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The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, by James Howard Kunstler
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The Geography of Nowhere traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where every place is like no place in particular, where the cities are dead zones and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots.
In elegant and often hilarious prose, Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. The Geography of Nowhere tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. It is also a wake-up call for citizens to reinvent the places where we live and work, to build communities that are once again worthy of our affection. Kunstler proposes that by reviving civic art and civic life, we will rediscover public virtue and a new vision of the common good. "The future will require us to build better places," Kunstler says, "or the future will belong to other people in other societies."
- Sales Rank: #15842 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Free Press
- Published on: 1994-07-26
- Released on: 1994-07-26
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.44" h x .80" w x 5.50" l, .62 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
Features
From Publishers Weekly
In this inconsistent but provocative analysis, Kunstler ( Blood Solstice ), a novelist and journalist, mixes memoir, historical essay and reporting to condemn the car-dependent suburbanization of America. Kunstler, who writes ably, casts a very wide net: he finds the roots of American individualism in pre-colonial property ownership, decries the abstracting influence of modernism on city architecture and slams road-builder Robert Moses to support his contention that suburbia is a social environment without soul. He offers an intriguing history of the decline of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., his hometown, describes trips to failing Detroit and well-planned Portland, Ore., and dissects "capitals of unreality" like Disney World and Atlantic City. His worthy but sketchily described solutions--a sustainable economy, better neighborhood development and preservation of the countryside--could, however, each merit a book.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this spirited, irreverent critique, Kunstler spares none of the culprits that have conspired in the name of the American Dream to turn the U.S. landscape from a haven of the civic ideal into a nightmare of crass commercial production and consumption. Kunstler strips the bark off the utopian social engineering promoted by the machine-worshiping Modern movement of Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright and skewers the intellectual camps (e.g., Venturi) that have thrived on making academic glory of the consumer wasteland. With the fervor of an investigative reporter and in the vernacular of a tabloid journalist, Kunstler exposes the insidious "car lobby" and gives case studies of landscapes as diverse as Detroit, Atlantic City, and Seaside, Florida, to illustrate both the woes and hopeful notes. The ideas in this book are not new (Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte Jr. were bemoaning the loss of civic life a quarter-century ago), but Kunstler gives their case an urgent, popular voice. An eminently relevant and important book; highly recommended.
- Thomas P.R. Nugent, New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
It's no news that many Americans live in a spread-out, privatized suburban wasteland without community or centers; that much landscape has given way to ugly sprawl; that this condition may be due to systematic policies on the part of government and industrial forces; and that the automobile is the engine that has driven us there. What novelist Kunstler (The Halloween Ball, 1987, etc.) does here is to explore and deplore these developments. Kunstler traces, from the nation's beginnings, the implications of changing architecture styles; the manifestations of our extreme emphasis on private-property rights and low regard for the public realm; and the destruction that our car-centered life has visited on American communities in general and certain profiled older towns and cities in particular. His discussions of specific places--chosen to represent such concepts as an ``old industrial metropolis gone to hell'' (Detroit); ``how to mess up a town'' (Saratoga Springs, New York); the ``most hopeful and progressive trends in...urban planning'' (Portland, Oregon); and sinister commercial myth-mongering that distorts small-town reality (Disney World)--lack the original ideas, cutting analysis, and stimulating insights that characterized last year's Variations on a Theme Park (ed., Michael Sorkin). But for a more popular audience, Kunstler provides an accessible overview that's all the more interesting and effective for his frankly expressed and all-enveloping viewpoint. If his attachment to the small towns of the past seems an insufficient answer to the problems of the present and future, his depiction of those problems is on target. And the author makes a persuasive case for convicting the private automobile of a gamut of 20th-century ills: the Great Depression; the death of the cities and of the family farm; the trashy consumerism that has driven the economy since the end of WW II; voodoo economics; the S&L crisis; and global environmental degradation. An informative and well-integrated polemic. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
105 of 114 people found the following review helpful.
revolutionary
By Shannon B.
Geography of Nowhere is a wonderful, life-changing book. I wish I could make every developer, every SUV owner and every town council read this book. Its main topic is the physical environments that Americans live in, in contrast to our historical environments and to overseas. Kunstler shows how the advent of the automobile has changed the face of cities, small-towns and birthed the suburb. The choice to live without an automobile is now a very difficult one for most people, and also comes with certain social assumptions. Yet, after reading Geography of Nowhere, I am seeking ever more ways to take public transportation and reduce my reliance on a vehicle that both pollutes the natural environment and despoils the man-made environment.
Some chapters in the book focus on cities gone wrong, such as Detroit. Others discuss the ideal community, involving mixed-use neighborhoods (both purpose - commercial, residential, industrial - and class - working, professional, wealthy). Kunstler makes the case that prior to the development of suburbia and the reign of automobiles as our primary form of transportation, we had a kinder, cleaner, and happier world. Disney World's Main Street was used as an example of how car-free neighborhoods have become an American dream, and at the same time, few people understand why cars have had such a negative effect.
Geography of Nowhere has confirmed my choice to live in a city with public transportation, in a mixed-use neighborhood, within walking distance of most of my needs. It may be more expensive and it may be unconventional, but I now have the evidence to back up my convictions.
47 of 49 people found the following review helpful.
A Refreshing Book
By rex tugwell
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.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
The Land of Denny's
By N. P. Stathoulopoulos
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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