The Geography of Nowhere

Posted on 22 July 2017 by James Howard Kunstler

The Geography of Nowhere The Rise and Decline of America s Man Made Landscape Download The Geography of Nowhere – kino-fada.fr In describing a certain way of viewing the landscape, Kunstler makes the observation that a Jacksonian student of landscape can study a fast food place in his example a place called the Red Barn that looks like a red barn and never arrive at the conclusion that the Red Barn is an ignoble piece of shit that degrades the community There is the thrust of Kunstler s book, a stirring...James Howard Kunstler, prophet of doom, blogger Clusterfuck Nation , author, novelist, wrote this book way back in 1993, but it has that timeless feel Not a whole lot has changed, except apparently we ve pushed doom a little further off into the future The era of cheap gas is drawing to a close, he warned us, meaning death for the suburbs as many people would no longer be able to afford to drive Well dang it if cheap ish gas prices aren t here again, after their scary highs of 08.Kunstl James Howard Kunstler, prophet of doom, blogger Clusterfuck Nation , author, novelist, wrote this book way back in 1993, but it has that timeless feel Not a whole...There is nothing like a little James Howard Kunstler to make you feel like a complete asshole and Capitalist whore His newest prophesy is that the American suburb is dead, but this book only predicts that with its strangely plausible sounding doomsday warnings and vehement attacks against anyone so blind enough to want the myth that is the American Dream The book takes a fascinating look at the forces that drove the rise of individual landownership and the suburb as currently accepted in moder There is nothing like a little James Howard Kunstler to make you feel like a complete asshole and Capitalist whore His newest prophesy is that the American suburb is dead, but this book only predicts that with its strangely plausible sounding doomsday warnings and vehement attacks against anyone so blind enough to want the myth that is the American Dream The book takes a fascinating look at the forces that drove the rise of individual landownership and the suburb as currently accepted in modern society his examinations of human psychological and anthropological tendencies are depressing, but spot on as far as this...This is book is largely a rant well researched and eloquent but a rant nonetheless Overwrought with cynicism, it is hard to distinguish Kunstler s reasonable concerns from his own sense of nostalgia He draws some erroneous parallels e.g holding Disney World to the standard of anything but an amusement park but does make an effective point regarding how U.S citizens were ill prepared for the after effects of the heyday of the automobile.Fundamentally, Kunstler s cynicism aside, he s an ad This is book is largely a rant well researched and eloquent but a rant nonetheless Overwrought with cynicism, it is hard to distinguish Kunstler s reasonable concerns from his own sense of nostalgia He draws some erroneous par...The Geography of Nowhere tends towards the polemic, but through most of the book I found myself agreeing with Kunstler s ideas His basic premise is that the fundamental American bias towards private property rights has created a culture weak in community and this bias has combined with an over reliance on the automobile to produce nowhere places suburbias with no center, endless highways of stripmalls, and millions of units of crap housing He s not optimistic about the future of this civ The Geography of Nowhere tends towards the polemic, but through most of the book I found myself agreeing with Kunstler s ideas His basic premise is that the fundamental American bias towards private property rights has created a culture weak in community and this bias has combined with an over reliance on the automobile to produce nowhere places suburbias with no center, endless highways of stripmalls, and millions of units of crap housing He s not optimistic about the future of this civilization we ve created once the oil runs out, or the environment goes bad, or we go insane from spending weeks every year in our cars, he believes we re going to be somewhere beyond fucked His writing is at its best when he s describing specific ...Sometimes people tell me I m humorless, that I over intellectualize, that I need to chill out Well, in that regard, James Howard Kunstler makes me look like fucking Vinny from Jersey Shore.The Geography of Nowhere, is, above all else, a rant A very entertainingly angry rant, but a rant While I enjoyed reading much of it, it doesn t exactly have an academic basis the foundations for his claims are shaky at best, and when he makes claims about the nature of building and space, he doesn t just Sometimes people tell me I m humorless, that I over intellectualize, that I need to chill out Well, in that regard, James Howard Kunstler makes me look like fucking Vinny from Jersey Shore.The Geography of Nowhere, is, above all else, a rant A very entertainingly angry rant, but a rant While I enjoyed reading much of it, it doesn t...In this book, Kunstler covers the history and development of town planning and suburbification with a definite chip on his shoulder Starting with colonial times, he examines how we have used and misused land for individual, rather than group purposes The great expanse of America was ours for the taking, and take it we did, throwing aside the concepts of villages and civic harmony He vilifies the automobile industry, blaming it for the banality of suburbia and the destruction of commu...Kunstler Born in 1948, I have lived my entire life in America s high imperial moment During this epoch of stupendous wealth and power, we have managed to ruin our greatest cities, throw away our small towns, and impose over the countryside a joyless junk habitat which we can no longer afford to support Indulging in a fetish of commercialized individualism, we did away with t...Second Look Books The geography of nowhere The Rise and Decline of America s Man Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler Simon and Schuster, New York 1993 The great modern classic, The geography of nowhere, by James Howard Kunstler, describes the American predicament of having nowhere to go, at least nowhere to go that looks any different than any place else Everyplace and any place, and anyplace has, in this country, been built mostly since World War II, a tragic landscape of highway Second Look Books The geography of nowhere The Rise and Decline of America s Man Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler Simon and Schuster, New York 1993 The great modern classic, The geography of nowhere, by James Howard Kunstler, describes the American predicament of having nowhere to go, at least nowhere to go that looks any different than any place else Everyplace and any place, and anyplace has, in this country, been built mostly since World War II,...Kunstler s analysis of the sad suburban situation is mainly right on Unbridled private enterprise has destroyed public transit Roads and buildings designed predominantly for private car access create problems for the human inhabitants of that environment, making it impossible to do without a car for the simplest of tasks in many places Local zoning laws are often inane and archaic Ditto building code...

English
22 July 2017

James Howard Kunstler