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

For those who loathe the soullessness of suburbia, dread commuting on congested freeways past blighted neighborhoods, mourn the decay of civil life, and long for a sense of community, James Howard Kunstler provides a heaping measure of sympathy and (surprisingly) a modicum of hope. With superb reporting and story-telling skills, Kunstler, a former Rolling Stone editor and the author of eight novels, guides readers on a fascinating historical tour of America's peopled landscape. He begins with the Puritans, skips quickly through the Revolutionary and Civil War periods, wanders around the turn of the century and both World Wars, and winds up in "modern" times where dreary subdivisions march across the continent, crisscrossed by "boulevards so horrible that every trace of human aspiration seems to have been expelled, except the impetus to sell."

Without being pedantic or overbearing, Kunstler lays much of the blame for America's social, economic, and physical decay on urban and landscape designers, whose follies he says have alienated people from the land and one another. As well, he seems to shake his head in dismay when describing a befuddled citizenry lacking even the most basic understanding of the forces tearing apart its towns, cities, and farms.

Of all the villains portrayed in this book--modernist architects, real--estate agents, planning boards, and the creators of Disney World, Atlantic City, and other plastic utopias--none are more vile or have done more to rip up American society, Kunstler charges, than the tycoons of the automobile industry. The effects of automotive hegemony are sadly illustrated by the Motor City itself, Detroit, where superhighways pierce the hearts of old neighborhoods, and single-family houses "go on and on, seemingly forever, into a drab gloaming of auto emissions and K Mart signs." Given what Kunstler views as the imminent demise of the automobile age, and the fact that people are doing almost nothing to redesign cities in pedestrian-friendly ways, he finds it disturbingly clear that the country has "squandered its national wealth erecting a human habitat that, in all likelihood, will not be usable very much longer." The great suburban build-out, he warns, is over.

Kunstler manages to conclude our dismal excursion optimistically, introducing us to visionary architects and planners whose efforts have resulted in a few demonstration projects for conserving land and scaling communities to humans instead of cars.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Sierra Magazine
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group