The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler

May 11, 2008 Tim rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Americans, suburbanites in particular

Shelves: own

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 if somewhat flawed look at our degraded landscape.
The book takes us on a whirlwind tour of the history of the Un...more 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 if somewhat flawed look at our degraded landscape.
The book takes us on a whirlwind tour of the history of the United States, from the puritans through the evil that was modernism. We learn about early town planning, how it varied from state to state depending on the prevailing community values. As we pushed ever further into our growing land mass, we lost that community and turned inward. It really turns to shit though when we arrive in modern times and that dastardly movement known as modernism rears its ugly head.
Modernism is a sort of favorite punching bag these days. Kunstler is very hard on it, pretty much blaming the artistic movement for the disaster that is suburbia. In that respect I find Adam Rome's The Bulldozer in the Countryside more convincing. In that book we get a more solid, less "ignoble piece of shit" based argument. Rome lays out the economic conditions in a more methodical way and takes apart your average suburban house to show why it is an ignoble piece of shit. Kunstler just seems to hate how it looks. The tone changes a little later on and he elaborates on why suburbia is bad and what exactly is bad about it(height restrictions, lack of mixed uses, set back requirements). I also find the arguments put forth in David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity to be instructive. Harvey argues (and this gels with Rome's argument) that much of the "modern aestetic" came, at least in part, from the discovery of new building materials and techniques. Harvey agrues that the return to ornamentation in the postmodern period is a result of a refinement of those techniques. Kunstler also ignores the fact—again brought up by Rome—that the traditional way of building houses was not up to the task of dealing with the postwar boom, and that it was not so much an embrace of modernist design as an embrace of economical building practices.
Oddly enough, it is his relentless attack on aesthetics that provide this book with its relevance. While Rome's book is more technical (it has a lenghty chapter on the problems of septic tanks), Kunstler focuses on ecology and how we interact with places. I don't think that I agree entirely on the aesthetic principles he seems to favor (I don't think the garish colors used on Pinkberry locations harms the fabric of the Village), but I do agree that the look of a building (and how it "interacts with the street") is important (I lean more towards the iteraction aspect).
The last part of the book deals with efforts to bring back this sense of community, or at least provide us with pretty things to look at. We learn about Traditional Neighborhood Design (part of New Urbanism), land trusts (to save farmland), and what sounds like Transit Oriented Design (though it isn't called that in the book). He does a good job of not focussing too much on the look of buildings in Seaside (the TND posterchild), instead focussing on community. (This book came out too long ago to evaluate how successful that project has been, perhaps there is an updated edition?) He also points out the oft-forgotten part of the Seaside development, that it could only have been built in the middle of nowhere because of the zoning regulations that were present in Florida at the time. Many critics harp on the remoteness of Seaside (and the fact that it is a new development, which means it isn't exactly preserving open space), claiming that it is a glorified suburb. I like that Kunstler focusses on the functioning of this town and the difficulties the developers had in bringing it about. He also makes a point of referring to it as a demonstration project. He does however mention other developments in the same vein, but fails to address the fact that these are also entirely new developments. A few pages later he expresses his desire to see a new, more "sustainable" form of development. Surely filling up more land with deveopments cannot be considered sustainable. I guess what I wanted was more talk of rehabilitating broken places (if it is possible to save suburbia) and reusing abandoned cities (of which there are many).
Many of the faults are minor (his hatred of modernist architecture is forgivable and not too central to his argument), so I do recommend this book. It is entertaining and passionate; passion for city planning is something we need to see more of in America. I can't really blame him for his indignant tone. After reading about all the ways in which compentent city planning is actually illegal in this country, one can't help but be angry. Kunstler provides a great introduction to the issues that doesn't get bogged down by dry analysis. It moves along quickly and will hopefully inspire readers to learn more about the issues that are brought up.(less)

13 likes · like · see review

Jun 28, 2010 Lobstergirl rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone

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...more 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.

Kunstler's concern is the built environment; specifically, how horrific it is. The world around us is designed for cars, not people. We owe our environment to the metrics of traffic engineers, the zoning boards who listen to them, to government policies that subsidized cars and interstates but allowed streetcars and trolleys to die out. Even where zoning boards have tried to limit sprawl and encourage charm - say, by forcing houses onto 2 acre plots - they've only encouraged sprawl by pushing dwellings further and further out from towns, in 2 acre increments. And many of the most beautiful and historic homes that still stand in small town America would be illegal by current zoning standards. Living in a world designed not for us, but for our cars, engenders feelings of alienation in us. It's why office parks sit amid vast lagoons of cars, why split level house facades feature huge gaping garage doors, why Ramada Inns are unashamed to have loading docks and metal fire doors front onto the streetscape. If you've ever tried to walk somewhere in the suburbs, or the exurbs, where there were no sidewalks, maybe just a little grassy rut next to eight lanes of traffic, you'll want to read this book. If you've ever walked through a charming New England town with buildings on a human scale and old growth trees lining the streets, and then a fringe-urban warehouse district cinderblock moonscape, and wondered why one made you feel good and the other didn't, and how they both managed to get built, this book is for you.

Kunstler writes in a biting vernacular. Suburban stores are "shopping smarm." Individual houses sit on "big blobs of land." And everywhere, there is crud: "commercial highway crud," "creeping crud architecture of suburbia," "the modern crudscape." Our human habitat is "trashy and preposterous." The Swissman Charles-Edouard Jeanneret "took the hocus-pocus name Le Corbusier." (Kunstler despises Modernism.) The Red Barn fast food restaurant "is an ignoble piece of shit that degrades the community." All over American suburbs "there are the dreary voids we call front lawns and dull exercises in miniature vignette-making known as landscaping with shrubs."

In a chapter devoted to the glumness of fakery, he visits Atlantic City. "Standing on the Boardwalk this mild October Day, one beheld the Trump Taj Mahal with that odd mixture of fascination and nausea reserved for the great blunders of human endeavor." At Disney World, "after paying $32.50 for admission [in today's dollars a one-day ticket costs $79:], you are efficiently herded onto a ferryboat for a short ride across an artificial lake to the entrance of the Kingdom. This will be the first of many crowd-control experiences - and resulting lines - that add to Disney World's air of fascism. The boat ride is also a psychological device. Making you enter the place by stages, the Disney "imagineers" emphasize the illusion of one's taking a journey to a strange land - as if driving over 1500 miles from another corner of the nation was not sufficient..."

There are moments when his judgments come a little too close to snobbery for my comfort. It's not the snobbery of wealth or education but of aesthetics: people whose aesthetic choices are subpar - say, someone living in a ranch house with a rusty auto and a torn plastic wading pool in the yard - are to be pitied. "You could name a housing development Forest Knoll Acres even if there was no forest and no knoll, and the customers would line up with their checkbooks open. Americans were as addicted to illusion as they were to cheap petroleum." Or, maybe they don't have many choices. Maybe Forest Knoll Acres was affordable and close to work and its buyers were well aware that it wasn't some pastoral Eden - but knowing they were participants in a developer's illusion wasn't the most dire fact of their daily life. I prefer not to tie individual aesthetic choices so closely to virtue or lack of it. Not everyone can live in Seaside, Florida, or on Walden Pond.

He treats the built environment holistically: geography is related to architecture, which is related to economics, which is related to sociology. I have to admit I'd never thought of ecology and economy being as closely related as their roots would indicate. Ultimately it all has to do with private ownership vs. public responsibility. It's the story of America. I'd also never directly related the expenditures of the interstate highway system to anything else, but "because the highways were gold-plated with our national wealth, all other forms of public building were impoverished. This is the reason why every town hall built after 1950 is a concrete-block shed...and other civic monuments are indistinguishable from bottling plants and cold-storage warehouses."

This is an utterly harsh indictment of the way we live, and the manner in which we've surrendered decision-making unthinkingly. It's a plea to heal our "spiritual deformities" (yes, it really is that bad) by maintaining and building better communities and actually caring about them.(less)

4 likes · like · see review

Dec 21, 2007 Tracey rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: libraryread, pop-sociology, pop-history

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 community, g...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 08, 2011 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: non-eco-conscious humans, herding dogs, and all SUV owners

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...more

4 likes · like · see review

Jun 23, 2007 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

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...more

3 likes · like · see review

Oct 09, 2007 Benjamin rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved Kuntsler's writing style and I felt energized by his passionate, funny and poignant criticisms of modern suburbia. He vividly and accurately describes the majority of modern growth as banal and uninteresting. He points out how most suburbs are indistinguishable from one another and are full of bland, architecturally weak buildings that will not withstand the test of time. He laments the demise of good planning and sound building in America with eloquence and wit. The book, however, becom...more

1 like · like · see review

Mar 25, 2008 Sean O'Neil rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love Kunstler's curmudgeonly view of the ill effects of our car-dependent Suburbia culture. I agree completely with his perspective as shared in this book. I recommend reading this in conjunction with Tony Hiss's "The Experience of Place" and Wendell Berry's "The Unsettling of America." Read together, those 3 books will change the way you view the American Dream and may even help you become a force for improving the quality of life here in America. Highly recommended. Kunstler's website, "Clus...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jan 04, 2012 Carrie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: geography, cities, city, towns, planning, architecture, non-fiction, environment, environmental, impact

James Howard Kunstler brings up very thoughtful points in this book. It made me observe my world a little differently, from the buildings I see every day to the infrastructure on which I rely, to my complete inability (and everyone else's as well) to do without an automobile in this crazy, silly little world we call ours. Kunstler addresses the problem of the loss of community as a symptom of urban sprawl, and he's right.[return][return]Of course, there are many people to blame for this mess we'...more

like · see review

Jan 01, 2009 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cities-and-planning

Kunstler hates suburbia, sprawl, and corporate control, and champions well-planned cities and towns, public space, and democracy. The Geography of Nowhere is a satisfying read because he is able to explain the causes of our offensive landscapes and explain why it is that we are (or should) be repulsed by them. While Kunstler is able to articulate the need for more humane communities, he ultimately puts too much faith in certain “new urbanism” developments to re-design them. It appears he revisit...more Kunstler hates suburbia, sprawl, and corporate control, and champions well-planned cities and towns, public space, and democracy. The Geography of Nowhere is a satisfying read because he is able to explain the causes of our offensive landscapes and explain why it is that we are (or should) be repulsed by them. While Kunstler is able to articulate the need for more humane communities, he ultimately puts too much faith in certain “new urbanism” developments to re-design them. It appears he revisits this in his sequel, Home from Nowhere, which is on my bookshelf, waiting to be read. I read this book as I was beginning my degree in community development at a college of urban planning and policy. It was a helpful book to lay out both some of the failures as well as the progressive renaissance in urban planning as I was embarking into that field. Kunstler's language is both biting and playful, seldom academic, and therefore recommended for a wide audience of anyone who pays attention to their environment. I should also mention that much of his book is a look at small town development and its problems, though my review will focus on urban areas. The review below was published in another form in my friend's zine. Let me know if you're interested, and I'll find you a copy.

Kunstler's thesis is simple, but not simplistic: over the last century, the automobile has been a primary engine for development, and in the process, has ruined our surroundings. Auto-led development has destroyed some of our greatest communities and has replaced them with dehumanizing places.

Kunstler’s task is to trace historically how our cultural and physical environments have degraded one another, facilitated by the automobile. The rise of the automobile simultaneously contributed to our ongoing ideological project of privatization as well as our physical pattern of expansionist growth (often for its own sake). These patterns have long histories in our civilization, dating to our colonial-era seizure of North America. Land distribution, from the start, was speculative, meaning that a large tract was bought by one party and divided and sold at a profit to many other parties. This practices “degrades the notion of the public realm,” (27) because there is no incentive for collective ownership, and consequently no collective use. The physical and cultural meet if we are to agree with Kunstler that the public realm is the manifestation of the common good. This is a basic premise for all of Kunstler’s analyses. The pattern of expansionist growth, of course, is deeply rooted in our society, stemming from the “manifest destiny” ideology of our western-moving colonizing project.

Because I’m interested in Chicago, Kunstler’s discussion of cities is most important to me. He argues that the automobile simultaneously destroyed city transit and enabled two waves of class flight to the suburbs. How did the automobile rise to such a position of power? Beginning in the 20s, General Motors (GM) began to purchase electric streetcar lines, tear out tracks, and convert them to bus routes. The electric streetcar was a relatively new invention, and in its short time operated as a clean, efficient, and inexpensive mode of mass transit. But GM removed streetcar tracks, thereby creating a demand for buses, as well as a need for space to accommodate the car boom that soon followed. Along with Standard Oil and Firestone Tire and Rubber, GM created various subsidiaries in order to systematically dismantle all electric transit. They succeeded, because by 1950, more than 100 electric-run trolley systems were replaced by gasoline-powered buses (92). More importantly, this process facilitated the privatization of transportation: with the trolleys gone, there was more room personal car use. Furthermore, cities suffered severely in order to accommodate the personal car boom: Between 1910 and 1940 Chicago spent $340 million on street widening. There is a class element to this as well, given that the poor who could not afford cars subsidized those who could, by paying taxes (the car is a private vehicle, but which travels over public space) (90). Other losses were priceless: highway construction, part of the shameful era known as urban renewal, leveled entire neighborhoods and displaced thousands, which in Chicago usually meant poor communities of color.

One reason cities bent to the will of the auto-related industries, is because auto-related industries, were, essentially the economy during Great Depression. The car, and the public infrastructure needed to support it, created jobs, and highway construction stimulated real estate growth.

Of course, Kunstler takes on the suburbs. He really hates post 50's suburbia, and his emotions serve as strong propellers for a sound analysis. The automobile, through highways, led people and development further from city cores. Highways themselves became sites for development, giving new markets in transit. Hence the cheaply constructed and utilitarian commercial buildings that pepper any intercity road systems: gas stations, convenience stores, fast food joints, etc. However, the characteristics of these developments, namely (1) Extreme separation of uses and (2) Large distances between them, are also part of the intrasuburban developments,. In other words, commercial, residential, industrial, and civic developments are isolated at great distances from one another. Separation of zoning uses originates from a good cause: keeping industry away from homes. However, Kunstler argues that post-war suburbs take this to an extreme, to the point where it is difficult to survive in the suburbs without a personal car.

Extreme separation of uses means that: “there are no corner stores in housing subdivisions, though the lack of them is a great inconvenience to anyone who would like to buy a morning newspaper or a quart of milk without driving across town. The separation of uses is also the reason why there are no apartments over the stores in the thousands of big and little shopping centers built since 1945, though our society desperately needs cheap, decent housing for those who are not rich” (177).

Kunstler determines that the separation of uses and large distances degrade the quality of building construction. Unlike a traditional mainstreet, on which people walk and experience commercial buildings on a “humans scale,” suburban developments in their ubiquitous malls, are experienced on a larger scale, via the automobile. Because suburban commercial developments are isolated malls, their architecture has no context within which to fit. The result that Kunstler calls “obscene,” “irreverent,” and “cartoonish.” A degradation in the design of spaces corresponds with a degradation in their use. We do not experience such places as a coherent part of our community; rather; we transport ourselves to them at intervals to satisfy our individual consumption needs.

A perfect example of how a degraded physical environment degrades our cultural environment is the mall. Effectively, the mall commercializes the public realm for the quintessential privatized suburb. In a mall, you may meet and engage with fellow citizens and strangers, but within constraints: security forces prohibit you from being there during certain hours, and from engaging in certain activities (exercising your freedom of speech, etc.).

Basic public amenities, such as sidewalks, are conspicuously lacking in many suburban developments, despite the real estate-promoted myth that suburbs are the best places to raise children. Indeed, the auto-driven developments of suburbs can be hostile to the rearing of children. An example is the fact that streets are made to accommodate the protection of cars (property) over pedestrians (people): trees are sometimes prohibited within certain footage of the street, because they would damage a car that has come off the road, despite the fact that trees might protect a pedestrian from the reckless vehicle.

A fascinating part of Kunstler's work is his reading of some of America's tourist places. I will refrain from spoiling Kunstler's descriptions of Disney World, which are uncompromisingly critical and hilarious. He also examines Henry Ford's Greenfield Village, a historical reconstruction of a town typical of the times of the famous industrialist's childhood. It is a place for Detroit residents to drive to, park their cars outside, and experience life as we imagine it to have been in the 1880s. Disney World, Greenfield Village, and other tourist places are alluring to us because they offer spaces of fantasy; an escape from everyday life. Kunstler argues that one important way that these places are fantastic is because there is no hint of the car, nor car-oriented space. The supreme irony, is of course, that Henry Ford, perhaps the individual most associated with the car, created a tourist place that is fantastic and wonderful for its reconstructed pre-automobile state.

So, can we ever overthrow the car and reject our history of whack urban planning? Kunstler answers that it's not a question of can, but when.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Aug 08, 2007 Kenneth E. Harrison, Jr. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cultural-studies-and-social-critics

There is a downside to Kunstler here: at times he's given to over-generalizations and fallacious arguments. It's as though his passion for his subject precludes a more patient development of his thesis. (For example, his sweeping aside of Modernism makes little sense, especially considering that strains of Modernism in Literature railed against the very conditions Kunstler himself so vehemently opposes.) Yet on the whole Geography of Nowhere is insightful, engaging, angry, and rightfully so.

2 likes · like · see review

May 13, 2013 Zach rated it 4 of 5 stars

What is place?

I ask myself that often, because it's something I notice and can never nail down. It's always been easiest to notice a vacuum of place, normally when I have to toddle off to a Target in the Big-Box shantytown on the periphery of a city.

"Why do people like this? It's all the same."

Next to the Target is a Costco which neighbors a Best Buy that shares a parking lot with a Jiffy Lube and Toys 'R Us. If you're hungry, your choices are fast food, la-di-da fast food (Panera), or a sit-dow...more What is place?

I ask myself that often, because it's something I notice and can never nail down. It's always been easiest to notice a vacuum of place, normally when I have to toddle off to a Target in the Big-Box shantytown on the periphery of a city.

"Why do people like this? It's all the same."

Next to the Target is a Costco which neighbors a Best Buy that shares a parking lot with a Jiffy Lube and Toys 'R Us. If you're hungry, your choices are fast food, la-di-da fast food (Panera), or a sit-down restaurant that's weirdly expensive ($15.25 for chicken marsala at Olive Garden! It's not that Olive Garden sucks, it's that fifteen bucks is way too much to pay for something that came pre-made in a Sysco catalog).

Every town in America seemingly has this district, and that is weird. I personally find it repellent, ugly, and damn inconvenient ("You mean nobody installed a sidewalk for the half-mile journey between stores!?") I didn't always hate it, but the more I live in a city with unique food, shops, and scenery, the more I loathe the trek to the concrete flatlands of chain stores.

James Kunstler hates it too, and in far less kind terms. His book is angry and bitter at the unwalkable world we've built in the name of the automobile, and yearns for locality and the stability it brings to a town. Besides it being a labor of love for a disappearing world (and perhaps more so a screed against the ugly landscape in its place), he also examines the zoning laws that often mandate acres of parking, and how those statutes lack nuance for the community they serve. Zoning laws are often imported whole hog from other suburban developments, which is why each suburb and WalMart is nigh identical.

I knew we lived in a world of carefully measured easements and borders, but I didn't appreciate how restrictive those are, and how that prevents a close-knit community. Houses must be x feet from the sidewalk (thus you have no need for a porch and cannot talk to neighbors on the street). Parking must be available in front of the building (meaning no storefronts that open to the sidewalk). Land may only be sold in x acre parcels (which minces farmland while salting the earth for a small business owner). They're all small things with good intentions, but the end result is a world that is only accessible by automobile.

I realize that much of this is personal taste, and I'm fighting forces much larger than myself (which may well be the theme of the book). A lot of people love shopping at Macy's and eating their Subway sandwiches. That's fine, even if my last trip to Subway tasted like onion and lukewarm mayonaise (never again). The more I read, the more I'm learning that the American identity is one of self-reliance and utter independence. GoN notes that the American household is a pretend manor house devoted to the production of comfort. This house is isolated from others so we can have our space and back yards, and we drive alone in our cars to our offices, which are far away from home, which is far from the places we shop. It's dualism, but of the daily functions of life.

This book is educational, but it is not at all objective. It's one man who is upset at the vast nothings we build because we lack creativity or foresight for better. I agree with him, so I liked it, despite its heavy-handedness. If you enjoy the mall, you might not take kindly to his labeling of such as "ugly". Aesthetics play strongly in Kunstler's theology of space, and these rules are not always well defined. But he does make a call for a definite urban plan, and presents examples of successes, rare as they may be.

This is not a set of instructions for life in the future. It's pessimistic. It has none of the save-the-world glamor of a TED talk. But it is achingly honest and human.

I came for the cranky man yelling, but I stayed to learn why the landscape is shaped as such.(less)

like · see review

Jan 23, 2013 Erika RS rated it 3 of 5 stars

Part history, part analysis, and part plain old rant, The Geography of Nowhere discusses the evolution of the cities and houses in the U.S. in the city, the country, and the suburbs.

Kunstler starts with a historical overview of housing and community development in the U.S., starting with colonial towns and ending with the soulless suburban sprawl of today. Although much of the content was familiar, the historical overview had a number of surprises.

If you grew up in the U.S., when you think of an...more Part history, part analysis, and part plain old rant, The Geography of Nowhere discusses the evolution of the cities and houses in the U.S. in the city, the country, and the suburbs.

Kunstler starts with a historical overview of housing and community development in the U.S., starting with colonial towns and ending with the soulless suburban sprawl of today. Although much of the content was familiar, the historical overview had a number of surprises.

If you grew up in the U.S., when you think of an agricultural community you think of isolated farm houses surrounded by fields. Historically, agricultural communities have had a rather different setup. Homes were clustered together, and these town centers were surrounded by the farm lands. Your farmland was not necessarily adjacent to your property, but it was within a manageable distance. This layout provided safety and was more efficient for people without cars. The country sprawl that we think of as typical today is actually a result of the vast amounts of lands in the American west and the governments policies for settling them.

The history of the suburb is also surprising. Again in the U.S., you generally think of suburbs as the result of car induced sprawl. However, the first suburbs were built in the 1800s as communities along rail lines. They shared many features with modern suburbs (people lived there but did not work there, they were often planned communities of similar homes). However, they differed in one key respect. The original suburbs were built to human scale. Because they were rail suburbs, the residents still had to be able to walk within the community. Furthermore, the railroad station provided a natural center to the community, something which modern suburbs lack.

The next part of the book discusses the changes in house styles in the U.S. This part contains a fair bit of ranting about modern architecture. Home A Short History of an Idea by Witold Rybczynski does a better job of presenting similar information.

Kunstler presents case studies of 6 cities, pointing out what is right about them and what is wrong, and closes with a discussion of what is being done to make better places and stronger communities. Overall, I enjoyed The Geography of Nowhere. Kunstler ranted enough to be amusing without being distracting. The historical perspective and the case studies were valuable resources. Even though this book was published in 1993, it is still relevant. In fact, it may be increasingly relevant as the crash of the housing bubble lends energy to community rebuilding efforts.(less)

like · see review

Aug 25, 2011 Sophia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Sophia by: Nataliya

Shelves: 2011, cities, green, non-fiction

"It makes me ashamed of my civilization," James Howard Kunstler uttered during his visit to Greenfield Village, Henry Ford's tribute to American history. Reading his The Geography of Nowhere might have you saying the same, if you agree with his critique of the built American landscape. In addition to being ugly, expensive, and unsustainably oil-dependent, Kunstler charges suburban sprawl and Modernism with destroying a true sense of place, which in turn, impoverishes our sense of home and social...more

like · see review

Apr 22, 2010 Billy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Here is James Howard Kunstler's credo from The Geography of Nowhere:

"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 habit which we can no longer afford to support. Indulging in a fetish of commercialized individualism, we did away with the public realm, and with nothing left but private life in our...more

like · see review

Jun 05, 2009 Bren rated it 4 of 5 stars

Overall Kunstler does a pretty good job reviewing the history of some of the more unsightly features of the built environment such as the rise of the automobile and housing developments and so on and so forth. However, Kunstler does not offer any definition of "landscape" and the manner in which he refers to landscape implies that it is not the definition employed by human geographers, that is the cultural landscape. Instead it seems as if Kunstler views landscape from the more traditional (and...more

like · see review

Feb 28, 2013 Chris Ledermuller rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: urbanism

I'm torn on James Howard Kunstler. The author and journalist, since the Internet age, has become the Andrew Wakefield of the doomer (civilizational collapse) set. Read his website and look at his devotee circle. Yikes!

Yet give Kunstler a book as a platform, and an editor to save him from his basest instincts, and he is a compelling and thoughtful author and cultural commentator.

He has a knowledge and passion for history and architecture, and he combines it with a biting takedown of post-World Wa...more I'm torn on James Howard Kunstler. The author and journalist, since the Internet age, has become the Andrew Wakefield of the doomer (civilizational collapse) set. Read his website and look at his devotee circle. Yikes!

Yet give Kunstler a book as a platform, and an editor to save him from his basest instincts, and he is a compelling and thoughtful author and cultural commentator.

He has a knowledge and passion for history and architecture, and he combines it with a biting takedown of post-World War II society. His thesis: Americans took their cars and got on the highway to hell.

Kunstler points out that America's awful built environment reflects a broader degeneration of Americans as a people.

He'd lose his audience quickly. Suburbanites have the income, education and leisure time to absorb his book, only to find it a big slap in the face. Yet the book serves as an awakening to suburbanites who'll have an A Ha! moment and see the failings.

The biggest one is that after World War II, Americans with means raced to the suburbs and let everything before it wither and die. Not only that, but they've lost the ability to make livable places. Uniform housing construction style and materials have killed architecture worth caring about. Suburbia also favored mass merchandising and mammoth scale that have poisoned the well for smaller businesses rooted in the community.

This book is now 20 years old and didn't see a rebound for urbanism, nor did it see the transfer of inner city pathologies to the suburbs. Furthermore, Kunstler also says the future lies in small towns, urban and walkable in form but lightly populated. Small towns and rural areas have it just as bad as suburbs -- high rates of unemployment, domestic violence and drug use in the form of meth and highly potent painkillers. Also, small towns and rural areas now live and die based on whether immigrants are coming in. Areas that did not see immigrants are declining in population and economic activity.

Kunstler's chapters on three cities -- Detroit, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon -- are his weakest. I am a Los Angeles native and immediately see the nonsense. For one thing, he describes Southern California as a giant desert incapable of sustaining itself. Southern California's deserts are 125 miles east of the Pacific Ocean. Most of Los Angeles is a Mediterranean coastal plain, and had robust agriculture for most of the 19th century. Detroit's decline story is too superficial. Even Portland, for all of the love Kunstler gives it, only looks the way it does near a few MAX stations. The rest is banal suburbia found everywhere.

Kunstler, though, is at his best at examining history and architecture. Also, his savage attack on Disney culture, and the ritual of gambling, are guilty pleasures. Kunstler shakes these pastimes off their pedestals and turns their busts to rubble.

Best of all, "The Geography of Nowhere" takes us to a time when Kunstler was still coherent and didn't indulge in doomer porn.(less)

like · see review

Oct 18, 2010 Margot rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

A bit ranty, but written engagingly, curse words and all. Kunstler has an endearing term for the monotonous American landscape he spends the book despising: "crudscape." I think it a fitting term for the indistinguishable suburb/strip mall/big box store landscape I've seen throughout the country (and we've shipped this trend internationally as well!).

This tome is Kustler's scathing indictment of the results of suburbanization, sprawl, and general ugliness of the American landscape, which he seem...more A bit ranty, but written engagingly, curse words and all. Kunstler has an endearing term for the monotonous American landscape he spends the book despising: "crudscape." I think it a fitting term for the indistinguishable suburb/strip mall/big box store landscape I've seen throughout the country (and we've shipped this trend internationally as well!).

This tome is Kustler's scathing indictment of the results of suburbanization, sprawl, and general ugliness of the American landscape, which he seems almost to take as a personal affront. He points to the American tendency to prioritize individual rights over the common good, with property rights ("It's my land, I can do what I want with it!") eliminating consideration for community/public space. Kunstler also holds a special contempt for the denigrating effects of car culture, and the effects of a petroleum-based lifestyle that fueled flight from the blighted cities out to a slice of our own little paradise in the suburbs of paved-over countryside.

I could have done with a few more detailed citations within the text to further reading, and perhaps a bit more cohesion and deliberate organization. Sometimes Kunstler's arguments were as free ranging and broadly meandering as the suburban landscape he lambasts. Despite that, I still talked incessantly about his arguments to my friends, family and co-workers!

Here's a taste:
"Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built in the last fifty years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading--the jive-plastic commuter tract home wastelands, the Potemkin village shopping plazas with their cast parking lagoons, the Lego-block hotel complexes, the "gourmet mansardic" junk-food joints, the Orwellian office "parks" featuring buildings sheathed in the same reflective glass as the sunglasses worn by chain-gang guards, the particle-board garden apartments rising up in every meadow and cornfield, the freeway loops around every big and little city with their clusters of discount merchandise marts, the whole destructive, wasteful, toxic, agoraphobia-inducing spectacle that politicians proudly call 'growth.'" (10)
"The houses, with a few exceptions, were identical boxy split-levels, clad is asphalt shingles of various colors, with two windows above a gaping garage door, affording the facades an aspect of slack-jawed cretinism."(11)
"The suburban 'developments' of today and the shopping smarm that clutters up so much of the landscape in between them, arose from the idea, rather peculiar to America, that neither the city nor the country was really a suitable place to live."(39)
"Part of America's cockeyed genius was pretending there were no class differences, that each fellow was as good as the next--at the same time that each individual tirelessly strove to prove that he was actually better than the next fellow."(48)
"As if to say, 'Here, you nation of morons, is another inevitably banal, cheap concrete box, of the only type your sordid civilization allows, topped by some cheap and foolish ornament worthy of your TV-addled brains.'"(83)
"Instead, there are the dreary voids we call front lawns and dull exercises in miniature vignette-making known as landscaping with shrubs."(127)
"You walk to a store--enjoying the felicities of the street as you go--and you are able to see other people along the way. You may even have a conversation with a stranger. This is called meeting people, the quintessential urban pleasure. (Or else it is called a mugging, the quintessential urban calamity.)"(127)
"There is a direct connection between suburban sprawl and the spiraling cost of government, and most Americans don't see it yet, including many in government. Likewise, there is a connection between disregard for the public realm--for public life in general--and the breakdown of public safety."(246)(less)

like · see review

Jun 01, 2011 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-history

I'll start with the good.
New Urbanism! The hope of the suburban hopeless! For anyone who ever looked at a freeway interchange, a modern office park, or a cookie cutter subdivision and thought "gee, this place is pretty depressing." Here is a book, written in 1993, that not only confirms your suspicion but gives a laundry list of reasons why. I had always assumed in a vague way that it was the model houses to blame... you could only choose between 3 or 4 models and thus were virtually indistingui...more I'll start with the good.
New Urbanism! The hope of the suburban hopeless! For anyone who ever looked at a freeway interchange, a modern office park, or a cookie cutter subdivision and thought "gee, this place is pretty depressing." Here is a book, written in 1993, that not only confirms your suspicion but gives a laundry list of reasons why. I had always assumed in a vague way that it was the model houses to blame... you could only choose between 3 or 4 models and thus were virtually indistinguishable from your neighbor. But there's so much more. Home design, lot size, placement of the home on the lot, the arrangements of the lots in relation to the street, the street shape, the proximity to public areas, and many more principles are enshrined in zoning laws which conspire against the suburbanite. The solution lies in better zoning, planned neighborhoods that are true communities with walkable errands, a diverse population, a sense of purpose, and architectural unity. Five stars.

Unfortunately, Kunstler is a top notch asshole. After a few pages of reading I thought "what is WITH this guy?" and did a bit of Googling. Check out his website sometime. He is a self-styled prophet of doom who clearly enjoys fear-mongering and provocation. His resume of failed apocalyptic forecasts is impressive. In case you needed further convincing, his lone writing credential in this book is that he was an editor at Rolling Stone, which should tell you all you need to know about his commitment to journalistic excellence. One star.

Because of this... "writing style" ...it isn't worth listing and refuting all the points in his book that are questionable or flat out wrong. But there are some things worth summarizing for their entertainment value. Among the things Kunstler hates: plastic signage, chain stores, freeways, casinos, skyscrapers, anything designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, buildings with siding, buildings with flat roofs, Disney World, television, Cheetos, Puritan colonists, Southern plantation colonists, the Industrial Revolution, scientific progress, Detroit, Los Angeles, Modernism, and cars. Boy, does he really hate cars. Cars are the cause of all the things listed above, as well as child abuse, alcoholism, and teen pregnancy. Cars haven't just made us lazy, they've put us on a one-way track to a post-apocalyptic, medieval lifestyle when the oil runs out. (Recall he hates scientific progress, so any hope of alternative technologies is a lost cause.)
So focused is his rage toward cars that during a visit to Greenfield Village (an outdoor museum of famous American buildings from yesteryear outside of Detroit), he quizzes other patrons on why they find the place so agreeable, hoping to get them to answer that there are No Cars. The people give a myriad of thoughtful answers - the grounds are well kept, the employees friendly, the exhibits interesting, etc. Unable to coax the No Cars answer out of anyone (after all, isn't this how good journalism works?) he expresses with great disappointment and resignation that the people he spoke with are just plain stupid (his word).
Equally intense is his distaste for Disney World, filled with its fake scenery, worship of death and consumerism, blah blah. Dude, its a fucking amusement park. You can just imagine him knocking on a rocky butte in Frontierland and exclaiming "why this isn't real at all!!!! This is a shocking scandal of illusion!!!" Yeah Grandpa, it is. Can you hold my purse while I ride Space Mountain?

But I get what he's saying underneath, and for the most part, I agree. I just hope I never have to meet the guy. Looks like I'll be turning to other texts on the topics of building better living places, although surely GofN was ground-breaking when it first came out. Wikipedia claims it is standard reading now in many architecture and planning courses. Wikipedia also uses a photo from Celebration, Florida as the model of New Urbanism development. Celebration of course was designed and built by Kunstler's favorite... Disney! I bet that really sticks in his craw :)

(less)

1 like · like · see review

Apr 02, 2010 Jake rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sociology

"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...more "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 places in America- cities that he feels have failed, like Detroit or LA, towns that he feels are broken, like Woodstock, Vermont, or weird capitals of illusion like Disneyworld. He's less good when he's giving a compressed history of architecture and urban planning in America- that part felt like a blizzard of names and styles, and with no pictures, I had to do a lot of Google image searching to understand his references. And I felt the ending of the book was pretty weak: his proposed solutions for the problem of suburbia all felt kind of half-assed, like building new, denser cores into the suburban wasteland, rather than just knocking it all down.

One other thing that bothered me about the book was the absence of any mention of Jane Jacobs or her ideas. I think that reflects Kunstler's fundamental bias towards small town living: he's lived upstate in Saratoga Spring for most of his adult life. But the problems he describes are really only solved in cities, and Jane Jacobs ideas about what makes cities work are key to understanding what makes suburbs not work. I could imagine Jane Jacobs dismissing a lot of what he has to say about saving suburbia as meaningless and besides the point- I don't think she'd find anything there worth saving. (less)

2 likes · like · see review

Jan 26, 2009 Dasha is currently reading it

R had been trying to get me to read this book for months. And now that I'm sick I finally decided to give it a try and cannot put it down.
My favorite so far:
"In their effort to promote a liberated and classless society, the Modernists and their successors tried to stamp out history and tradition, and the meanings associated with them, as embodied in the places where we live and work. They failed to create a social utopia, but they did tremendous damage to the physical setting for civilization. W...more

like · see review

May 14, 2010 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: craftyness, histoir, nonfiction, the-good-life

The Geography of Nowhere is an amazing book. I haven't devoured a book with this much gusto since I read "Crunchy Cons" by Rod Dreher, who pointed me toward TGoN in the first place.
Kunstler is cranky, make no mistake, but he is truthful and exact. I didn't find his rage, well-articulated as it is, to be off-putting in the least. I've described reading this book to friends as "like listening to a lecture from your favorite uncle". It's very conversational and well-written. He is a journalist, af...more The Geography of Nowhere is an amazing book. I haven't devoured a book with this much gusto since I read "Crunchy Cons" by Rod Dreher, who pointed me toward TGoN in the first place.
Kunstler is cranky, make no mistake, but he is truthful and exact. I didn't find his rage, well-articulated as it is, to be off-putting in the least. I've described reading this book to friends as "like listening to a lecture from your favorite uncle". It's very conversational and well-written. He is a journalist, after all.
He touches on so many aspects of building in the United States today that I find it incredibly difficult to sum up. I learned a hell of a lot reading TGoN, so I'll just excerpt a few paragraphs from an email I composed the other day to a like-minded friend regarding neighborhoods you'd want to live in:

Kunstler talks about a sense of being sheltered (something all human beings crave, no matter how evolved we get) when he points out what makes a suburban street different from a city-neighborhood street. Cars parked along the curb give that sense of shelter, because, on the sidewalk, we're slightly removed from traffic with a buffer between us. Buildings from 2-5 stories high will do give that shelter. High, arching trees that stand just as tall as these houses, or taller, give shelter all along the street. Buildings set close to the sidewalk do the same thing, as well as houses with porches - there's not the sudden, cut-off distinction between house and street like there is in a suburban n'hood.
In suburbia, everything is set back at least 25 feet, there are seldom porches, never ones that are used, and the garage, a big, ugly, blank wall, is the closest thing to the street. The trees are short and far between, sidewalks are never used because there's no place to go to on foot, and the long, curving, wide streets never reward you with a focal point the way a T-junction would, the way towns used to put a nice post office at the end of the block there, or a park, or a fountain. (Incidentally, most n'hoods since the 50s are laid out with traffic flow being the biggest concern. Wide, curving streets 50 feet across are much better for throughput than two-lane, parking-at-the-curb, turn-right-only-at-the-T-junction streets. It's sort of baffling as well because which street would you choose to let your children play beside? One where a driver naturally exercises caution given the parked cars? Or one where there's nothing to slow a car down when it's going 35 around the bend?)
The pain of it all, and not even addressing actual houses and building them, is that to build a neighborhood like the one I live in and you are moving into, would now be illegal according to United States law. There are minimum lot sizes and restrictions on structure area, and depending on where you want to build, restrictions on height, setbacks from the street, whether you can rent out your converted attic or not ...
And this is just city planning!! There's so much more in this book ...

End excerpt. All in all, it is a great book for those who give a crap about beautiful places, and those who believe beauty is not just for the rich. Read on!!(less)

like · see review

Apr 05, 2010 Sharon rated it 2 of 5 stars

Throughout his sermon directed exclusively to the choir, Kunstler assumes that everyone unconsciously hates suburbia, or ought to as soon as they wake up from their delusion. And although I identify with his loathing, I have trouble reconciling it with my otherwise sensible friends who like driving everywhere, and with the fact that we haven't run entirely out of oil in the last 15 years. If it takes a catastrophe to change people's minds about what makes a livable country and we still haven't h...more

like · see review

Mar 23, 2011 Andre rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: architects, city planners, politicians

Shelves: favorites

Kunstler takes readers on a tour of suburban sprawl, tracing from its European roots to its current state. Its difficult not to view your surroundings completely differently after reading a book like this. Kunstler comes off as a bit of a mad prophet. At times the its difficult to cut through what appears to be a thick layer of cynicism for modern America, but one is left to no other choice other than to accept the premise of his book. The way we build our houses, communities, and buildings has...more

1 like · like · see review

Mar 25, 2008 Nate rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book should be required reading for every single American. School children should read it aloud instead of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Kunstler makes an elegant argument about what we want in architecture and what Americans have done to make that impossible.

Well-written, relevant, thoughtful, and funny--non-fiction does not get better.

1 like · like · see review

May 28, 2007 Beth Barnett rated it 5 of 5 stars

A history of the automobile, roadbuilding, and suburbanization in the US. Kunstler explains why pedestrian-unfriendly urban planning makes us feel bad and ruins our civic environment, among other things. This book clarifies the malaise that most of us feel but cannot always verbalize about ugly and alienating urban/suburban design. (Also see Home from Nowhere)

1 like · like · see review

Aug 04, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: economics, history, political-philosophy

This is the starting point for a long journey with Kunstler.

Encyclopedic in his survey of current socio-political-economic issues, he cuts to the chase: the economic landscape of early 21st century America is unsustainable.

There are only hints here of the spirited, even angry, tone he later develops, but there's no question where he stands on matters.

It's a persuasive polemic, remarkable for his avoidance of pointing to any single bad guy character or group as causing our current dilemmas. Rathe...more

like · see review

Jul 11, 2012 Teresa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Have you ever thought about how the automobile has impacted not only our lives, but our homes? Think about how many of the establishments we pass every day are for the sole purpose of catering to a vehicle, or to the people stuck inside that vehicle on their way somewhere. When was the last time you walked anywhere? When was the last time you were able to walk somewhere?

This book looks at the history of land use in the United States from early colonial days to the present. It discusses how zonin...more

like · see review

Sep 07, 2011 Andrew added it

Shelves: urbanism

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...more

3 likes · like · see review

Jun 14, 2010 Erica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: environmental

Kunstler's ornery sarcasm provides a strange sort of solace to anyone who's lamented the soullessness of America's suburban wastelands. His explanation for how we got here, while perhaps leaving out some details, is succinct and enlightening. The automobile, exalted as King in my home state of Michigan, is here pillaged as the cause of most of what's bad about our cities (and nowhere is the car's destructive force more evident than in the ruins of the Motor City itself). Everywhere the public sp...more

like · see review

Feb 15, 2013 Hani Omar rated it 4 of 5 stars

At once cranky, anti-Modern, and deeply reactionary, as well as bracing, lyrical, and startlingly prescient, Kuntsler is an uncompromising polemicist who brings to the subject of sprawl an epic sense of historical narrative reflective of his true craft as a writer of fiction. Read as the long, unaccidental history of a very bad idea, this book is every bit as relevant today as it was when it was first published 20 years ago, during a time when mortgage-backed securities hadn't yet infected the e...more

like · see review

title link	preview: The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
avg rating	preview: The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape Goodreads rating: 4.06 (1556 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_Nowhere?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348814708l/125313.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_Nowhere?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler[/url]

The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (1)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About James Howard Kunstler

Books by James Howard Kunstler

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About The Geography of ...

Quotes from The Geography of Nowhe...