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Michiko Kakutani "The New York Times" Provocative and entertaining.
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Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built since the end of World War II. This tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside is not simply an expression of our economic predicament, but in large part a cause. It is the everyday environment where most Americans live and work, and it represents a gathering calamity whose effects we have hardly begun to measure. In The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where everyplace is like noplace in particular, where the city is a dead zone and the countryside a wasteland of cars and blacktop. Now that the great suburban build-out is over, Kunstler argues, we are stuck with the consequences: a national living arrangement that destroys civic life while imposing enormous social costs and economic burdens. Kunstler explains how our present zoning laws impoverish the life of our communities, and how all our efforts to make automobiles happy have resulted in making human beings miserable. He shows how common building regulations have led to a crisis in affordable housing, and why street crime is directly related to our traditional disregard for the public realm. Kunstler takes the reader on a historical journey to understand how Americans came to view their landscape as a commodity for exploitation rather than a social resource. He explains why our towns and cities came to be wounded by the abstract dogmas of Modernism, and reveals the paradox of a people who yearn for places worthy of their affection, yet bend their efforts in an economic enterprise ofdestruction that degrades and defaces what they most deeply desire. Kunstler proposes sensible remedies for this American crisis of landscape and townscape: a return to sound principles of planning and the lost art of good place-making, an end to the tyranny of compulsive commuting, the un
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There is a marvelous moment in the hit movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? that sums up our present national predicament very nicely. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
There is a marvelous moment in the hit movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? that sums up our present national predicament very nicely. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a treat. It's one of those books that helps give you words for what you've always felt, but haven't articulated. Kunstler approaches the topic of why America is so GoshDarn ugly from many different perspectives. The parts of the book that focus on the histories of human habitats are not as thigh-slappinlgly funny as the parts in which he describes (with a dead-on accuracy that might make you cry) our own late-twentieth century American (ridiculous) landscape, but are compelling nonetheless for the sheer volume of information. Certain passages in the book are so elegantly written you will read them out loud to friends. Others are so funny you will laugh to yourself. Read this book with a pen to underline all the good stuff. It will no doubt change your perspective.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mr. Kunstler writes about the rise and fall (and glimmerings of a new rise) of our urban landscape. In beautiful prose he provides overviews of important American events (my husband loved his two page synopsis of World War II) to explain why our communities lack a sense of community, why houses,buildings and streets built before World War II are charming, and why those post-WWI are not and what some people are doing about it. Reading this book made a passionate New Urbanist out of me - I haven't felt this way about an issue since I picketed the draft board in the early 70's. Buy one copy for you and one for your friend who develops strip malls, 7-11's and Big Box stores. Up against the wall, bauhaus!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A book you have to read if you are concerned about sprawl. Tells why America everywhere is starting to look the same-cookie cutter subdivisions, etc. Buy this book-you will be glad you did.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
One of the best urban writers of the twentieth century.
Jim Kunstler's books are the best popular expression of the architectural movement known as New Urbanism. Read more
Published on 26 Jan 1999
A sarcastic look at what is wrong with suburbia
I really enjoyed this book as a biting, sarcastic look at what is wrong with suburbia today, how it got there and is there an alternative? Read more
Published on 23 Jan 1999
Witty in lieu of insight...
As a general study into the well documented shortcomings of contemporary cities (suburbia/automotive society), Kunstler has done an excellent job of expressing his turmoil. Read more
Published on 9 Sep 1998
Stunning and Clear Insights About a Civilization in Decline
Kunstler is a gracious and wonderful writer. How can anyone with half a brain not feel anger at what has happened to America? Read more
Published on 4 Aug 1998
Kunstler's language should be used by the planners.
James Kunstler has the advantage of the skillful writer of novels, which enables the more brilliant and satirical passages found in his description of our automobile wasteland. Read more
Published on 20 Nov 1997
"There's no 'there' there"-find out where America went wrong
Starting from the first colonial settlements continuing to the present day,
Kunstler examines the evolution of the built environment of the United
States with a... Read more
Kunstler examines the evolution of the built environment of the United
States with a... Read more
Published on 6 July 1997
Grumpy old man visits the suburbs.
"The Geography of Nowhere" doesn't say much about
the problems of suburban development that
Jane Jacobs didn't cover much better in "The Death
and... Read more
the problems of suburban development that
Jane Jacobs didn't cover much better in "The Death
and... Read more
Published on 20 Jun 1997
Why bad design makes our towns so depressing; how to fix it!
I am so glad I read this book. Kunstler has identified and explained why strip malls, cars, and vast paved areas can never compete with more traditional (i.e. Read more
Published on 19 Mar 1997
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