Situationist Theses on Traffic_debate en la ciudad contemporánea_
El hecho de que las ciudades en Europa y sus calles no fueron diseñadas para el coche, nos afecta en nuestro día a día como habitantes de las mismas en el siglo XXI.
La problemática que trae consigo la imposición del uso del coche en las ciudades y su discurso no es nuevo, sino que ya en los 60 - cuando en España se empieza a comercializar masivamente el seat 600, que provocó la euforia del turismo local-. El coche nos ha condicionado el modo de movernos por la ciudad como peatones, sorteando coches para cruzar la calle diagonalmente que será la forma más natural de hacerlo por otro lado, la imagen que percibimos a diario de nuestros barrios es el de una amalgama de coches que encierran edificios, la predisposición de nuestra salud a sufrir alergias, ha teñido de gris el aire de nuestras ciudades...
Situationist Theses on Traffic_debate en la ciudad contemporánea_
El hecho de que las ciudades en Europa y sus calles no fueron diseñadas para el coche, nos afecta en nuestro día a día como habitantes de las mismas en el siglo XXI.
La problemática que trae consigo la imposición del uso del coche en las ciudades y su discurso no es nuevo, sino que ya en los 60 - cuando en España se empieza a comercializar masivamente el seat 600, que provocó la euforia del turismo local-. El coche nos ha condicionado el modo de movernos por la ciudad como peatones, sorteando coches para cruzar la calle diagonalmente que será la forma más natural de hacerlo por otro lado, la imagen que percibimos a diario de nuestros barrios es el de una amalgama de coches que encierran edificios, la predisposición de nuestra salud a sufrir alergias, ha teñido de gris el aire de nuestras ciudades...
Interesante reflexión de los Situacionistas en relación al uso del coche en ciudades. Guy Debord 1959:
A mistake made by all the city planners is to consider the private automobile (and its by- products, such as the motorcycle) as essentially a means of transportation. In reality, it is the most notable material symbol of the notion of happiness that developed capitalism tends to spread throughout the society. The automobile is at the heart of this general propaganda, both as supreme good of an alienated life and as essential product of the capitalist market: It is generally being said this year that American economic prosperity is soon going to depend on the success of the slogan “Two cars per family.”
2
Commuting time, as Le Corbusier rightly noted, is a surplus labor which correspondingly reduces the amount of “free” time.
3
We must replace travel as an adjunct to work with travel as a pleasure.
4
To want to redesign architecture to accord with the needs of the present massive and parasitical existence of private automobiles reflects the most unrealistic misapprehension of where the real problems lie. Instead, architecture must be transformed to accord with the whole development of the society, criticizing all the transitory values linked to obsolete forms of social relationships (in the first rank of which is the family).
5
Even if, during a transitional period, we temporarily accept a rigid division between work zones and residence zones, we must at least envisage a third sphere: that of life itself (the sphere of freedom and leisure — the essence of life). Unitary urbanism acknowledges no boundaries; it aims to form an integrated human milieu in which separations such as work/leisure or public/private will finally be dissolved. But before this is possible, the minimum action of unitary urbanism is to extend the terrain of play to all desirable constructions. This terrain will be at the level of complexity of an old city.
6
It is not a matter of opposing the automobile as an evil in itself. It is its extreme concentration in the cities that has led to the negation of its function. Urbanism should certainly not ignore the automobile, but even less should it accept it as a central theme. It should reckon on gradually phasing it out. In any case, we can envision the banning of auto traffic from the central areas of certain new complexes, as well as from a few old cities.
7
Those who believe that the automobile is eternal are not thinking, even from a strictly technological standpoint, of other future forms of transportation. For example, certain models of one-man helicopters currently being tested by the US Army will probably have spread to the general public within twenty years.
8
The breaking up of the dialectic of the human milieu in favor of automobiles (the projected freeways in Paris will entail the demolition of thousands of houses and apartments although the housing crisis is continually worsening) masks its irrationality under pseudopractical justifications. But it is practically necessary only in the context of a specific social set-up. Those who believe that the particulars of the problem are permanent want in fact to believe in the permanence of the present society.
9
Revolutionary urbanists will not limit their concern to the circulation of things, or to the circulation of human beings trapped in a world of things. They will try to break these topological chains, paving the way with their experiments for a human journey through authentic life.
GUY DEBORD
1959
“Positions situationnistes sur la circulation” originally appeared in Internationale Situationniste #3 (Paris, December 1959). This translation by Ken Knabb is from the Situationist International Anthology (Revised and Expanded Edition, 2006). No copyright.
Fuente: http://www.bopsecrets.org
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