The Man in the Street: A Polemic on Urbanism

by Shadrach Woods

256 pages, Paperback

Published September 30, 1975

Reviews

[Keen Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars!

“Finance is manipulation and management of money, while economy is the husbanding of the society’s resources. Finance is profit orientated, economy is survival. We have often seen financially profitable actions, such as war, which are economically disastrous.”

Published posthumously two years after his untimely death, this polemic certainly has many echoes of Debord and the Situationists, especially as there's quite a focus on Paris and France throughout the book too. Ultimately Woods expresses many concerns about the increasing density of global cities, citing concerns for the motivations with those driving and dictating the changes that the rest of us have to live with day to day.

“Free enterprise cannot be reconciled with the idea of planning; they are incompatible. Free enterprise will always follow the line of least resistance, since it seeks maximum profits, whereas planning has to deal with choices that are based on other criteria.”

He talks a bit about Fourier’s phalansteries, proxemics as well as showing a growing concern for so called educational ghettos, as seen in the Ivy League colleges and Oxbridge etc, making a fair point about how they shouldn’t be cocooned from the system they are supposed to be training to live and work in etc.

“The public submits to, and suffers under, the yoke of urbanism from on-high. Our world is upside-down.”

He goes onto say that urbanism is, “an activity where the participation of the user, the ultimate client is of the greatest importance. Yet it is carefully shrouded in mystery, and its simple intentions are obscured with jargon incomprehensible even to the professionals.”

So this was an interesting enough read and Woods makes many valid points about who shapes the world we live in and why, this also had some really impressive photos and images which help illustrate and amplify many of his points.

“The world is a city, and urbanism is everybody’s business.”