The book by Igor Velić, a traffic engineer, activist and cyclist from Bor, asks whose cities are "our", who is building them, who is chasing them and why we allowed ourselves to be expelled. Velić's book is also a tribute to his grandmother and the city of Bor, but also to the "little man" who was pushed to the sidelines.
You can download the entire book in pdf format. free download here. Excerpts follow with permission of the author:
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We live in a system that has taught us that fighting for space is the only realistic answer to life; not because we are wild, but because for too long we have been left at the mercy of the "elite", which first took away our dignity, and then the space in which we would live that dignity.
Whenever I watch a driver entering an intersection as if to conquer territory, I see more than aggression and recklessness. I see a man oppressed by loans, an uncertain job, suspicion of institutions that lie to him and take advantage of him. That darkness behind his eyes fits into the rearview mirror.
He drives fast because his life is out of control, so he uses four wheels to try to regain a sense of power. He speeds up because he feels slowed down in everything else. He cuts the ribbon because he is afraid that someone will threaten him in his life. (…)
Feeling of helplessness
Our transportation system runs on existential anxiety. The whole country is sliding like a car without brakes, and we, the individuals, are trying to survive by gripping the steering wheel as tightly as possible and pressing the gas as hard as possible. Violence on the street is just an extension of violence over our lives. Aggression is not a character - aggression is a consequence. (…)
Our political "elite" has been producing a feeling of powerlessness for years. It's not just the wages that are low, the possibility to influence our own city, the way the streets are shaped, how children go to school, how people with disabilities cross the street is also low.
That systemic humiliation became a deep social trauma. And trauma has a habit of speaking where we least expect it: in the horn at the traffic light, in arrogant parking, in the nervous jerking of the steering wheel as if we want to correct all the injustices of this world.
Political apathy spilled over into traffic aggression. The one who pushes you out of the lane just repeats what he sees every day: the stronger has the advantage, the weaker remains silent and suffers.
Serbia is not suffering because of "lack of culture in traffic", as is often said in the media. Serbia suffers because it is constantly being sent the message that rules exist only for the weak, while the powerful go through life as if through a red light, without consequences or punishment. When the social system normalizes lawlessness, traffic only faithfully copies it.
The fact that we are the first in Europe in terms of the number of fatalities per million inhabitants also speaks of our traffic fatalities! (…)
Anger is allowed.
Traffic is a space where suppressed anger is released because it is the only place where it is "socially allowed". You are not allowed to shout in the mall. You are not allowed to swear in the office. In front of the foreign investor for whom you wind the cables, you bend your head and spine. On the street, it's as if you're laughing as long as you're gasping.
Zygmunt Bauman wrote about how modern life creates fragile identities. Fragile identity in traffic reacts violently because it is safe only in speed, visible only in conflict. (…)
Our everyday life is exhaustion. An exhausted person drives differently than a rested one. An exhausted man crosses the street with more fear. An exhausted man slips into aggression more easily than he thinks. (…)
Capitalism, which grinds us down at work, governs our movement with the same aggression. Today's worker has no right to space, no right to rest. His movement is just an extension of his work: accelerated, fragmented, uncertain.
Traffic is the psychological topography of social exploitation. Everything we feel, the street also feels. (…)
Returning space to man
Urban poetics is not only aesthetics. It is a political struggle.
For a city to be poetic, it must be just. The street must be accessible to those who walk, not only to those who rush. Space must belong to children, the elderly, workers, dreamers, and not only to investors and space managers.
The poetics of the city is actually a struggle for the city to belong to the people again, for the space to return to man.
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