Sociocide

Cities are chaotic and necessarily so. They are also kaleidoscopic. This should be accepted as a positive credo before it is too late. Order has no function, this side of evil, other than to make what is essentially chaotic work. Add to this the notion that no abstract norm imposed from above or any other motive, sanitary or speculative, can further justify the wanton destruction of existing buildings or street patterns, not that which invariably accompanies the demolition of old ‘sub-standard’ or ‘obsolete’ housing: I mean the involuntary removal of people from their domicile, be it house, street or neighbourhood. Ultimately, the world today can no longer afford such waste, nor can it afford to overlook the right of people to maintain both the the built form and the social fabric of their domicile if that is their choice. Anything else is sociocide — local genocide with only the people left alive.

Statement wirtten by Aldo van Eyck about 1971 and published in December 1979 in Spazio e Società, no.8, p. 78