Banham: First to Apply Situationist Understandings in America

"In its emphasis upon the behaviour and emotions provoked by the experience of the city Banham's text appropriates understandings of 'psychogeography' and urban 'drift' advanced by Guy Debord and the situationists, applying them in an American urban context, arguably for the first time. For the distinctive quality of Los Angeles, according to Banham, resides not merely in its architecture but in the range of feelings, emotions and kinetic sensations that the city encourages and elicits."

Edward Dimendberg, "The Kinetic Icon: Reyner Banham and Los Angeles as Mobile Icon," Urban History, 33(May 2006):110.