In this series of blog posts I will discuss some of the assigned readings for the Sustainable Planning Seminar (Urban Planning/Geography/Landscape Architecture 446) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
The readings for this week were selected sections (chapters 1, 2, 9) from the book The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler, as well as his TED Talk from 2007.
Geography of Nowhere
Scary Places
Kunstler describes his journey through the various built environments by tracing his early childhood on Long Island through his years spent in Manhattan, and finally ending in a college town. He contrasts his experiences as a teenager in a city with those of his peers from “suburbia,” whom the author thinks live rather boring lives.
Teen life was reduced to waiting for that transforming moment of becoming a licensed driver.
With this one sentence, Kunstler explains the core of the problem. Suburban “places” where so many people now live are 1) not walkable, thus offering very little in the way of activities and productive preoccupations for youth, 2) unattractive, and poorly designed, such that young people cannot wait for the chance to finally leave these places. Through this chapter, Kunstler establishes his purpose for writing, which is to give readers a “vocabulary” and history to understand how and why the natural and built worlds have been perverted by unrestrained growth in America.
American Space
This chapter begins the historical account of city design in the early days of American colonies. The Puritans attempted to control the development of colonial settlements but, invariably, these places progressed haphazardly. Later, the author writes
American land law was predicated on the paramount principle that land was first and foremost a commodity for capital gain.
The notion of stewardship, that “we who are alive now are responsible for taking proper care of the landscape so that further generations can dwell in it in safety and happiness,” was abandoned in favor of profits.
I found the author’s choice to skip a discussion about the cultures that existed before the “New World” was “discovered” by Europeans rather troubling. Especially since this book was motivated by the authors frustration and disgust with the destruction of “place.” Native American cultures had a deep and profound connection to the land they lived on – “stewardship” was their way of life. This level of connection to the living land has never been replicated by any Western society (Cajete, 2000).
A Place Called Home and How Bad Architecture Wrecked Cities
In the chapter titled A Place Called Home and Kunstler’s TED talk about the damage caused by bad architecture, Kunstler laments the awful progression of the built world. He argues that true places called “home” no longer exist in a meaningful way and that places no longer have value. It is my impression that Kunstler equates American Individualism with the destruction of Nature, with which I would not disagree.
Thoughts
It seems to me that the foundational cause of all of our societal problems can be traced back to a combination of capitalism and religion. Capitalism, is at fault because it assumes that all values can be wrapped neatly in the form of a dollar or capital. This clearly fails because it doesn’t capture the long term impacts of our choices. For example, the potential loss of productive capacity from American farms due to climate change is not implicitly captured by the dollar. This economic system emphasizes immediate rewards over long term sustainability. Religion, particularly religions following the Judeo-Christian tradition, is at fault because it has been used as an excuse for American exceptionalism. This allegation I charged against religion is not at all nuanced, neither is my implication of capitalism. Yet, whether the discussion is about energy, resource management, damage from climate change, and even the design of the built environment, it all leads to an apparent abdication of duty by the individual to the collective.
Reference
Cajete, Gregory, and Bear L. Little. Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence., 2000. Print.