April
5, 2002
Mega
Malls and Suburban Sprawl: James Kunstler Argues that Poor Design
Destroys Community
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James
Kunstler believes that this country has developed a terrible
pattern for human ecology.
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We associate the
word "ecology" with the connection between animal populations
and their natural environment— birds left homeless by deforestation,
fish populations unable to survive in polluted streams. For writer
James Kunstler, "ecology" also aptly describes the connection
between the living/working spaces we design and the very success
of our civilization.
In his books The
Geography of Nowhere (Simon and Schuster, 1993), Home from
Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-First Century
(Simon and Schuster, 1996), and The City in Mind: Notes
on the Urban Condition (The Free Press, 2001), Kunstler argues
that the United States has developed a terrible pattern for human
ecology, a poorly designed landscape of "automobile suburbs"
that destroys economies, isolates us from one another, impoverishes
our cities, and ravages our countryside. On Wednesday, April 10,
Kunstler will present the lecture "The City in Mind: The
Cost of Lousy Planning," in which he will discuss the development
and consequences of the American landscape and share how we might
compose a more meaningful and sustainable one. His lecture, sponsored
by Mount Holyoke's Center for Environmental Literacy (CEL), is
scheduled for 7 pm in Gamble Auditorium.
Kunstler's assessment
of America's landscape and the steps required to transform it
will be "unique and unabashedly provocative," said CEL
Director Thomas Millette. "Jim is fearless about how he articulates
his ideas about the terrible job we've done building the places
where we live and work. He takes issue with some of the greatest
architects and buildings in the world, arguing that they create
'monuments to egos' and land-consuming houses that do nothing
to build community."
 The
lecture will appeal to homeowners whose sprawling developments
isolate them from businesses, stores, and social life, leaving
them dependent on cars and with nothing but the grocery store
for meeting neighbors. It will appeal to parents weary of chauffeuring
their children but afraid to let them ride bicycles on busy, unsidewalked
streets. To those who spent their teen years with nowhere to go
and nothing to do but attend basement drinking parties and wait
to become licensed drivers. To politicians wondering how to enliven
impoverished downtowns. To professionals and business travelers
facing long commutes, traffic jams, and parking problems. To drivers
concerned about pollution and oil consumption in our auto-dependent
nation. To those bothered by a landscape of huge, cheap-looking
housing projects, megastructure office complexes, and tacky strip
malls. And to those who enjoy this country's landscape "exceptions":
the walking neighborhoods of Georgetown, Beacon Hill, and Charleston;
Orlando's planned community of "Celebration," with its
pretty architecture, sidewalks, parks, and thriving downtown;
the vibrant downtown of Portland, where businesses and all classes
of residents thrive without congestion or dehumanizing tower tenements.
Questioning and changing
our built environment means challenging traditionally American
notions of individualism, Kunstler argues. It requires thinking
about centers of humanity, not just centers of business, designing
with an eye to (and respect for) what's going on next door, considering
property as public realm or social resource rather than individual
commodity or civil liberty, and ending an economy based on unrestrained
auto use and land development. Such shifts will be difficult but
necessary in solving the "crisis of place in America,"
Kunstler says, warning that "a land full of places that are
not worth caring about will soon be a nation and a way of life
that is not worth
defending."
"Generally, the
public discussion now taking place in our nation is incoherent,
even among the educated and politically progressive," said
Kunstler. "I assume that Mount Holyoke will produce its share
of cultural leaders. I hope they are prepared for the decades
ahead, which I believe will be difficult for us in America. I'm
confident that most of the audience will 'get' it, and that they
will never look at their town the same way again."
James Kunstler was
born in New York City in 1948. He moved to the Long Island suburbs
in 1954 , returning in 1957 to the city where he spent most of
his childhood. He graduated from the State University of New York,
Brockport, and worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number
of newspapers and Rolling Stone magazine. Author of eight
novels, including The Halloween Ball and An Embarrassment
of Riches, he is a regular contributor to the New York
Times Magazine and op-ed page, and a lecturer at Harvard,
Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, the University of Virginia,
and many other colleges and professional organizations.
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