The Situationists and the City

Re-imagining the city as a revolutionary utopia
The Situationist International (SI), led by Guy Debord and central to the Paris uprising in May 1968, published many incendiary texts on politics and art in the journal Internationale Situationniste. One central theme to their work was rethinking the city: from a site for routine consumption and work to a utopia that breaks down barriers between function and play. In this essential volume Tom McDonough collects together all of the SI’s key essays on urbanism and the city.
The book will be strikingly illustrated by images that were core to the SI project. It will include such key texts as “The Theory of Dérive,” “Formulary for a New Urbanism,” and many previously untranslated texts, including those that came out of the Situationists’ collaboration with Henri Lefebvre.
Tom McDonough is Associate Professor of Modern Architecture and Urbanism in the Art History Department at Binghamton University, and an editor of Grey Room. He is the editor of Guy Debord and the Situationist International and the author of The Beautiful Language of My Century.