisage athird sphere: that of life itself (the

sphere of freedom and leisure — theessence of life). Unitary urbanismacknowledges no boundaries; it aimsto form an integrated human milieu inwhich separations such aswork/leisure or public/private willfinally be dissolved. But before this ispossible, the minimum action of unitary urbanism is to extend theterrain of play to all desirableconstructions. This terrain will be atthe level of complexity of an old city.

6

It is not a matter of opposing theautomobile as an evil in itself. It is itsextreme concentration in the citiesthat has led to the negation of itsfunction. Urbanism should certainlynot ignore the automobile, but evenless should it accept it as its centraltheme. It should reckon on graduallyphasing it out. In any case, we canenvision the banning of auto traffic

from the central areas of certain newcomplexes, as well as from a few oldcities.

7

 Those who believe that theautomobile is eternal are not thinking,even from a strictly technologicalstandpoint, of other future forms of transportation. For example, certainmodels of one-man helicopters

currently being tested by the US Armywill probably have spread to thegeneral public within twenty years.

8

 The breaking up of the dialectic of thehuman milieu in favor of automobiles(the projected freeways in Paris willentail the demolition of thousands of houses and apartments although thehousing crisis is continuallyworsening) masks its irrationality

under pseudopractical justifications.

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But it is practically necessary only inthe context of a specific social set-up. Those who believe that the particularsof the problem are permanent want infact to believe in the permanence of 

the present society.

9

Revolutionary urbanists will not limittheir concern to the circulation of things, or to the circulation of humanbeings trapped in a world of things. They will try to break thesetopological chains, paving the waywith their experiments for a human journey through authentic life.

 Translation Ken Knabb

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/316