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Summary: Provocative criticism of suburbia and modern development
Review: James Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere" is both an explaination of how we got to the Superhighway/Suburbia landscape and of how we might escape it. Kunslter is at his best when he describes how two different government decisions helped us arrive at where we are at today. First the investment in the system of highways helped spur the demand for cars within American families. Every family could now move around at an accelerated pace. Secondly the system of loans for family homes helped encourage the creation of suburbs ringing once prosperous and lively cities. Both disasters such as Syracuse, NY and successes like Portland, OR are described. Kunslter's example of Paris with its broad boulevards and open cafes gives a great contrast with the San Diego freeway and downtown office culture in the US. Intelligently written and often opinionated, its book to be recommended and one that's had a fair amount of influence since its publication.
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Summary: One of the best urban writers of the twentieth century.
Review: Jim Kunstler's books are the best popular expression of the architectural movement known as New Urbanism. 100 years from now, people will look on Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford and James Howard Kunstler as the definitive writers on the subject of American urbanism.
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Summary: Stunning and Clear Insights About a Civilization in Decline
Review: Kunstler is a gracious and wonderful writer. How can anyone with half a brain not feel anger at what has happened to America? The ugliness and horror that has engulfed our natural and civic environments are all the more shocking for the speed at which they've occurred. It's almost as if we're hellbent on removing the last vestiges of beauty and meaning from our lives.Our loud, sometimes mute complicity to runaway and wretched development says everything we need to know about patriotism in America today.
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Summary: The Land of Denny's
Review: Kunstler is not too happy with how we've built our cities, our suburbs, and our society. And I can't blame him.
This is an important consideration of how the landscapes of America have changed, and not for the best. The decline of American cities, the rise of the never-ending suburban sprawls, the addiction to cars and to oil and highways, all contribute to the decay of social fabric.
It all sounds deep, but Kunstler is clearly onto something. Himself transplanted to the suburbs of Long Island, Kuntsler is angry at what he sees as an America that is less and less concerned with maintaining any lasting community, anywhere.
All you have to do in this country is go to a few different cities and look around. First off, you can hardly distinguish most big cities from each other in the US--you have a downtown (in some cases among the worst part of a particular city, and often deserted and bland) and you have the endless suburban sprawl. What you find is isolation, isolation, isolation. Pick a big city, and you see the problems still being faced decades after population shifts, demographic changes, cultural changes etc: Detroit, Atlanta, St Louis, Miami, etc, etc.
Architecture is in the dumps, as short-term profit is the motivating factor behind flat, faceless and featureless buildings. Suburbia has long been the answer for many: miles of designed streets with identical houses, cut off from undesirables by miles of highway, encouraging an inefficient life where everything is separated, the car has replaced the PERSON as the unit we build for, to say nothing of the cultural wasteland half of America becomes with the influx of 100 fast food chains, a Walmart, a mall, an 'entertainment complex', etc, destroying anything that once gave a place character.
The notion of public space is different in America than elsewhere. Here, we don't seem to think much of it. While it may enrage some folks to compare ourselves to Europe and its cities, Kunstler points out that European cities are built to last, so to speak. Public space is respected and cherished, cities are built around people and for people, and so what if you don't have a Chili's, an Outback Steakhouse, a Radioshack, a Best Buy, a Wal Mart, etc, etc everywhere.
Even in New York you see the chains have moved in to stay, the blandness extends to every facet of life. At least you can walk out the buildings here and walk on a street and see people, unless of course, you don't want to see anyone except those who are exactly like you.
Important stuff, and God-forbid, thought-provoking.
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Summary: Occassionally hilarious, generally good
Review: Kunstler throws alot of punches in this book, many of which are on the mark. The general idea is one thats as old as humanity: that things are going to hell. In this case, the built environment. Modernists, Highways, the automobile, suburban sprawl- all these get a chapter of scathing criticism. As an architecture student, I thoroughly enjoyed his blasting architectural critiques, which were occasionally hilarious- of Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas, he says: "They were like stoned graduate students on a road trip, critical faculties up in smoke!" (saying that they should have been MUCH more critical of Vegas). I read this book before I read Jacob's Death and Life of Great American Cities, and I found Jacobs to be a heck of a lot more restrained and academic (yet also very funny at some points). Also, Jacobs would probably condemn some things that Kunstler advocates- things like Seaside, Florida, which to me seem to be simply more exclusive and better-designed sprawl. Sprawl is still sprawl, pretty or not. The solution lies in bringing life back to cities, not more Seasides. Kunstler is from a small New York town, so perhaps he has a fondness for small towns (which certainly have their place), but re-invigorating cities or lessening automobile dependance isn't going to be achieved by a thousand Seasides. Anyhow; pretty good book. Give her a read if you're concerned about the built environment. Jacobs says alot of the same things though, and she said them what, 30+ years before? Kunstler adds a sense of desperate, almost angry urgency to it. Understandably- all the perscriptions for curing cities laid out by Jacobs weren't followed at all- the only thing that will change the way Americans build will be massive economic changes.
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Summary: Welcome Voice of Reason
Review: Kunstler's informed report may come off as a rant, but he does speak from a place of genuine concern. Compared with the abstracted anti-urbanism of Bernard Tschumi, Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman and other of the quasi-intellectual poseurs practicing as architects these days, we should welcome Kunstlers much-needed rebuttal.
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Summary: Greetings...... from Rust Belt Hell!!!
Review: Kuntsler was dead on in his excoriation of my (sigh) hometown in his scathing chapter on how to completely annihlate both a populace and the surrounding environment in one fell swoop. The cult of the car is the only religion that matters in this post-modern, blasted-out, emaciated shell of a once "mighty" metropolis. Everything in this hovel is BUTTUGLY, UGLY, UGLY: attitudes, people, politics, architecture, cul-de-sacs, what open land there is, etc. (We're the home of Kid Rock and Eminem, dontcha know - lovely!)If the Almighty is looking down on us, He is surely muttering: what the hell did you do to Detroit, you megalomanical morons?
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Summary: The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Urban Style
Review: 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!
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Summary: A Refreshing Book
Review: No, this book isn't the most scholarly approach to urban planning. But is a much needed book. One of the problems with the myriad of books that have emerged lately on the topic of modern urban design is that they are written in academic speak, not readily understandable by the layman or laywoman who is attempting to make a difference while serving on town boards. Although no one has mentioned it in these reviews, it was gutsy of the author to propose that a building could be objectively ugly. This is important to those of us who are sick and tired of trying to tell developers that we don't want another McDonalds because the golden arches don't relate to the spacial relationships of our sidewalks. Damn it, we have the right to reject it because its plug ugly. His comments on Disney were wicked, accurate, and entirely true. Read this book.
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Summary: wonderfully cynical
Review: The _Geography of Nowhere_ is a scathing attack on post-WWII (sub-)urban planning. Kunstler had no formal training at the time he wrote the book and channels his anger and cynicism towards his surroundings into an effective - yet readable - analysis of our cities. People are beginning once again to champion 'living downtown' and walking and using public transit. Kunstler did it ten years ago - at a time when very few of us were thinking about it. Unfortunately, as is common with many critiques, Kunstler does not have very many solutions to urban planning problems - he leaves those for his next book, _Home from Nowhere_.
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