The Capitalist City or the Self-managed City

Posted on July 19, 2004, filed Under Housing & Urban Issues. Leave a Comment

by Tom Wetzel

from Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World, edited by David Solnit (City Lights Press, 2004).

Patterns of capital flows have a visible effect on working class communities in the United States. Some communities see closed plants, abandoned stores, boarded-up dwellings, scarce jobs. Such are signs of disinvestment. Capital has moved to some other site in the global production line.

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The Social Ideology of the Motorcar

Posted on August 3, 2001, filed Under Housing & Urban Issues. Leave a Comment

by André Gorz (from Le Sauvage September-October 1973)

The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea:
luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which
in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner,
the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car,
like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don’t
have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury
good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratized. If everyone
can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone
diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and
frustrated in return.

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