The City In Mind: Meditations on the Urban Condition. . - Cul-de-Sacked - book review

Washington Monthly, Jan-Feb, 2002 by Erik Wemple

Note to author: Americans care far more about their $11.99 oil changes and $5 burger-and-fries combos than they do about architectural syntaxes and hierarchies, whatever the hell they are. Perhaps the best proof of this mass preference is the boom town of Las Vegas, the object of endless, overwritten rants by Kunstler--not to mention more cogent criticism of practically every other urban critic in America today. Las Vegas has both the fastest-growing population and most hideous sprawl in the country. Kunstler calls development schemes in the city "appalling" and "outlandish" and takes pains to deplore the outsize scale of the Las Vegas Strip--critiques that raise questions about the author's qualifications to analyze any American city. This place, after all, is Vegas, for chrissakes. That's where America stores its cheesiest people, buildings, kitsch, whatever.

"Las Vegas is a world capital of foolish and absolutely incorrect notions about what it takes to reconcile human nature with the project of civilization," writes Kunstler. Duh?

ERIK WEMPLE is the Washington correspondent for Inside.com and Cable World.