Comments against urbanism

TEXT FROM

COMMENTS AGAINST URBANISM

RAOUL VANEIGEM

1961

urbanism is the most concrete and perfect fulfillment of a nightmare. 

the ideal urbanism is the projection in space of a social hierarchy without conflict. roads, lawns, natural flowers and artificial forests lubricate the machinery of subjection and make it enjoyable. As it combines Machiavellianism with reinforced concrete, urbanism's conscience is clear. 

we are entering upon the reign of policed refinement. The art of reassurance - urbanism knows how to exercise it in its purest form: the ultimate civility of a power on the verge of asserting total mind control.

what signs should we recognize as our own? A few graffiti, words of rejection or forbidden gestures, hastily scrawled, in which cultured people only take an interest when they appear on the walls of some fossil city like Pompeii. But our own cities are even more fossilised.

we would like to live in lands of knowledge, amid living signs like familiar friends. The revolution will also be the perpetual creation of signs that belong to everyone.