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By Philip Pugh
A disease is affecting American society—a sickness that covers the geography of our country like a monstrous growth or cancer. There is even a Latin medical term for this condition that is poisoning our lives—Suburbia. In his book, The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler sets out to diagnose this disease, to identify just how it infectedus, and to provide some ideas on how we can cure it. In doing so, he traces itsroots in American history outlining the social, technological, and economic conditions that made it possible and the reasons why it is an unsustainable lifestyle.
The first chapter sets out the three kinds of community: the city, the small town set in the countryside, and suburbia. The city is a place of vitality and culture where the arts flourish and where people congregate in many small overlapping communities. To Kunstler,this is a healthy kind of community, though not without its problems. The small town too is a healthy community, where people know one another and will meet their friends walking down the street to the local bar or grocery store.Suburbia however, is a car-dependent materialist culture where little real community is possible. For Kunstler, Suburbia is a rotting community, despite its seeming economic vitality.
Kunstler traces the roots of suburbia back to the earliest days of the colonial period when land was perceived as an abundant resource. In the early days, if a person didn’t like the community, he could just leave and find a new tract of land. As the country grew in the 19th century, planners and speculators carved up vast tracts of wilderness into a grid pattern consistent with the new and rational vision for society. Farms could be widely scattered and independent, while cities could sprawl. The result in urban life was an emphasis on maximal efficiency. In a land where property rights were the highest value, no landlord could be expected to provide even basic amenities. While the creation of urbanspaces like Central Park helped to a degree, the result was an exodus of the rich and the middle classes to a new area: the suburbs.
However, Kunstler primarily blames America’s car culture for the abysmal urban and suburban landscapes of today’s America. While the modernist orthodoxy of architecture in the last hundred years may bear some of the blame for the problems in the cities themselves, the decay can be credibly blamed on the car culture. In this culture, all urban and suburban planning is designed around the operation of automobiles, with little regard for pedestrians or the psychological effects of the physical surroundings. The result is a disconnected maze of streets with no community to speak of and an undesirable living space. The reason, suggests Kunstler, that older neighborhoods in places like Georgetown or Charleston are such highly valued places to live is not because they are antiques, but because the multi-use living spaces make for a much more human-friendly environment.
The rise of suburbia does not just affect cities, though. Kunstler describes the slow declines of Schuylerville and Saratoga Springs, New York, towns which he believes could be revitalized.His argument is that for a town to be a real community, it needs local industry that actually has a stake in the future of the town. However, Kunstler predicts a post-automobile economy in which towns like Schuylerville and Saratoga Springs will be able to thrive again.
Kunstler also presents the modern American communities that have worked and failed, The communities he targets are Detroit, Michigan, Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, California. Detroit is an example of failed planning: a city dependent on one ultimately unsustainable industry now left to decay. In contrast, Portland has become one of the best cities in the country to live in because of careful planning and management. Los Angeles is a bit more complicated, but in the end, Kunstler writes it off as the kind of community that will eventually become unsustainable due to its over-dependence on automobiles.
The conclusion is that urban planning needs serious rethinking in the United States. Kunstler points to current movements and individuals (now called “new urbanism”) that are working to create vibrant and living communities. Kunstler recommends rethinking current zoning and transportation laws to encourage such communities.
While Kunstler’s apocalyptic predictions about the doom of cheap oil have still not come to pass, this book is still useful in describing the process and conditions of suburbia and their inadequacy. The end result is a book that does for suburbia what Amusing Ourselves to Death did for television and media—it critiques the phenomenon and suggests ways in which we can turn nowhere into somewhere again. The Geography of Nowhere offers an accessible orientation course for the issues at stake in our culture’s ongoing discussion about liveable communities.
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