Ferrari good, Volkswagen bad.
Adapted from The Social Ideology of the Motorcar by André Gorz.
When the car was invented, it was to provide a few of the very rich with a completely unprecedented privilege: that of travelling much faster than everyone else. No one up to then had ever dreamt of it. The speed of all coaches was essentially the same, whether you were rich or poor. The carriages of the rich didn't go any faster than the carts of the peasants, and trains carried everyone at the same speed. Thus, until the turn of the century, the elite did not travel at a different speed from the people. The motorcar was going to change all that. For the first time class differences were to be extended to speed and to the means of transportation.
However, 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. But recognising the car as a luxury good is a concept that has been slow to catch on.
When everyone claims the right to drive, everything comes to a halt, and the speed of city traffic plummets – in Boston as in Paris, Rome, or London – to below that of the horse; at rush hours the average speed on the open road falls below the speed of a bicyclist.
The automobile is the paradoxical example of a luxury object that has been devalued by its own spread. But this practical devaluation has not yet been followed by an ideological devaluation. The myth of the pleasure and benefit of the car persists. The persistence of this myth is easily explained. The spread of the private car has displaced mass transportation and altered city planning and housing in such a way that it transfers to the car functions which its own spread has made necessary.
It doesn’t matter if we increase the number of city expressways, beltways, elevated crossways, 16-lane highways, and toll roads, the result is always the same. The more roads there are in service, the more cars clog them, and city traffic becomes more paralysingly congested. As long as there are cities, the problem will remain unsolved.
If the car is to prevail (as an entitlement for everyone), there's still one solution: get rid of the cities. That is, string them out for hundreds of miles along enormous roads, making them into highway suburbs. That's what's been done in the United States. Ivan Illich sums up the effect in these startling figures: "The typical American devotes more than 1500 hours a year (which is 30 hours a week, or 4 hours a day, including Sundays) to his [or her] car. This includes the time spent behind the wheel, both in motion and stopped, the hours of work to pay for it and to pay for gas, tires, tolls, insurance, tickets, and taxes. Thus it takes this American 1500 hours to go 6000 miles (in the course of a year). Three and a half miles take him (or her) one hour. In countries that do not have a transportation industry, people travel at exactly this speed on foot, with the added advantage that they can go wherever they want and aren't restricted to asphalt roads."
The reality is that a compromise has been reached. The cities and towns have been broken up into endless highway suburbs, for that was the only way to avoid traffic congestion in residential centres. But the underside of this solution is obvious: ultimately people can't get around conveniently because they are far away from everything. To make room for the cars, distances have increased. People live far from their work, far from school, far from the supermarket - which then requires a second car so the shopping can be done and the children driven to school. Of course, you can get yourself to work doing 60 mph, but that's because you live 30 miles from your job and are willing to give half an hour to the last 6 miles.
The great city which for generations was considered a marvel, the only place worth living, is now considered to be a "hell." Everyone wants to escape from it, to live in the country. Why this reversal? For only one reason. The car has made the big city uninhabitable. It has made it stinking, noisy, suffocating, dusty, so congested that nobody wants to go out in the evening anymore. Thus, since cars have killed the city, we need faster cars to escape on superhighways to suburbs that are even farther away.
The more widespread fast vehicles are within a society, the more time – beyond a certain point – people will spend and lose on travel. It's a mathematical fact. From being a luxury item and a sign of privilege, the car has thus become a vital necessity. You have to have one so as to escape from the urban hell of the cars. There's no longer any need to persuade people that they want a car; its necessity is a fact of life.
However, 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. But recognising the car as a luxury good is a concept that has been slow to catch on.
When everyone claims the right to drive, everything comes to a halt, and the speed of city traffic plummets – in Boston as in Paris, Rome, or London – to below that of the horse; at rush hours the average speed on the open road falls below the speed of a bicyclist.
The automobile is the paradoxical example of a luxury object that has been devalued by its own spread. But this practical devaluation has not yet been followed by an ideological devaluation. The myth of the pleasure and benefit of the car persists. The persistence of this myth is easily explained. The spread of the private car has displaced mass transportation and altered city planning and housing in such a way that it transfers to the car functions which its own spread has made necessary.
It doesn’t matter if we increase the number of city expressways, beltways, elevated crossways, 16-lane highways, and toll roads, the result is always the same. The more roads there are in service, the more cars clog them, and city traffic becomes more paralysingly congested. As long as there are cities, the problem will remain unsolved.
If the car is to prevail (as an entitlement for everyone), there's still one solution: get rid of the cities. That is, string them out for hundreds of miles along enormous roads, making them into highway suburbs. That's what's been done in the United States. Ivan Illich sums up the effect in these startling figures: "The typical American devotes more than 1500 hours a year (which is 30 hours a week, or 4 hours a day, including Sundays) to his [or her] car. This includes the time spent behind the wheel, both in motion and stopped, the hours of work to pay for it and to pay for gas, tires, tolls, insurance, tickets, and taxes. Thus it takes this American 1500 hours to go 6000 miles (in the course of a year). Three and a half miles take him (or her) one hour. In countries that do not have a transportation industry, people travel at exactly this speed on foot, with the added advantage that they can go wherever they want and aren't restricted to asphalt roads."
The reality is that a compromise has been reached. The cities and towns have been broken up into endless highway suburbs, for that was the only way to avoid traffic congestion in residential centres. But the underside of this solution is obvious: ultimately people can't get around conveniently because they are far away from everything. To make room for the cars, distances have increased. People live far from their work, far from school, far from the supermarket - which then requires a second car so the shopping can be done and the children driven to school. Of course, you can get yourself to work doing 60 mph, but that's because you live 30 miles from your job and are willing to give half an hour to the last 6 miles.
The great city which for generations was considered a marvel, the only place worth living, is now considered to be a "hell." Everyone wants to escape from it, to live in the country. Why this reversal? For only one reason. The car has made the big city uninhabitable. It has made it stinking, noisy, suffocating, dusty, so congested that nobody wants to go out in the evening anymore. Thus, since cars have killed the city, we need faster cars to escape on superhighways to suburbs that are even farther away.
The more widespread fast vehicles are within a society, the more time – beyond a certain point – people will spend and lose on travel. It's a mathematical fact. From being a luxury item and a sign of privilege, the car has thus become a vital necessity. You have to have one so as to escape from the urban hell of the cars. There's no longer any need to persuade people that they want a car; its necessity is a fact of life.