highways post fordism

7/27/2019 Highways Post Fordism

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Misho AntadzeThe Architecture of Work

The Ghost of Fordism: Life in the Age

of HighwaysThe maps of the contemporary Western world are dissected by highways. Living in a

highly mobile society is unimaginable without access to transportation. Due to the

access to transportation, the scale of physical distances becomes smaller, since

everything is becoming more connected than ever before. There are over a billion cars

in the world today; in the United States, theres roughly one car per capita. In the

1950s, when car ownership surpassed one per household, it has become a symbol of

individual freedom in popular Western culture; the owner of the automobile is not

dependent on anyone but himself or herself for transportation. The need for highways

arose from the desire to be mobile, and the desire for car ownership grew with the

expansion of the Interstate Highway System. Such developments look positive on the

surfacea freely mobile world, when one is not confined by their geographical

location. Universal ownership of means of transportation can be called the

Communism of Transportation. This vision, however, is unfortunately a myth created

by the consumerist ideology. The highways have proved, in many ways to be

effective, but overall, even disregarding the environmental problems associated with

mass car ownership, the societal problems theyve created outweigh the benefits. The

highway, as a direct consequence of Fordism has facilitated a war on the

impoverished, destroyed public spaces, institutionalized racism and created an illusion

of consumerist prosperity.


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From the Industrial Revolution to Fordism

The desire to for quick transportation, in regards to both individuals and

goods, has been one of the integral parts of the Western society since the Industrial

Revolution. Indeed, it was during the Industrial Revolution when the bourgeoisie

emerged as a class, and effectively dismantled feudalism as the hierarchical structure

of the society. The capitalist metanarrative, which effectively equates the acquisition

of financial wealth to success and happiness, is still the dominant one in the

contemporary world. Those in control the means of production, whether individuals

or corporations are also effectively the dominant classes in the society. The system,

on its most basic level, works on the principle of supply and demand, where those

who produce goods barter them for the value determined by the demand of the

product. Thus, to reap most profit the goods should be delivered wherever theyre in

demand, and as quickly as possible. Thus, it is of no surprise that the development of

railroad transportation started in England, the birthplace of the industrial revolution.

Railroad transportation made trade extremely efficient, however, it created the

demand for even more efficient transportation. The invention and the mass production

of the automobile satisfied this demand, since now it was possible to own the means

of transportation as well as the means of production, and the flexibility and efficiency

of transportation was greatly increased: transportation of individuals and cargo was no

longer dependent on fixed time schedules and points of arrival and departure. In fact,

one of the major re-inventions of capitalism can be directly associated with the

automotive industry; Fordism, the dominant form of capitalism for half a century, is

named so after Henry Ford and his car-production enterprise, Ford Motor Company.

Fords production method was innovative for several reasons, but most importantly it


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standardized the practice of mass production, by making it extremely efficient. This

was achieved by introducing machinery (such as the conveyer belt) that would take

down workers movements to a minimum, so that the work performed would be

maximally efficient.

The problems with such practices are apparent, and perfectly portrayed in

Charlie ChaplinsModern Times (USA, 1933), which opens with Chaplins character

as a factory worker in a highly industrialized, Fordian factory. The boss (clearly

resembling Henry Ford) closely monitors the workers actions and reprimands them

for taking the shortest breaks. He even tests a machine designed to feed the workers

without having them to leave the assembly line on Chaplins character. Finally, due to

extremely repetitive nature of his work, the protagonist goes insane, and starts acting

like a broken machine very much like the one used to feed him, repeating his

function as a worker excessively, even when it is not needed. Effectively, Chaplin

has demonstrated the effect that Karl Marx defines as alienation, which arises when

an individual looses the sense of control over ones autonomy and life, and conceives

of his or her self as a mere instrument.

However, Fordism as a paradigm truly arose when Ford came up with a way

to counter this criticism: after adjusting the price of his product to meet with the

income level of his workers, he effectively transformed the worker into the consumer.

The worker-consumer was not just a machine after all. The personal automobile, once

only available to the wealthy, was not just a luxurious commodity any more. This new

type of worker, the worker-consumer was not just a crank in the conveyer belt, but

was an individual who would desire commodities as much as the bourgeois. The

alienation at the workspace was countered out by the desire for acquisition of

commodities. The worker-consumer was a machine that worked with machines to


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produce the machine that he desired. By 1925, on average, there was a car for every

other household in the United States. In 1950, there was already one car per each

household. The general population became seemingly much more mobile than before.

With increased mobility, came the demand for better roads.

From Ford to Hitler to Eisenhower

The automobile highway, as we know it, started in 1920s in Germany, the

birthplace of the car, as we know it. The first section of theReichsautobahn was

completed in 1929, and connected Dusseldorf and Opladen. However, it came into

full bloom under Hitlers administration, when it implemented the project of

Motorisierung, or motorization, which meant to provide the general populace with

affordable cars, such as the still-surviving Volkswagen, or the peoples car.

Unsurprisingly, Hitler openly admired Henry Ford (an open anti-Semite), and the

principles of Fordism. Hitler spoke of Ford:

I shall do my best to put his theories in practice in Germany. I have come to the

conclusion that the motorcar, instead of being a class dividing element, can be the

instrument to unifying the different classes, just as it has done in America, thanks to

Mr. Fords genius.

The Volkswagen structured very much like the Model T, the very car that Ford has

produced to turn the workers into consumers. With more households that owned cars,

the benefits of expanding the Autobahn were as obvious as the fact that the Autobahn

also provided improved the mobility of the military. By the end of World War II, the

Reichsautobahn covered more than two thousand kilometers.


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During World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower, then a Supreme Commander in

the US military, was deeply impressed by the mobility that the Autobahn has

provided. Previously, as a soldier of a lower rank, he had been deeply impressed by

his experience in 1919, when he accompanied a military convoy across the country on

its first interstate road, the Lincoln Highway, that ran from New York to San

Francisco. Later, he would reflect in his autobiography,At Ease:

The old convoy had started me thinking about good, two-lane highways, but

Germany had made me see the wisdom ofbroader ribbons across the land This was

one of the things that I felt deeply about, and I made a personal and absolute decision

to see that the nation would benefit by it.

When elected President in 1953, Eisenhower appointed Charles Erwin Wilson, the

CEO of General Motors, as the Secretary of Defense. Famously, Wilson was

questioned by the Senate Armed Services Committee if, acting as a Secretary of

Defense, he would be adverse to the interests of his former company; he answered

that he would but [] thought what was good for our country was good for General

Motors, and vice versa. Under his supervision, in 1955, a future plan for the highway

system, The General Location of Interstate Highways was published. Referred to as

the Yellow Book, it contained the maps of the plans for the Interstate System.

However, in 1955, the Congress rejected the bill to support the construction of the

National System of Interstate Highways. A year later they would accept the same bill,

renamed to the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.

Around the same time, consumerism was in its full swing. A study published

by the Labor Department declared: Certainly, the automobile has aided wage earners

in breaking down barriers of community and class. Despite its similarity to Hitlers

quote on Ford, many truly believed that a strong consumerist society was the only


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way to create an equal population. In 1960, Eisenhower would make a speech at the

National Automobile Show Industry Dinner:

Other peoples find it hard to believe that an American working man can own his own

comfortable home and a car and send his children to well-equipped elementary and

high schools and to colleges as well. They fail to realize that he is not the

downtrodden, impoverished vassal of whom Karl Marx wrote. He is a self-sustaining,

thriving individual, living in dignity and in freedom.

Institutionalized Repression

The fantasy of prosperous consumerism did look true for those in the middle

of the food chain. After all, the average person could indeed afford to buy a car. The

car ads showed happy families enjoying vacations in the countryside, or a smiling

man driving out of the garage of his suburban house. The desire to move away, to get

away from it all, to live in comfort without witnessing the problems of daily struggles

has finally come true with the Interstate Highway System. And yet, nobody in the

middle or the top paid attention to the fact that the social gap between the middle and

the bottom has become greater than ever. And yet, nobody on the top paid attention to

the huge and growing gap between the middle and the bottom. While officially the

highways were a part of the economic development plan, de facto they became a

weapon in the war on the impoverished.

And a war on the impoverished in the United States also meant a racial war.

Not only did the Interstate facilitate the phenomenon known as white flight, meaning


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the mass movement of white residents of urban centers to suburbs, but it facilitated

the destruction and further impoverishment of black neighborhoods. To construct the

highways in Atlanta, huge portions of the city were moved down. 67,000 people were

displaced, with 95% being black. Most of them went uncompensated. At first the

highways forced them to move into more concentrated neighborhoods; then, they

acted as segregation lines. Urban planners looked up at the highway, and looked down

on public transportation. Besides, many of the impoverished blacks could not afford a

car. It was clear that the Highway System was not being built for them, but against

them.

Aesthetical Issues

Today, it would be surprising to hear someone say that they think that the

Highway is beautiful. However, when it was constructed, it was symbolically

associated with American growth and prosperity. There was a fascination with the

Highway in car ads, unlike the country roads we see in commercials today. It has

become the American Way. The aesthetics of public space changed accordingly.

Besides, with the demolition of the Pruit Igoe housing projects, many saw the death of

modernism.

Perhaps, Robert Venturi, Scott Brown and Steven Izenour best reflect this in

Learning From Las Vegas. In the book, the three architects present and analyze the

symbolism of popular, roadside and consumerist architecture of Las Vegas. They

photographed every hotel and gas station, along with their logos and neon signs. This,

they proclaim, is the lost symbolism, which gave meaning to architecture. They

openly embraced the symbolism of roadside attractions, corporate logos and neon

signs. It was, in a way, a rebellion against elitist practices of modernism. If the


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symbolism is easy to understand for every consumer, why should it not be taken

seriously academically, or why should it not be central to contemporary architectural

practices.

However, even if one agrees that Modernism was tyrannical, removing more

academic architecture from the public space means reducing the discourse to pure

consumerist values, dominated only by the market force. Such a worldview is

simplistic, since it assumes that the general population is unintelligent enough to

understand high end architecture. However, when the population spends

increasingly longer periods of time in their cars, they become aesthetically

misinformed, and in fact, do reduce themselves to buying machines.

Conclusion

After looking at the history of the Highway, one can see how strongly its

development was associated with Fordism and Fordian capitalism. Its hardly

surprising that today, consumerism is one of the strongest paradigms of Western,

especially North American societies. The ease of transportation has increased for the

most of us, but it brought along increased poverty, segregation of cities and poor

aesthetics. Individuals get together faster, but the space between increases. The car

has become available to almost everybody, but it has not increased happiness. The oil

corporations are thriving, and our living environments are being destroyed. Perhaps,

there is no easy way out of this, but taking a bus instead of the car would be the first

step in the right direction.


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Works Cited:

Weingroff, Richard F. "Sept/Oct 2000Vol. 64 No. 2." The Genie in the Bottle: TheInterstate System and Urban Problems, 1939-1957. US Department ofTransportation, Oct.-Nov. 2000. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.

"Why President Dwight D. Eisenhower Understood We Needed the InterstateSystem. U.S. Department of Transportation, 2006. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

Strand, Ginger Gail.Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate.Austin: University of Texas, 2012. Print.Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Address in Detroit at the National Automobile ShowIndustry Dinner.," October 17, 1960. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,The American Presidency Project

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=11982

Home Con

Flink, James J. The Automobile Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1988. Print.Venturi, Robert, Brown Denise Scott, and Steven Izenour.Learning from Las Vegas:The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1977. Print.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/index.phphttp://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/index.phpmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/index.php

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