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From Kirkus Reviews
It's no news that many Americans live in a spread-out, privatized suburban wasteland without community or centers; that much landscape has given way to ugly sprawl; that this condition may be due to systematic policies on the part of government and industrial forces; and that the automobile is the engine that has driven us there. What novelist Kunstler (The Halloween Ball, 1987, etc.) does here is to explore and deplore these developments. Kunstler traces, from the nation's beginnings, the implications of changing architecture styles; the manifestations of our extreme emphasis on private-property rights and low regard for the public realm; and the destruction that our car-centered life has visited on American communities in general and certain profiled older towns and cities in particular. His discussions of specific places--chosen to represent such concepts as an ``old industrial metropolis gone to hell'' (Detroit); ``how to mess up a town'' (Saratoga Springs, New York); the ``most hopeful and progressive trends in...urban planning'' (Portland, Oregon); and sinister commercial myth-mongering that distorts small-town reality (Disney World)--lack the original ideas, cutting analysis, and stimulating insights that characterized last year's Variations on a Theme Park (ed., Michael Sorkin). But for a more popular audience, Kunstler provides an accessible overview that's all the more interesting and effective for his frankly expressed and all-enveloping viewpoint. If his attachment to the small towns of the past seems an insufficient answer to the problems of the present and future, his depiction of those problems is on target. And the author makes a persuasive case for convicting the private automobile of a gamut of 20th-century ills: the Great Depression; the death of the cities and of the family farm; the trashy consumerism that has driven the economy since the end of WW II; voodoo economics; the S&L crisis; and global environmental degradation. An informative and well-integrated polemic. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
From Library Journal
In this spirited, irreverent critique, Kunstler spares none of the culprits that have conspired in the name of the American Dream to turn the U.S. landscape from a haven of the civic ideal into a nightmare of crass commercial production and consumption. Kunstler strips the bark off the utopian social engineering promoted by the machine-worshiping Modern movement of Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright and skewers the intellectual camps (e.g., Venturi) that have thrived on making academic glory of the consumer wasteland. With the fervor of an investigative reporter and in the vernacular of a tabloid journalist, Kunstler exposes the insidious "car lobby" and gives case studies of landscapes as diverse as Detroit, Atlantic City, and Seaside, Florida, to illustrate both the woes and hopeful notes. The ideas in this book are not new (Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte Jr. were bemoaning the loss of civic life a quarter-century ago), but Kunstler gives their case an urgent, popular voice. An eminently relevant and important book; highly recommended.
- Thomas P.R. Nugent, New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
- Thomas P.R. Nugent, New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
In diesem Buch
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Einleitungssatz
There is a marvelous moment in the hit movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? that sums up our present national predicament very nicely. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
Buchdeckel | Copyright | Inhaltsverzeichnis | Auszug | Stichwortverzeichnis | Rückseite
There is a marvelous moment in the hit movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? that sums up our present national predicament very nicely. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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Format:Taschenbuch
If anyone has the capacity to let it sink into the average American suburbanite's head (at least those born in the postwar era) that that gleaming new boxy/plate-glass convenience store or massive-warehouse-style mega-mart (as well as all that tract housing) is *not* incredibly beautiful to either our eyes or our psyche, Kunstler has the gift of the pen to do it. Kunstler is unquestionably correct in pinpointing the automobile as the primary target of what has been wrought upon our new and ugly built environment (although other writers have also pointed this out as well). He pinpoints villains ranging from corporations to politicians in allowing this to happen; he's basically on target here as well. However, while Kunstler does hint at the following, it would do well to remind the reader in unmistakeable terms that it was ultimately the *American people* that allowed this to happen. When faced with a choice between aesthetics and convenience, we postwar Americans gave a huge bear-hug to convenience -- and in effect said, "Let's bring on the six-lane speedways slicing through the middle of town -- and if you make that fast-food joint gaudy enough, we'll be able to spot it as we drive towards it so we can get to it on the next exit ramp." The author also points out the Disneyesque phony-ness of much of today's "trendy" architecture (which seems to be a confused antidote to that six-lane monster and panoply of crud that surrounds it). Kunstler, like a number of others, pinpoints New Urbanism-type solutions as a very plausible antidote to all this ugliness and phony-ness. However, while a noble attempt to overcome the sins of the recent past, New Urbanism does have its critics (I confess to be one of them); it can perpetuate some of that theme-park fakeness that Kunstler deplores. Just how do you design an attractive, infectious community (or part of a community) that realizes that our appetite for cars, Whoppers, Super Wal-Marts, etc. is not going to go away anytime soon, and also is designed with a sense of architectural and functional *validity* to it? It seems that literature that addresses this entire question is hardly to be found. If Kunstler can expertly answer this in a future book, he'll earn a secure place in architectural and planning history.
Format:Taschenbuch
No, this book isn't the most scholarly approach to urban planning. But is a much needed book. One of the problems with the myriad of books that have emerged lately on the topic of modern urban design is that they are written in academic speak, not readily understandable by the layman or laywoman who is attempting to make a difference while serving on town boards. Although no one has mentioned it in these reviews, it was gutsy of the author to propose that a building could be objectively ugly. This is important to those of us who are sick and tired of trying to tell developers that we don't want another McDonalds because the golden arches don't relate to the spacial relationships of our sidewalks. Damn it, we have the right to reject it because its plug ugly. His comments on Disney were wicked, accurate, and entirely true. Read this book.
Format:Taschenbuch
This is something of a sightseeing tour through the depredations of modern urban design. Highly anecdotal in its approach, choppy in style, it covers no real new ground. It is, however, a useful survey of current criticism of urban planning. I was distressed to see his bibliography contained no mention of Jane Jacob's 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities'-- the seminal work taking to task the concepts manifested in suburban wastelands and decaying inner cities. Kunstler's approach swings between vague economic, historic and philosophical tracts and some fairly well traveled material on building and urban design theories. The most prominent villain in this take is the car. This really doesn't provide a useful starting point for designing more livable cities. Not unless you acknowledge that the car is here to stay, and that urban design will have to come grips with its presence and still aspire to build cities which provide intense community centred cultures.
Urban design reflects directly our values as a society. Answers as fundamental as Kunstler is proposing cannot be broached successfully without changing those values. That is an idealistic and realistically futile prospect. The vocal and activist polarities on this issue, the utopian and maudlin pragmatic, dictate the limited attention and action it gets in the political reality. Railing against the automobile, corporate priorities, environmental inattention or our alienation from the homogenous communities of our past will finally relegate the issue to a few academics and misanthropes. The real solution, such as one exists, is going to have to come from a consensus which realizes that population growth, economic realities, automobiles, and social heterogeneity are going to be part of our future and have to be incorporated in a far from perfect outcome. But one which will hopefully ensure human and community values have a presence and priority in planning decisions. The potential trap is that a new paradigm replaces the last with some faddish design manifesto completely inappropriate to many local conditions, imposing some sentimental pastiche on problems which are not primarily architectural in nature. Like environmentalism, city design works best at the involved community level, where unique urban aspirations can be iterated with economic and ergonomic necessity.
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Just another book promoting the over-rated "New Urbanism"
If you want to read stories about the author's boyhood, or read lies about Modern Architecture, this is for you. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 21. November 1999 von Evan Rofheart
The State of the United States
This book does an extrememly good job of describing the current state of the United States. I read this book for my anthropology class. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 9. Oktober 1999 veröffentlicht
It all comes into focus!
If you grew up in a suburban tract house, you may have hated it. I know *I* did. I wasn't sure why, I just knew that something was *wrong*, something was *missing*. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 14. September 1999 veröffentlicht
Shows how common sense in planning is uncommon!
A book you have to read if you are concerned about sprawl. Tells why America everywhere is starting to look the same-cookie cutter subdivisions, etc. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 3. Juli 1999 veröffentlicht
why America is so GoshDarn ugly
This book is a treat. It's one of those books that helps give you words for what you've always felt, but haven't articulated. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 8. April 1999 veröffentlicht
One of the best urban writers of the twentieth century.
Jim Kunstler's books are the best popular expression of the architectural movement known as New Urbanism. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 26. Januar 1999 von John Massengale
A sarcastic look at what is wrong with suburbia
I really enjoyed this book as a biting, sarcastic look at what is wrong with suburbia today, how it got there and is there an alternative? Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 23. Januar 1999 veröffentlicht
The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Urban Style
Mr. Kunstler writes about the rise and fall (and glimmerings of a new rise) of our urban landscape. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 11. September 1998 von tomar3@gte.net
Witty in lieu of insight...
As a general study into the well documented shortcomings of contemporary cities (suburbia/automotive society), Kunstler has done an excellent job of expressing his turmoil. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 9. September 1998 von jeff a jurzyniec (ajurzyniec@cableregina.com)
Stunning and Clear Insights About a Civilization in Decline
Kunstler is a gracious and wonderful writer. How can anyone with half a brain not feel anger at what has happened to America? Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 4. August 1998 veröffentlicht
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