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 vast 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'.
The newspaper headlines may shout about global warming, extinctions of living species, the devastation of rain forests, and other worldwide catastrophes, but Americans evince a striking complacency when it comes to their everyday environment and the growing calamity that it represents. - The Geography of Nowhere by James Kunstler
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Our own little Eden
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9 comments:
Awareness getting better...at least now communities are demanding "green-space" to fill the gaps between all the rubbish. At issue, though, is that the "developers" obviously are aware of nothing but profit...rape and pillage.
And your quote speaks nothing of the oversized amusement-park/church-facilities that apparently appeal to southern souls.
Brent,
I don't know who you are, but I like most of your points (esp about church facilities). I wish we could as a society decide to do things differently.
I think it's unfair to blame everything on developers. If developers can make money building "green", then they will. But if they can't make it a profitable venture, they aren't going to do it.
If we as a society decide we want to live near where we work (I wonder how much gas would be saved nationwide if everyone lived 1/2 as far from work as they currently do.), and are willing to pay for it, developers will make it happen.
I want to get involved in some of this, but right now there is money in retail centers and my daughters can't live off of recycled gray water.
brentr,
Thanks for stopping by. I am glad you are seeing some awareness as I don't know if I would put that label on it. You are quick to make the developer out to be the bad guy in all of this, but I think you overlook the fact they the only thing a developer does is react to the wants and desires of the general public. They wouldn't build it if no one would come and they would certainly build 'better' if there was a market for it (aint that right Jed?).
I think what Kunstler was getting at is that we, as a culture, don't know what good is anymore and we just roll over and take it in some apathetic 'placeless' condition.
you beat me to the punch Jed.
If we can't beat you on the field, we might as well beat you on the Peg.
RTR.
MC / JP,
I see your point, and agree. A transformation is needed; a market shift, both supply and demand. I make a hobby of labelling developers the bad guys, because they expend the up-front capitol (capitol that I don't have) to move the ball forward.
MC, your latest post strikes even closer to the root of the problem...automobiles.
And as a matter of full disclosure, I'm a contractor, and therefore an accomplice to the crime.
Blogger BB has some insight as well:
Here
And Here
Construction?!? Heavens. I don't know if I can talk to you anymore.
Just Kidding.
I wouldn't label cars as the root problem and I think the jury is still out on if our post-modern settlement patterns are in fact bad.
My point about cars is that they take up room, and that makes things difficult for designers and developers alike.
We are quick to label sprawl as bad and cars as evil, but what form should a placeless society take?
Yeah, conskruktion. Mostly public sector work...if that helps any.
And you're right again. Cars are the root of sprawl, and is debatable as to whether our "post-modern settlement patterns" are a problem. I get impatient at times and take "a + b = c" and turn it into "a = c".
I think sprawl is not an inherrent evil, but poorly done, it is devastating...and unfortunately, sprawl done well is hard for me to find. Devastating because once done poorly, the "revitalization" is often more difficult and harder to sell than the original greenfield "rape and pillage."
Not to be a brown-noser, but I think urban growth could benefit hugely from a more liberal employment of urban planners, architects, landscape designers, and the like. But in general, this is not the way growth takes shape. Growth, in our free-market, democratic economy normally happens as a result of speculation. Thus my unfair maligning of developers.
I think I might be missing your question about the form of a placeless society. Are you conceding that it is placeless, and now what do we do with it? Or, are you saying it should not be placeless and how do we fix it?
perhaps this topic is better served with a post more on topic than a quote from a book.
Let's see what I can muster...
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