The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

The Claremont Road Situation
the possibility of cost-effective repair even before the activists had begun
their precarious remodeling; indeed, a favorite catchphrase in the street was
“it’s all got to go.” There was something akin to a poetic sense of tragedy
about Claremont Road, and even the most callous of bailiffs must have felt
hesitant about rushing toward the bitter end. By suffusing the place with
imaginative creativity, the people of Claremont Road produced a vision of
an alternative way of living that turned the authorities into the vandals.
The street was also a place of obvious good humor. The activists
constantly ridiculed both the authorities and themselves with wit and sensitivity.
The security men, for example, tended to receive sympathy rather
than mockery for their poorly paid and often dispiriting jobs. And there was
some two-way banter between these groups. When activists chanted
“Homes not Roads!”—an established cry of road protest—their opponents
responded with “Soap not Dope!”; this in turn was quickly returned as
“Dope not Soap!” Humor can be disarming. It is difficult to maintain one’s
guard against someone who irritates one moment and amuses the next. The
activists constantly kept the police and bailiffs second-guessing, and for
their part the authorities could seek to maintain some sense of order only
through a humorless, obsessive application to the job. The playful cheek of
Claremont Road turned the authorities into the fanatics.
But this is not to suggest that Claremont Road humor was simply
cynical posturing. Activists generally were having fun, and it was their intention
not simply to antagonize but also to demonstrate that there were
other, possibly more rewarding, ways of living. Their real battle was not
with the individuals engaged to evict them but with “car culture.” They
generally believed that the superficial appeal of motorcars had seduced society
into making catastrophic and irreversible decisions. For them the car
was fundamentally destructive; it destroyed the environment, living places,
and the possibility of a rich social life within those places. Motorcars were
all about selfish insularity; they provided individual benefits, but at enormous
social cost. And if drivers were unaware of or unconcerned by these
costs, that was generally because they had used their cars to distance themselves
from society. Motorcars insulated their inhabitants from both the irritations
and joys of collective existence. They made life more controllable
and more controlled. They numbed the intensity of life, and in the process
they destroyed the places in which rewarding communal life might otherwise
exist. The purpose of Claremont Road was to demonstrate just how
great this loss could be, and that the freedoms of the motorcar were illusory.
The financial costs and regulations that came with motor dependency tied
people to a life of mundane conformity. And without them it was possible