Advance Praise for the Kunstlercast

Advance praise for The KunstlerCast

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION the KunstlerCast: conversations with James Howard Kunstler

...the tragic comedy of urban sprawl

Duncan Crary

Cover design by Diane McIntosh. Art by Ken Avidor.

Printed in Canada. First printing September 2011.

Paperback isbn: 978-0-86571-693-3 eisbn: 978-1-55092-

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www.newsociety.com ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION For Grace and John Crary

Special thanks to Eileen Sheehan, Roger Noyes, Philip Schwartz, Ian and Craig White, Peter Albrecht, Tom Reynolds, Ingrid Witvoet, Alison Bates, Jes Constantine, Ben McGrath, Matt Dellinger, Andrew Blechman, Wendy Anthony, the Congress for the New Urbanism and our listeners.

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Contents

Intro ...... xiii

Chapter 1: The Geography of Nowhere . . . . 1 The Glossary of Nowhere ...... 1 The Human Habitat ...... 9 America’s Honeymoon with Cities is Over . . . . 14 Mandating Suburbia ...... 19 Children of the Burbs ...... 25 Sprawling to Obesity ...... 36 The Architecture of Suburbia ...... 41 Picturing Suburbia ...... 52 Sprawl Defenders ...... 58 The Politics of Place ...... 66 Boomers: Back to the Burbs ...... 71

Chapter 2: The End of Suburbia ...... 79 Charging Our Way to Suburbia ...... 79 The New Urbanism ...... 87

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Seaside ...... 93 From Suburban Sprawl to Peak Oil ...... 104 Keep the Car Running? ...... 118 The Foreseeable Future ...... 122 Doomers ...... 127 Retooling Suburbia ...... 136

Chapter 3: American culture ...... 141 Social Critic ...... 141 Throwaway Culture and the Plastic Fantastic . . . . 149 Americans are Scary-Looking and Infantile . . . . 151 Dude, We’ve Got Technology ...... 157

Chapter 4: Architecture ...... 165 The Starchitects ...... 165 Brutalism ...... 174

Chapter 5: Getting There ...... 185 Making Other Arrangements ...... 185 Reinvesting in Rail ...... 189 Water Transit ...... 194

Chapter 6: The City in Mind ...... 199 The Green Metropolis? ...... 199 Contracting Cities ...... 210

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City by City ...... 215 City Flybys ...... 219 Small Cities and Towns ...... 226 Concentrating Poverty ...... 233 Anti-Urban Bias ...... 241 Missing Teeth in the Urban Fabric ...... 244 A Drugstore on Every Corner ...... 253

Chapter 7: Urban Polemicists ...... 257 Jane Jacobs ...... 257 Lewis Mumford ...... 265

Chapter 8: Parting Words ...... 269 Packin’ for France ...... 269 Cassandra ...... 273 Legacy ...... 276

Outro ...... 279

Notes ...... 287 Index ...... 293 About the Contributors ...... 297

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION I lived in lies all my life, And I’ve been living here for a long, long time, I know it’s been coming down a while now. — John J McCauley III, Deer Tick “Art Isn’t Real (City of Sin)”

There’s a passage in Moby-Dick those words, and little remains of where Herman Melville compares the “illimitable Pine Barrens” he two lone whaling ships crossing described on the outskirts of Albany. the Pacific to strangers crossing the But the place has become a new kind “illimitable Pine Barrens of New of wilderness that is equally inhos- York State.” If these travelers were pitable to this traveler. It is a terrain to encounter each other in such of parking lots, shopping malls, inhospitable wilds, he explains, it subdivisions and highways. It is a would be natural for them to give geography of nowhere that stretches “mutual salutation” and stop for a from the edge of my town to yours. while to interchange their news of But we will not be adrift here alone the world. In whaling argot, this is forever. called a “gam.” Kunstler will be here soon. And More than a century and a half when he arrives, we’ll have ourselves has passed since Melville wrote a gam.

xi ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Intro

James Howard Kunstler has been Like so many of my Generation called a lot of things. The world’s X, I was hatched on a cul-de-sac most outspoken critic of suburban in the American suburbs. As an sprawl. A caustic hero of New Urban adolescent, I grew deeply dissatis- ism. A peak oil provocateur. Curmud fied with that mode of living. It was geon. Jeremiah. Doomer. Dystopian. monotonous, ugly and isolating, Generalist. Social critic. Crank. and I was acting out along with my He usually just goes by Jim. peers in strange and bad ways. But it My first encounter with Jim was wasn’t until Geography that I acquired through The Geography of Nowhere, a the tools to be able to articulate the highly acclaimed, landmark polemic things I found profoundly wrong about the failures of suburbia. I was about the non-place of suburbia. nineteen when I discovered that Kunstler’s acid wit was a laxative to book, just a few years after its 1993 my constipated feelings about our publication. And I’ve been amusing, everyday surroundings. He seemed enlightening and pissing people off to put across, in a wickedly funny with what I found between its covers manner, all of the complaints and ever since. disappointments and frustrations xiii ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION xiv The Kunstlercast that had been a lump in my throat had done for hers. People across the for years. I knew suburbia sucked. nation were taking notice. What I lacked until I saw it in print By the time City hit the shelves was the vocabulary and framework in 2002, I was no longer a passive that JHK used to back up the senti- reader of Kunstler’s work. I was ment. I was never the same again. actually following in his footsteps. I Kunstler wrote other books had landed a dreary gig as a reporter addressing the subject, and I read covering the municipal meetings them, too. In Home From Nowhere he and so-called “quality of life” issues introduced me to the New Urbanism, in a suburb of Albany, New York. This a reformist movement of architects happened to be in the same town and planners working to create where Jim himself had toiled as a spaces you could actually give a reporter thirty years earlier, when damn about. In The City in Mind, his lens on suburbia had its first he dissected the urban organism real grinding. He left the area after with eight portraits of major world that for a stint at Rolling Stone and cities — some wonderful, some utterly a few other bohemian adventures, unsustainable. These follow-up titles but ultimately returned to settle in never garnered the same attention nearby Saratoga Springs, where he’s as the first, but they helped secure lived ever since. Luckily for me, that his place on the totem pole of urban made JHK a local source that I could thinkers. He was clearly doing for call upon for an occasional quote a new generation what Jane Jacobs about various sprawl-building efforts in my beat. And I took whatever

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Intro xv chance I got to insert his voice evil developers. He was shifting the into my reporting, planting little public consensus by getting us regu- Kunstler bombs to be delivered to lar folks to think about the places the doorsteps of suburbia by way of where we spend our lives. That’s how newsprint Trojan horse. (That’s how you reclaim the public realm. And I imagined it at the time.... I was it’s that empowering aspect of his twenty-three.) thought-sharing that I still find most I graduated to other papers, appealing. magazines and projects. But I In recent years, Kunstler’s gaze kept returning to Kunstler. I felt has turned to a new chapter in the compelled to bring his ideas to new suburban saga: its future. He believes audiences, whether they wanted to it will soon become self-evident hear them or not. There were other that our zeal to suburbanize this contrarians out there challenging nation — in a seemingly endless cycle the suburban dogmas of the day, of revolving debt — was “the greatest but in my mind JHK was the best in misallocation of resources in the the genre. His rhetoric was meme- history of the world.” The choices we spreading, widely repeated and often made during the past half-century in imitated. Sure, he cussed and used how we would inhabit the landscape, hyperbole and had a malicious sense conduct commerce and even feed of humor. He was funny as hell. But ourselves will prove to be tragic. We he was not just arming the populace made these tragic choices during a with zingers to hurl at defective “fiesta” of cheap fossil fuel, which is planners, brain-dead architects and now ending. A permanent energy

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION xvi The Kunstlercast crisis is upon us, and it is coinciding oblivion the important principles with a financial collapse that will and practices of tradition-rooted leave our civilization functionally architecture and urban design. broke. Our failures in leadership at Soon, Kunstler predicts, this body all levels may bring about political of pre-automobile place-making instability. Throw in the unknown skills will be applied once again to effects of climate change and we our smaller cities and villages as begin to see a picture of the converg- we rediscover and reinhabit them. ing catastrophes of the twenty-first Agriculture, commerce, daily life century. Welcome to what Kunstler will be conducted locally again in a has dubbed “The Long Emergency,” more organic arrangement. There which is also the title of his latest and will be resistance and pushback to most provocative nonfiction book. these inevitable changes. But eventu- The worst of car-dependent ally, JHK is serenely convinced, we suburbia is “toast,” in Kunstler’s will find ourselves a much happier prognosis. We won’t have the will or people, living in a more rewarding the finances to retrofit it. And so it is setting. destined to be “a living arrangement There’s a lot more to Kunstler’s with no future,” he says. Fortunately, worldview, which is often misunder the New Urbanists accomplished stood or digested only in bits and something very important during pieces through brief media ap- the fiasco of suburban build-out that pearances. Even his followers tend will prove invaluable in the times to to compartmentalize him. Many come. They retrieved from cultural of those who know him through

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Intro xvii his earlier critiques of suburbia podcast for a think tank promoting are somewhat put off by his more the philosophy of humanism, which recent preoccupation with peak I took as another chance to speak oil, financial collapse and crystal with Kunstler about the need for ball-gazing. On the other hand, a a more credible “human habitat.” lot of the “collapsniks” who found His appearance on that program him through The Long Emergency was well received and we seemed to and his Clusterfuck Nation blog are have a good “on-air” chemistry. So somewhat bored by and dismissive we decided to keep meeting — in his of his urbanist thoughts. Neither house in Saratoga, in my apartment camp seems to appreciate the full in Troy, sometimes in the field — to spectrum of Kunstler’s Unified Field record more conversations for an Theory of Modern Civilization, as independent side project we called another reporter once described it “The KunstlerCast,” for lack of a to me. To be honest, I didn’t get the better name. It was a weekly discus- whole picture myself. Which is why sion about “the tragic comedy of I felt it was time to sit Jim in front suburban sprawl,” an endless source of a microphone and start from the of material for Kunstler’s dyspeptic beginning. commentary. By 2007 I had gotten into a new For many, it was an addictive media form called podcasting, which little program. Jim had the gift of is really just a means of delivering gab, which is not always the case old-fashioned talk radio through the with writers. He feared no topic, Internet. I was producing a monthly needed little to get him going, and

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION xviii The Kunstlercast everything he said was off the top of mance, in a way that only the Inter- his head. My most important con- net would allow. I was called “kind of tribution was probably showing up a dork,” “a doting young host” and “a to press “record,” though I did help satirical, smirking sidekick.” One fan to keep him on track. I assumed the of the show accused me of lobbing role of host, and sometimes foil, to softball questions. his magnificent rants. My intention At times, even Jim could be a was to be a proxy for the audience little imperious in his tone with me, who could enjoy Jim’s snark from the especially early on. It is no secret safety of their earbuds. I was always among those who have interviewed more interested in learning from him that Kunstler can be a chal- Jim rather than interviewing him, lenging subject; the adjective I hear and our listeners seemed to enjoy most often is “prickly.” He has little that dynamic. It’s a very traditional patience for combative questioning thing to do, to sit with an “elder” and or lines that attempt to lead him to receive the transfer of knowledge a conclusion he hasn’t drawn. He from one generation to the next. We doesn’t take kindly to being chastised just happened to have ten thousand for not being hopeful enough or for iPods sitting alongside us. not proffering enough “solutions.” Kunstler is a lightning rod, But overall he was patient, kind and though, and if you stand close to a generous with me and I quickly lightning rod you’ll eventually get found that he is more than willing to zapped. Over the years I received assess his own ideas and limitations. my share of criticism for my perfor- All I needed to do was simply nudge

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Intro xix him toward those topics and get out of a dialogue that spanned many of the way. years. It is based on transcripts of our For four years, I talked with a weekly dispatches, which unfolded very interesting man named James in no particular order, so I have Howard Kunstler. This is a record of selected, reordered and edited for what he told me. length and clarity the exchanges I — DC felt were most important. With a few slight exceptions, I have left Jim’s A technical note words as they were spoken, cutting When I first conceived of the idea to only for length, redundancy and to produce a book based on a podcast, splice related thoughts together. I I thought I had invented the world’s have taken more liberty with my own laziest way to write a book. My idea words, mostly to provide smoother was: stick a microphone in front of transitions. a well-known author, record, tran- It is a strange thing to be credited scribe and publish. What follows was as the author of a book based on a not so easy to produce. And it is not a long conversation in which another verbatim transcript of my conversa- person does most of the talking. I tions with Jim. am more like the host of this book, This is an edited reconstruction which eventually wrote itself.

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Chapter 1: The Geography of Nowhere

The Glossary of Nowhere

Duncan Crary: I was rereading the years before I wrote that book — of opening to The Geography of Nowhere trying to formulate a vocabulary recently. Not much has changed since for myself to understand it. I made you wrote that eighteen years ago. several attempts to produce written James Howard Kunstler: I’ve changed essays on the subject. And I found though. My brain has shrunk from myself repeatedly defeated, largely too many off-gassing carpets. because, like a lot of other normal DC: You said you wrote that book people who are affected by this, I kept to give people a vocabulary to talk defaulting to these style issues. about their unhappiness with subur- I didn’t quite understand the bia, because it’s so hard to articulate physical form and design issues. It some of these feelings. wasn’t until I encountered Christo- JHK: I was struggling with it myself. pher Alexander and Andrés Duany I went through a period — ten, fifteen and many other contemporaries

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Scary Places 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 computer 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, ex- tinctions of living species, the devastations 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. I had a hunch that many other people find their surroundings as distressing as I do my own, yet I sense too that they lack the vocabulary to understand what’s wrong with the places they ought to know best. And that is why I wrote this book. — James Howard Kunstler The Geography of Nowhere1 ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Glossary of Nowhere 3 in the field that I began to really When you see a Laurel and Hardy understand what I was talking about. comedy from the 1920s — these two DC: You take these topics seriously. morons hitting each otherwith But so much of what you write about two-by-fours and dropping pianos suburban sprawl and modern archi- on each other — or even a Tweety tecture is funny. Your speaking en- Bird cartoon, what we’re seeing is gagements are especially funny when people hurting each other. But we you use images to illustrate your laugh. Getting hit by a two- by-four point — like, you’ll describe some in reality is not a pleasant thing. In modernist building in Schenectady, fact, it can kill you. When you see New York as “Darth Vader’s Helmet” it on stage or in a film, though, it and of course, with the photo of this becomes funny because we identify weird curvy glass building on the with the pain of it. So the pain of our screen, the audience goes wild.2 everyday environments in America JHK: Yeah, it’s sort of evolved into a is so extreme — they’re so bad, they comedy act. But I was a theater stu- suck so egregiously — that all that’s dent in college — that was my major, left, finally, is humor. believe it or not — and I was exposed DC: Let’s go through some of the to Samuel Beckett at a tender age. funnier terms and phrases in your Beckett put it very well: “Nothing is “Glossary of Nowhere” that you funnier than unhappiness.”3 These use to talk about suburbia. You can environments cause us so much explain what they mean and where unhappiness, so much distress, that they came from. What are “parking they’re a source of comedy. lagoons?”

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JHK: That one was a little ironic, extremely distressing. One of the because the word “lagoon” evokes reasons that urban design depends a lovely kind of tropical place that on defining space well is that people you’d like to hang around on your don’t like to be lost in space. They like yacht. Whereas the parking lot is to know where they are. They like to the opposite — it’s a demoralizing, know where things begin and end. repellent place. I was just trying to DC: Speaking of being lost in space, mess with people a little bit. how about UFOs? You refer to a lot of DC: You can park your yacht-sized modern buildings as UFOs. car in the parking lot, though. JHK: I may have gotten that from JHK: That was an implication. somebody else, although I have DC: You have a lot of riffs on parking no recollection of who it might lots. For one of the bits in your spiel have been. The whole idea was the you’ll put up a slide of a parking development as UFO landing strip, lot that’s so huge you can’t see the and the idea that you’re actually not Wal-Mart from the Target store on building anything memorable — the other side because the curvature you’re just building a place for of the Earth blocks your view. something out-of-this-world to put JHK: Right. The scale of the streets down on. The trouble is, once these and the parking lots is so huge that UFOs land, they don’t fly away. you end up feeling like you’re in a DC: You’ve also noticed that these surrealist painting where you can’t UFOs tend to bring a lot of juniper find the horizon. You’re lost in space shrubs with them. In the talk you out there. And to be lost in space is gave at the TED conference, you

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Glossary of Nowhere 5 showed the audience a photo of a trees. You have a mutilated town, street with a bark mulch bed and with terrible buildings that have three weird-looking juniper shrubs, been built in the last thirty years — which you described as the mother the Burger Kings and all that — and ship, R2D2 and C3PO.4 we think that if we stick a little bark JHK: Yeah, it was a big juniper shrub mulch bed with juniper shrubs in and two little junior ones exploring front of them, that it makes it OK. the planet to see if they could colo- We have no confidence in our ability nize it. They were doing a chemical to create urban places, so “nature” is analysis of the bark mulch to see if always the default cure. they could live there. We also do it to make ourselves That was a comment on the feel better about being “green.” You idiocy of our landscaping design, know: “I’m green. I’m a good person, which tends to be used as a Nature with good intentions.” The whole Band-Aid to mitigate the failures of thing has been a complete waste of our architecture. time and money and effort. If we put DC: That’s another signature expres- up buildings that were worth looking sion of yours: “Nature Band-Aid.” at in the first place, we wouldn’t need JHK: The reason why you see so the Nature Band-Aids. many stupid landscaping fantasias What you’re also seeing is a very around American cities and suburbs deep typological confusion over is because our buildings are so bad what is inherently urban and what is we’re constantly trying to hide them rural — between what is in the town, behind beds of shrubs and crabapple and what is in the country, and what

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 6 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere belongs where. Typically, what this urban town for the newspaper. And involves is people trying to “ruralize” these planning board people were the city. If your city is bad, you try obsessed with berms. Everything had to cure it by bringing the country to be hidden behind a grassy mound. into the city. And what we’ve demon- JHK: Sure. You just put a bunch of strated in about fifty years of doing birch trees on a raised esker that this is that it’s no cure at all — in fact, runs between the K-Mart and the it only makes things worse. Wal-Mart and that’s supposed to An interesting exercise, for those make things all right. who still do foreign travel: go to DC: There’s something else we try the plaza in front of the Pantheon to hide our buildings behind, and in Rome. It’s a nicely proportioned it’s my favorite expression of yours: outdoor public room, with walls “patriotic totems.” that are composed of the sides of JHK: I usually apply that to flagpoles. the buildings around it. There’s The reason we see an ensemble of probably not one green thing within flags flying over the Denny’s restau- the whole ensemble except maybe rants is not because they really give one flower box. They understand, in a damn about the war in whatever these other countries, that you don’t country we’re in at the moment. have to “green” everything up. The The flags are totems warding off architecture itself does the work of criticism. Because if you put a flag in being wonderful. front of something, that brands it as DC: I used to cover the planning being something you identify your board meetings of a real sprawly sub- culture with. You’re not supposed to

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Glossary of Nowhere 7 dis your own culture. So that’s why had not been screwed up with all of there are so many flags in front of this stuff. Of course, we had our own the corporate box stores — it allows oil supply in this country then and it them to put up crappy buildings that was really cheap. It must have been can’t be criticized. fabulous. DC: “The Fossil Fuel Fiesta”? But that’s not the experience of JHK: That’s what I call the post–World our generations, yours and mine. War II era. That was the height of We got all of the post–World War II the cheap oil and cheap natural gas crap that changed everything. Happy fiesta, and it allowed this hypertro- Motoring was a system that got totally phic growth of our cities and the out of control. And now it’s nearing suburban asteroid belts that grew up its end. We can’t imagine living around them. And it allowed us to without it and the whole thing is create our Happy Motoring Program. just tragic and awful. DC: What’s the “Happy Motoring I think it’s important to make the Program?” point that the whole Happy Motor- JHK: That’s what we’ve got in Amer- ing Program was not a diabolical ica for gettin’ around. You know the scheme worked up by the Devil to thing is, it must have started out as a make the American people unhappy. wonderful experience. Imagine be- It really seemed like it would be a ing in the United States in 1927 when great thing in the early decades and there are only a few million cars in people were rightfully enthusiastic the country and the open road was about it. They just couldn’t tell how really the open road. The countryside out of control it would get. It’s sad.

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DC: The Happy Motoring Program JHK: It is a project in the sense that is what turned America into our what we bring to it is purposeful. “National Automobile Slum.” DC: And I suppose projects do tend to JHK: Exactly. have a beginning, a middle and an end. DC: Where did you get “Happy Motor JHK: There’s that, too. ing” from? Did you come up with that? DC: How about “techno-grandiosity” JHK: No. It was a slogan they used and “techno-triumphalism”? to put on the side of the old Esso JHK: That’s the idea that you can gasoline stations — a big thing spelled solve absolutely every problem in the out in sculpted letters that said world by pushing a computer mouse “Happy Motoring.” around — “Dude, we’ve got technol- DC: And you like to use it ironically? ogy!” It’s a form of self-delusion that JHK: Well, it appeals to me, because we’ll be able to keep running every- it’s such a contradiction from what it thing the way we have during the really evolved into, which is unhappy last sixty years of the cheap energy motoring. And it’s going to become era. The companion term I use is increasingly unhappy for a lot of “techno-rapture.” people as they become foreclosed DC: Anyone who gets an email from from the Happy Motoring Program. you will notice the signature ends DC: You refer to a lot of things as with “It’s All Good.” Where did you “programs” and “projects,” including pick that up? the “Project of Civilization.” Why JHK: I’ve attracted a certain number do you refer to civilization as a of correspondents over the years. “project”? There was this one particular guy —

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Human Habitat 9 a reader, who I still correspond with “It’s All Good.” He meant it ironi- regularly after ten years. He’s a very cally. I took it that way, and I thought interesting cat. He’s a Vietnam vet- it was funny. It just seemed to be eran, Zen master kind of personality about the best way to sum up the and he introduced me to the saying American experience of our time.

The Human Habitat

Spiritual Ownership of Place Any place you allow the car to dominate, the buildings will invariably end up turning their backs to that corridor. All these things add up to make it a place that nobody really wants to be in. Nobody wants to take spiritual ownership of that corridor. All that’s left are the commercial considerations about getting attention for what product you’re selling — whether it’s pancakes or mufflers. There’s no consideration for anything else, and in fact we cease to care. — James Howard Kunstler, May 6, 2010 KunstlerCast #110: “Human Scale”

Duncan Crary: I know you didn’t it struck me. Because we typically coin it, but the first time I came only hear the word “habitat” when across the phrase “human habitat” environmentalists are talking about was in The Geography of Nowhere. And wildlife habitat — the loss of it, usually.

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We don’t think about our own built way. It’s understandably appalling. environment as being a “habitat.” We But the most painful thing for me is don’t think about the destruction we that I’m constantly rubbing elbows do to our own habitat. But humans with real high-toned environmen- need good habitat, too, in order to be talists, and to an individual they are happy and healthy and successful. absolutely preoccupied with finding Just like other animals. some snazzy new way to run their James Howard Kunstler: You’re cars. I give lectures at colleges and making an interesting point. And I around the country, and they come think it shows one of the real short- up to me afterwards and they tell me comings of the environmental move- that they just got a Prius, you know? ment in our time. Environmentalists They want me to give them a brownie haven’t paid enough attention to the point, or put a medal on them. They human habitat per se or the idea that don’t seem to have any sense of con- it’s part of the larger ecology of the sequence about what this actually planet — that it’s justified in its exis- leads to. tence. These people want to live at the This may reflect their horror at end of a twenty-mile dirt road con- the poor job we’ve done in elaborat- nected to their society by the um- ing the human habitat during our bilical cord of their car. By the way, time of industrial technology. We’ve this is characteristic of one of the taken the human habitat to a scale most famous alternative motoring that’s terrible and destroyed an aw- projects in America, which is Amory ful lot of other habitats along the Lovins’ Hypercar project at his Rocky

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Mountain Institute. Here you have some magic fuel to power everyone’s a guy running this environmental SUV, then we’re still stuck in this institute — this guy who’s regarded suburban dystopia where you have as one of the great geniuses of his to drive to get to work, drive to go generation, Amory Lovins — and he shopping, drive to go for a hike.... spent fifteen years developing this JHK: The way you’ve defined the project to design a car that gets such problem is actually another layer supernaturally wonderful mileage that’s much more important: if we that it’ll be just the greatest thing enabled ourselves to drive our cars ever. He never realizes that the main for another hundred years we’d unintended consequence of all this is completely destroy North America, that it just promotes the idea that we not to mention the rest of the planet. can continue being car-dependent. It The problem in America is not shows how cracked we are. that we’re driving the wrong kind DC: There’s all this talk about electric of cars. The trouble is we’re driving cars and hydrogen fuel cell cars and every kind of car incessantly. And super-efficient cars. But I don’t even we’ve got to find a way out of the care if the fuel you’re running your incessant motoring — not a punish- car on is spewing out some kind of ing way to live without it, but a happy fumes that are good for the environ- way to live without it. And it means ment. Because I don’t want to live a completely different paradigm for in a world where I have to drive my everyday life. car everywhere — no matter what We would benefit a lot more if en- it runs on. If we do come up with vironmentalists would put a fraction

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 12 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere of their mental energy into thinking have fallen into the trap of suburban about walkable communities or into thinking. retrieving really good urban design, JHK: Absolutely. This gets to another or if they put a tenth of their energy thing that is essential about under- into the real important project that standing the problem of suburbia. we face as far as transportation is The great promise of the suburban concerned, which is restoring the venture, and one of the reasons that American passenger rail system at the environmentalist community is all levels — that’s what we need the suckered into it, is that it promises environmental people to put their to allow you to live an urban life in a energy into instead of spending all rural setting. One of the things this their time thinking about how we’re represents is the fact that we have going to run cars differently. It’s absolutely no faith in our ability to totally insane. create urban environments at all. DC: Let the car die. Our ability to create cities is so bad — JHK: Let the car die. Let the motor- our cities suck so badly, they’re so ing system die, and let’s move on unrewarding, they’re so ugly, they’re to the next thing — which ought to so poorly organized, they’re so un- be good urbanism, walkable neigh integrated, they’re so psychologically borhoods, walkable cities that are defeating, they generate so much scaled to the true energy resources anxiety and depression — that the of the future, not just wishes and default remedy for this is “nature.” fantasies. So now we have to live in some DC: But even the environmentalists cartoon version of “the country.”

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We don’t even want to think suburbia and in the countryside. But about what a good human construct they have to reward us hugely. Right could be. So we put absolutely no now, people in the United States effort into understanding how to aren’t getting rewards for living in do this. That’s one of the reasons the urban settings — that’s one of the environmental movement has been great tragedies in all this. completely uninterested in urban I’m hammering on the envi- design per se, because the human ronmentalists here, but I hasten habitat doesn’t interest them. to add: I’m not a neocon. I’m not a DC: Well if we’d paid more attention Republican. I’m not a reactionary. to our own habitat, if we hadn’t But one of the things I notice is the abandoned our cities and villages environmental community gener- to suburbanize the continent, then ally tends to view this thing they call maybe we wouldn’t need an environ- the “environment” as having value mental movement to protect nature only for recreation or scenery. They from us in the first place. don’t even value it for agricultural JHK: Right. But in order to prompt production. people to make the choice to want I think that behavior and ideol- to live in the city or the town, those ogy is deeply out of sync with what places have to be wonderful. If the we need to do in this country, which “green people” would become really is to recreate a meaningful relation- active in urban design and get good ship between urban human habitats at it, then it’s likely that fewer people and a productive rural landscape. would take the option of living in We’re going to have to produce our

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 14 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere food differently in the future because going to change our ethos, and our industrial agriculture is going to fail aesthetic, our value system, and our along with all the other things that concept of who and where we are. are dependent on cheap fossil fuel. We’re going to be a very different We’ll get beyond this, though — people when we exit the cheap not because I’m complaining about energy era. it, but because circumstances are I’m convinced that the disorders now developing that are going to of the twenty-first century are going compel us to do things differently. to return us to a lot of things that we And we will. It’s going to change used to do better, including design- everything about how we live. It’s ing better buildings and better towns.

America’s Honeymoon with Cities is Over

Duncan Crary: When did Americans dirt and smells and the horror of all decide that we needed to ditch our that — the scale of it is what really cities for suburbia? starts to disturb people. All of a James Howard Kunstler: For about sudden factories are no longer just a hundred years, before the end of three-hundred-foot long boxes in the World War II, the American city was middle of the city. With things like a manifestation of the industrial electrification and the assembly line, experience. And it produced cities they’re now the size of a neighbor- that weren’t that pleasant to be in. hood. The automobile was imposed It’s not just the noise and the on the city, making it more unpleas-

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION America’s Honeymoon with Cities is Over 15 ant than ever. Then came the Great well and fire escape. That becomes Depression and World War II, adding everybody’s idea of the city, and they another layer of neglect and decay to reject it completely. They say, “Forget our cities. it! We’re moving somewhere else.” By the time the soldiers come home from World War II, American The Rush to the Suburbs cities are pretty crummy. What we JHK: We get this huge demographic find is the typical American satanic shift in the fifties. The cities are city of belching smokestacks and being decanted into the suburbs. smelly factories. You get places like The process had already begun in Pittsburgh, which was renowned for the 1920s with the first iterations having so much smoke in the air it of suburbia, but the Depression was like twilight all the time. and World War II had stalled us. By The whole idea of the mass the 1950s we were back to it. And industrial man, living in the worker we begin to have this land rush tenements which are half a century into the agricultural hinterlands old and deteriorating — it’s sort of a of the cities, otherwise known as dreary panorama. So the one image the suburbs. of the American city that really be This is all coinciding with the comes universal in the early 1950s further development of the auto- is Ralph Kramden’s apartment in mobile and all of its accessories and The Honeymooners TV show — this infrastructure, which is fueled by miserable, dark little hole in a box, the continued growth of the world- looking out on this miserable light dominant American oil industry.

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DC: People often describe the evacu- all of the parts of the cars in Akron ation of American cities after World and Dayton, etc. War II as “white flight.” But beginning in the 1970s, those JHK: Yeah, although that was only manufacturing jobs started to leave. one feature of it. I would submit The industries started to incremen- that the other features I described tally break down and move away. By were more important in the whole the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s we’re starting process. to develop high levels of unemploy DC: OK. But how did racial migra- ment, a lack of education and cul tions factor into this story of the city tural dislocation in the American and the suburbs? inner city. That’s pretty much what’s JHK: While all these events are un- left in a lot of the heartland indus- folding, there are still more things trial cities in America today. So we in motion. The invention of the me- call that “urban” now, because every- chanical cotton picker in the South body else is living in this cartoon of puts an end to sharecropper labor. the country known as suburbia. So you get a lot of southern peasants, many of them black, moving up into Disassembling the the industrial cities looking for op- Urban Organism portunities. The opportunities were DC: What makes suburbia so different actually there in the industrial cities from the places we lived in before it? in the 1950s and ’60s. The factories JHK: One of the chief characteristics were still humming. They were still of suburbia is its disaggregation — the making cars in Detroit and making disassembly of the organs of civic

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION America’s Honeymoon with Cities is Over 17 life and then the consequent isola- can get to them without prosthetic tion of them — so that all the people assistance — namely the car — and in live in one place, all the shopping a way that allows them to enjoy the occurs in another place, the offices journey from one organ to the other. are in a third place, the industrial Anybody who’s been to a European stuff is in the fourth place, and all city understands this, because they of it can only be accessed by cars. didn’t throw their cities away the DC: So how does a healthy city, or way we did. Rome, Florence, Paris, village, or town center function? Munich — you go around these places JHK: A successful city or town is and the journey from point A to made up of integral parts. You think point B is very rewarding. You’re of these as the organs of the larger seeing things that were created delib- organism of the city or town: the erately to be beautiful, to reward the residential organs, where the people human spirit. And you don’t have to live; the commercial organs, where cross an eight-lane freeway, generally, commerce and trade take place; the to get from one to the other. manufacturing organs; the civic The main characteristic of a organs, where we have our meeting healthy urban organism is that it is halls, courthouses and the police scaled to the energy diet that is avail- station — the cultural organs are the able to it. Unfortunately, much of the museum and the school, the theater twentieth century provided America and so forth. with an energy diet that was abnor- In a successful city, these organs mal. It was the height of the cheap oil are deployed so that most people and cheap natural gas fiesta, and it

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 18 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere allowed us to create urban organisms the oil era, that arc of decline we’re that were scaled to dimensions that now entering. can’t be sustained after the peak of

Disaggregation and Deadness We have choices in the designs that we choose for our habitations. Those designs either invoke an idea of aliveness or invoke an idea of deadness. Mostly we’ve made the choice for deadness in America, and the deadness mostly comes from cutting one thing off from another. The aliveness comes from when things have transitions between each other that are graceful, beautiful transitions that allow you to go seamlessly from one activity to another, or from one place to another, or from one room to another. But when you start putting up barriers — including one-way streets with no parking that function like freeways so that one block is cut off from the next, or you start putting in berms that supposedly protect one use from another but really just isolate them, or when you create housing pods that only connect to the rest of the world by one entrance to the housing development — then things do not seamlessly connect to each other. — James Howard Kunstler, September 16, 2010 KunstlerCast #125: “Cassandra”

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Duncan Crary: It’s practically illegal So we developed this idea in the to build a healthy urban organism early twentieth century that you had in suburbia because of the zoning to rigorously segregate all the uses codes, which are almost identical in the city. The residential neighbor- everywhere. Even in a lot of cities, hoods had to be rigorously cordoned we now have zoning codes that off from the places where industry prevent anyone from building in was allowed to do its thing and be the city the way cities are supposed dirty, and noisy, and smelly and all to be built — buildings that are close that. That became the classic model together, multiple stories high, with for zoning. mixed uses and little or no parking. DC: One of my favorite stories from How did we end up doing things Troy, New York, involves a guy who this way? got snubbed by the elitists and so James Howard Kunstler: It’s also he got revenge by building some a tortured story that goes back to horrible-smelling soap factory as the early twentieth century when close to their homes as he could.5 the city was changing very rapidly, Before the zoning codes, you could becoming an extremely unpleasant get away with that kind of stuff. place. Again, the scale of industry was JHK: That’s the point. How do getting enormous — an automobile you regulate the behavior of these plant in the 1920s was huge! — and it industrial activities which are was all mixed in with the other stuff. taking our cities and making them It was hurting property values. unpleasant in a way that we’ve never

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Main Street, USA, Disneyland At the heart of Disney World is Main Street, USA. This is the little town of Marceline, Missouri, that Walt Disney spent most of his childhood in. This is the recreation of his memory of what small-town America was like back when small-town America was still pretty good, in the period before the First World War. What’s so fascinating about it is that Americans come from all over America to walk in a Main Street environment that is not tyrannized by automobiles, where some attention has been paid to putting some pretty buildings up. To call them beautiful is taking it too far, maybe. By Ameri- can vernacular standards, they employ conventions that we think of as being decorative. We call it Victorian, although God knows it’s a hodgepodge of stylistic things. But they come from their little towns in Michigan and Minnesota and Kansas and Arkansas and Georgia, and they flock to Disney World to be in a Main Street environment that is spiritually rewarding. Then they go back to their little towns in all these places and destroy their own hometowns. These are the same guys who sit on the zoning boards who make the decisions to turn their own Main Street into a six-laner, to knock down all the street trees, to make the sidewalks four inches wide. Then after they do that, they pack up the family and go back to Disney World so they can feel good about America. This is so perverse. — James Howard Kunstler, December 24, 2009 KunstlerCast #94: “The Disneyfication of America” ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Mandating Suburbia 21 experienced before? Zoning is sup- the world, except the United States posedly the rational response to a set after 1950, which is: people living of circumstances which at the time above retail establishments, above were pretty difficult. stores — normal urban typologies of It’s after World War II that we re- buildings that are more than one- ally start to get going on the refine story high. ments of zoning, and we enter this After 1950, we built very few territory of the absurd — especially commercial retail buildings that in suburbia where all the construc- were more than one-story high. tion is happening. Among the things That engenders this unanticipated we do is that we decide shopping consequence of having an affordable is now classified as an obnoxious housing crisis. We’re now obliged “industrial activity” that nobody to provide this artificial commodity should be allowed to live anywhere called “affordable housing” because near. we were too stupid to provide it or- Not only does that create huge ganically by allowing buildings to be problems for traffic — by doing that more than one-story high. you mandate that everybody has DC: In The Geography of Nowhere you to get in their car eleven times a mentioned that a lot of towns across day to make a trip for every little America adopted the same set of thing they need — but you’ve also zoning codes.6 now eliminated the most common JHK: There was an engineering com- kind of affordable housing that is pany that built a template for zoning found virtually everywhere else in for pretty much any municipality. It

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 22 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere was like the generic vanilla zoning this very firm agreement about how code. this stuff should all work. The fact DC: Which is why every housing that this is all on the verge of collaps- development in America looks ing now is another story. But as one almost the same? of my favorite correspondents never JHK: There was also a very firm tires of saying, “Shit happens, and consensus among the people who shit un-happens.” are delivering suburbia about how DC: And that’s how, in your assess- things should be done — the traffic ment, urban planning became all engineers, the developers, the real about following and enforcing these estate salespeople all agree that this codes instead of actually making is the way we should do it. The streets plans for good urbanism?7 should all be eighty feet wide. The JHK: Urban planning has no design houses should all be on a half-acre component anymore. It’s simply lot. The shopping centers should all about administering the codes and be far away from this so that people about the minutiae and trivia of aren’t bothered by grocery shopping. measuring the width of the curb And that’s how it becomes nor- cut — making sure that the signage mal. The consensus is adopted by all is exactly within a centimeter of the the professional organizations, like specifications. It has nothing to do the American Society of Highway with excellence in design or having Engineers and all of their cohorts, standards of excellence, or having and the professional builders, etc. a consensus for excellence, or least For about sixty years now we’ve had of all any consideration for how

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Mandating Suburbia 23 the buildings will behave in their codes that didn’t allow for mixed use relations with the other buildings so in this town for decades. that we have some kind of a coherent JHK: Well these poor bozos, they urban structure. That’s totally absent. come out of planning school — They threw it in the garbage in because they made some bad about 1950. They decided, “We don’t choice, or they were deceived into need this anymore. All we need thinking that they were in a design is the traffic engineering, and the discipline — and then they spend the highway geometries and statistical next forty years just working for a analysis. Nothing else is necessary. pension plan. They hate their work. So here’s five thousand years of They hate themselves for doing it. architecture and urban design, and They realize that the whole thing we’re throwing it in the dumpster is a mummery. Finally they gaze at now along with the old Boston cream that golden, glowing finish line of pies and the half-eaten tuna fish retirement, when they can go to a sandwiches.” place where it’s exciting, that has DC: I’ll never forget when one of mixed uses — a place that, in short, the town planners in this big subur- displays all the qualities that they’ve ban mess of a place told me that he been preventing from occurring was looking forward to moving to in the place they’re in charge of for Manhattan when he retired so that their whole career. The damage that he could actually live in a walkable these municipal officials have done mixed-used community. This was a all over America is just out of this guy who’d been enforcing the zoning world.

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Reforming the Codes or Victor Dover in Miami or Andrés DC: How do you feel about efforts to Duany’s company, DPZ. reform the zoning codes? They’ll go in there and they’ll JHK: For twenty years, I’ve been actually meticulously write a whole watching the New Urbanists8 go new so-called “smart code,” a term into locality after locality and fight that I’m not all that happy with, be- these battles to reform the zoning cause it tends to alienate that por- codes and the planning laws and tion of the population that knows the regulations. I’ve been in the they’re dumb — they tend to be the charrettes and the public meetings pro-sprawlers — so they don’t like to many times and watched it happen. hear somebody brandishing a “smart It’s often a heartbreaking process. code” because it implies that there’s Sometimes you go through two or another side that’s not smart. But three stages of these public meetings it was within the cultural trends of where you actually form a consensus our locutions of the moment, when with the various so-called stake everything was “smart”-this and holders. Then it gets down to the city “smart”-that — smartphones, smart- council actually voting on a new set etc. They’ve had quite a bit of success of codes, and they don’t do it. That when you consider what they’re up happens time and time again. Either against that or they actually hire some New But my own feeling is that rather Urbanist planner who really has the than reform all of these codes, I think expertise to do this kind of thing, a they’re simply going to be ignored guy like Joel Russell in Northampton as we move into this more difficult

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Children of the Burbs 25 future, this “Long Emergency” as I obviously ridiculous. Forget about call it. I don’t think we’re going to it. Don’t bother.” Because we won’t have the mental energy, or even the be driving as much. There will be administrative resources, to accom- fewer cars and less of a need to deal plish the reform of our zoning codes. with it. That’s what I see. So they’ll be I think that in the future people will ignored, and then, after a passage of just ignore them. It will be obvious time, when we can kick back a little that we can’t require nine parking bit and we have a little bit of mental spaces for every commercial place leisure recovering from these hard- that opens. Rather than legislatively ships and blows and discontinuities, try to change that in our city codes, we’ll create a new set of norms and we’ll simply say, “Look, this is standards for how we do things.

Children of the Burbs

Duncan Crary: One of the first hind that are racial issues that are too things I hear people say when they toxic for Americans to have a public choose the suburbs over living in an discussion about. But then there are urban place is, “I have children. I’ve the other aspects of living in subur- got to raise children.” bia for a child that go beyond school, James Howard Kunstler: When peo- that have to do with giving them a ple say that, generally what it means supposed “normal” life. But what is that they’re afraid to send their happens is they end up having a kids to schools in a city — and be- pretty abnormal life in the burbs.

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DC: Is raising children in suburbia So the family “chauffeur,” which is good for them? usually Mom, ends up taking them to JHK: Raising children in the suburbs all of these places. A kid doesn’t de- has a lot of drawbacks. Apart from velop any sense of moving through the school issues, kids over seven space under his or her own power. years old have a tough time in the Now I happen to live in a classic suburbs. Under seven, they don’t Main Street town that is set up so really have to go anywhere. They’re that kids really can get to things on happy in their little cul-de-sac, play- their own. They do come to down- ing cops and robbers or flies up. That town Saratoga Springs, and they do was my experience the three years I go to the coffee shop. They go to the lived in the suburbs between the age stores. They buy things. They learn of five and eight. That was OK. how to do things that will eventually The trouble starts a little bit later lead them into being fully function- when they have to become socialized. ing adults. Kids in the suburbs don’t And by that I don’t mean becoming learn how to do that — Mommy does socialists, I mean learning how to use everything for them. their daily environment themselves When I was a kid in 1957, my and developing their own sense of parents divorced and I moved from sovereignty — that tends not to occur the suburbs of Long Island into Man- in the suburbs, because it’s too hard hattan at the age of eight. Previously, for kids to get places. They can’t get my whole life was centered around to their soccer match by themselves. throwing baseballs on the cul-de-sac They can’t get to their clarinet lesson. and riding my little bike. Then I got

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Children of the Burbs 27 into Manhattan, and I didn’t even DC: So you start doing drugs in the have a bike anymore — that was over rumpus room in the basement and with. My whole life, all of a sudden, listening to gangsta rap instead. was about learning how to get on JHK: Playing with Dad’s guns. a Madison Avenue bus, to go from DC: It’s true. I suppose that behavior point A to point B — learning how to goes along with how we send our take the cross-town bus from 86th kids to suburban schools that look Street to the planetarium at the like penitentiaries. Museum of Natural History. JHK: I don’t understand why the That was kind of a scary thing for schools look so terrible and scary — an eight-year-old to learn how to do, why it’s necessary to do that. Obvi- but I did it. Then I got over it and I ously we didn’t do that in an earlier wasn’t scared anymore. I was just a period. If you go up to Glens Falls, normal person using the city. New York, there’s the old high school, DC: I grew up in the burbs. It was which was converted into apart- great until I hit this sort of dead zone ments. It’s a wonderful, dignified between the age of like thirteen and building. It fits in with the city. It sixteen, where you can’t drive. sends a message that what goes on JHK: Yeah, and your needs at that here is all about the eternal verities. point are greater than they were The school building is a neoclassical when you were seven years old. You building, so it sort of speaks in the need to be connected to stuff, and language of the classical verities. you’re frustrated continually by not Then you go see the new junior high being able to do it. school on Route 9 in Saratoga, it

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 28 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere looks like an insecticide factory, as architecture. It’s not about style. It’s Tom Wolfe put it.9 about making a statement to the user DC: The public high school in the of the building that this is a dignified suburban town where I lived looked place. That it’s an honor to be here — a like that. But I went to private school privileged activity goes on in here, in a city — the Albany Academy, which it’s not punishment. But with our is a beautiful neoclassical building mentality of just creating “facilities” that looks like an institution of rather than actual typological build- learning. ings like schools, churches, etc.... JHK: By saying this, I don’t think that When everything is a facility, it’s either one of us is necessarily pimp- really nothing. A “facility” is also a ing for neoclassicism as the only way prison. In fact, most of our prisons to decorate a building, or the only are now officially called “facilities.” way to design something. It happens We’ve gotten into a lot of trouble to be an architectural language that’s by sort of technologizing these suited to our democratic society, things. And we manage to take all our republic. It takes the idea from of the artistry and humanity out Greece of being a democracy, and the of them. idea from Rome of being a republic, and combines them. An Environment that We express that in a lot of our Teaches Hyper-individualism civic buildings: schools, libraries, DC: There’s something else about museums, courthouses. But there are the suburban environment that plenty of other wonderful styles of seems to give children disturbing

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Children of the Burbs 29 ideas about ownership and private friends and not get chased off for property and the concept of sharing. loitering. I remember hanging out When I was a kid in the burbs one of in a storm sewer culvert with my the most common disputes, at least, teenage friends. That was our idea among the boys — when we got mad of a good spot. at each other, we would say, “Get off JHK: The whole key to understand- my property.” We would have these ing the suburbs has to do with the arguments over property lines. impoverishment of the public places Eight-, nine-, ten-year-old kids! Did and the glorification of the private you experience any of that when you realm. We have more bathrooms per a kid out there? inhabitant in our houses than any JHK: It’s funny that you mention it. other nation in the world, but we have I seem to dimly remember exactly extremely poor public places in most those kinds of things. I guess what it of suburban America, which is most shows is that the exaggerated sense of America. Most of the public places of hyper-individualism out in the for kids are the leftover scraps — the suburbs is even communicated to berms, the parking lots, the places eight-year-old kids. that nobody really cares about. We have very few places that The Impoverishment demand respectful behavior from of Public Places the kids, and so you put them in a DC: It’s very hard as a teenager in the place like that and they are going to suburbs to find good public places tend to be as wild as possible. You where you can hang out with your put them in a berm between the

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Wal-Mart and the K-Mart and they’re no unplanned casual time. What kids going to torture kitty cats and make really need is unscripted roaming homemade tattoos and smoke bongs around their environment — beyond and drink aftershave. That’s how just the playgrounds that have been they behave in the public place of designed for them. They need to be the berm in suburbia. around buildings and shopping and You get incredible volumes of places where adults are doing things terrible behavior. And they’re usually and where policeman are, and where unsupervised. There are no adults ordinary citizens are doing their around to regulate torturing the business, and where people are kitty cats and stuff like that. If there making things and doing things were sensitive adults around, that that are useful. wouldn’t happen. It ends up being an They also need to be able to cross environment that does not prepare the boundary from the urban envi- kids to be successful, caring adults. ronment into nature. That boundary DC: Teenagers in the burbs don’t was everywhere until about 1950. seem to have a lot of adults around. It was one of the great things about But the younger kids can’t seem to the way life was. There really were get away from their parents — parents no big broad suburban areas, except tend to micromanage their lives. in maybe London, England, or New JHK: You know, one of the things York City, etc. But until then, in most that’s so different about the way small towns in the USA, you’d walk young children have been living in to the edge of town, and you were recent decades is that there’s almost out of town. It’s important for kids

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Children of the Burbs 31 to be able to make that journey and half ruined and the grounds had then go about their unplanned play these marvelous carriage drives and imaginative construction of lined with azalea bushes and stuff. their world. It was really quite grand. DC: I was very active outside as a My backyard ran right up against young kid growing up in the sub- that, so we could ramble around in urbs in the eighties. But the develop- this three-hundred-acre estate. Then ments hadn’t overtaken all of the old it underwent a very severe change. abandoned farm fields yet, so I still Another developer came in and plot- had access to the woods nearby. The ted out a new addition to the subur- kids growing up there today don’t ban development that we were in and have as many places to run around devastated the forest and brought in in the wild. But you know, the par- the bulldozers and created the new ents today seem to be more afraid to streets — all within a couple of years let their young children out alone from the time that we moved in. anyway.... At the same time, there was a JHK: When I was five or six, we character on the loose named “The moved out to a development in Mad Bomber.” He was like one of Roslyn, Long Island, that was right the first great serial bombers of the behind the remnants of an old modern age, at least the post-war age. derelict estate that belonged to a guy His name was George Metesky — he named Clarence Mackay, who was a was just some crank from Connecti telegraph magnate of some kind.10 cut who was leaving bombs here The mansion was abandoned and and there. I don’t even remember

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 32 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere whether he actually killed someone. the suburban development, through But he was some joker in a raincoat quite an obstacle course of things. or something who terrorized the First you left the development New York metropolitan area. I re- and crossed a major street. Then we member my friends and I saw a car went through a woody kind of wil- parked on this carriage drive in the derness that must have been about a forsaken estate behind my house. four-acre woods — not yet developed And we got it in our heads that this into a supermarket, which it later was the Mad Bomber who was hang- became. Then we had to cross Route ing out in this car. 25-A, which was a major four- or six- The only reason I’m telling you laner, even back then. Finally, from this dumb story is because it has to there, we went into the little grid of do with walking to school. I went to Greenvale, which was fairly safe — it a little grammar school about a half had some sidewalks, etc. But we did a mile from our suburban develop- this when we were five and six years ment, in one of the residue villages old, going to the first grade! of the north shore of Long Island. DC: Yeah. Sure. It was called Greenvale. And it had JHK: Nobody bothered to escort us been there a couple of hundred years. or drive us to school. We were pro- It had a little grid of streets. It had grammed fairly efficiently to find the pre–World War II houses, and it the place. We knew how to get there. had a grammar school that had been We even knew how to find the path built in the 1920s — a little red brick across the four-acre wilderness of building. And we walked there from woods to get to Route 25-A, Northern

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Boulevard. We were five and six years to any patch of woods or field or old, going to Miss Schneider’s class anything because I figure it’ll just in the first grade of the Greenvale get destroyed eventually. Do you school. No problem. Nobody wor- experience that kind of anxiety? ried. And I don’t know where we got JHK: Oh yeah. Tony Hiss wrote a this idea about the Mad Bomber, wonderful book back in the late probably from our parents, because eighties called The Experience of Place we didn’t read The New York Times. in which he said pretty much that DC: They still let you go out, even nobody in America anymore feels though they knew the Mad Bomber that they are entitled to go back was out there. I had a lot of unsuper home and find it being the same vised experiences like that, too — run- thing that it was when they left a ning around through the woods and few years earlier. riding my bike all over the place. I The rate of change has been ter- had a pretty good childhood in the rible. It’s not just the rate of change. burbs until those early teen years. It’s the quality of the changes that But one of the lingering psychologi- have taken place, because almost cal effects I have from the experience everything we’ve built in the last is that I feel anxiety whenever I find fifty years has made people uncom- a nice, open, “undeveloped,” natural fortable or made their lives worse. place. Because when I was growing In fact, that’s what’s really behind up in suburbia the landscape got so much of the NIMBY activity gobbled up so fast as I grew older. today, when the demonstrators Now I don’t want to get attached come out.

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DC: “Not in my backyard” that stands say that we overdo the whole abuse for. angle a lot. We’ve become hysterical JHK: Right. First, the bulldozers show puritans in that sense in our time. up. Guys in the yellow hard hats. And But it may be a response to the fact then the NIMBY protesters come that we are inflicting a lot of damage out. They don’t want anything new on ourselves and find that we can’t built next to them because all these stop doing it. things have made their lives worse. We can’t stop inhabiting our sub- The old expression is they don’t want urban environments, because we’ve a house just like their house next to invested so much of our national their house. wealth in them. They’re there! The DC: It’s funny because the word vast housing tracts, etc. — they’re “development” has been so hijacked there. And they are indeed very that I’ve come to dread it. “Develop- punishing for the development of ment” should be a positive word, children, who require certain things shouldn’t it? growing up in a human habitat that JHK: Yeah. But to us it just means a they don’t get in suburbia. But, obvi- new parking lot will appear next to ously, this is mostly unintentional. your house. Most people move to these places DC: Would you go as far as to say because that’s what we’ve got in that raising children in suburbia is America. We don’t have a whole lot a form of child abuse? of choice, especially when it comes JHK: Well, I don’t think it’s that far to the schools. off the mark. But I would hasten to People are making these deci-

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Children of the Burbs 35 sions because they feel like they are attractions and opportunities, but compelled to make them. It’s just it’s really an overwhelming place. I unfortunate. The suburbs are not don’t think that kids necessarily feel good places for kids. The cities are comfortable in it. The scale of the not really adequate either, the way streets and the buildings is huge. The most of them are in America. traffic is overwhelming and fright- You know, New York City has ening. There are very few places a lot of wonderful amenities and in Manhattan or Brooklyn that are

The Family Room The man’s den went through a double transition. It mutated from being a male space to the place where the TV is watched. But now it’s become something else again. It’s become the place where all the plastic children’s crap is strewn all over — the “family room,” where you can’t even walk without tripping over a three-foot-long plastic turtle. And so now, not only have the males had their space taken from them, but the adults generally have been banished from the family room. In many ways the word “family” in American lingo is a hidden synonym for “This is something for children.” — James Howard Kunstler, August 20, 2009 KunstlerCast #76: “Man Caves”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 36 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere scaled well for kids, and that’s one of fairly OK. It’s healthy. But most of the better environments in the US. the other towns around here are in a You go outside of New York, and you post–Soviet backwater haze of desola- start talking about Akron, Ohio, and tion and dereliction. Their school Kansas City. It’s really hard. For me, systems are suffering. Physically, the the default solution would be small- places are deteriorating. town America, but a lot of people It’s a really tough one — where are don’t have the ability to get there, and you going to live in America? You there isn’t that much of small-town can count on your hands the places America left that’s still OK. A lot of it that are really wonderful — there is really struggling. are very few places that are even Around here, where we are, the adequate beyond that. town of Saratoga Springs is doing

Sprawling to Obesity

Duncan Crary: The other day I was parently the American Academy of reading Planning magazine, which is Pediatrics estimates that 32 percent published by the American Planning of American children are overweight Association. There was a viewpoint due in large part to inactivity. And piece at the end titled “We Knew It this group of pediatricians has gone All Along.”11 It was about the link on the record linking the child between the obesity rate and the obesity rate in America to the way suburbanization of America. Ap- we’ve designed our built environ-

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Land Whales The most common species seen at a mall typically in the United States is the animal called the land whale, and we just saw several of them pass. The sidewalk was quaking under their tread.... They’re headed off to graze at the fried food buffet. — James Howard Kunstler, September 8, 2008 KunstlerCast #30: “Twilight of the Mall Era” Recorded at Colonie Center, Albany, New York ment to be so car-dependent ... over its construction and design. in other words, so suburban. So Yeah, it’s a big duh. the author of this op-ed piece in They’re about forty years behind Planning magazine was essentially in admitting it and reporting it, making the point that — Duh! We though. Because the damage that’s knew this all along as urban plan- been done to a few generations of ners, but now we have medical proof Americans now is out of sight. I just that what we can no longer afford to saw a statistic that the percentage ignore this issue. of obese Americans now is much James Howard Kunstler: It is amaz- higher even than it was in 1990. So ing that this comes from the profes- we’re heading off the charts. It’s also sional magazine of the people who interesting that this coincides with actually bring suburbia to you — or this cultural and economic crackup at least the officialdom that presides that’s underway. It couldn’t happen at

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 38 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere a worse time: the physical condition JHK: You see a quite different of our citizens is so bad at the very way of life, especially for adults, in time when they probably need to be European cities. You go to Paris and in much better shape just to succeed people walk all over Paris. It’s very in life and be successful organisms well designed for that. They also have under rather new stringent terms. the cultural component of being DC: Obesity has overtaken smoking used to not eating huge portions of as the number one cause of death in things. You go into a restaurant and the US. you get a reasonable amount of food JHK: It’s not surprising. The amazing on your plate. thing is that we went through this In America, food is sort of an half-century project of constructing entertainment, so you’re trying to the suburban living arrangement stimulate people’s frontal lobes the and we didn’t notice what was go- way you would with a movie. You go ing on — especially when you get into a chain restaurant like Ruby into this transition between how Tuesday or Friday’s — it’s all about children use their environment in a stimulating your brain visually and traditional human habitat, and the not really about nutrition, or even way that we’ve now started working about good eating. So that’s one of around the fact that everything is the side effects of being such an ultra disconnected. entertainment-oriented society, that DC: A lot of people in the US don’t food is much more about tickling even walk for twenty minutes a day. your brain cells than it is about That’s scary. nutrition.

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But it’s not just kids, it’s every- virtually everything that is now body. I was trapped in a chain motel part of the American diet. That’s all overnight at the Denver airport happening because we’re pouring and there was only one place to eat oil on the croplands to produce all within walking distance. It was a this stuff. So there’s a whole chain Ruby Tuesday chain restaurant. So I of circumstances out there that are went there, and it was really startling. really pretty tragic. I just hadn’t been in one of these DC: If I were to take this pediatrics places for years. It was full of people study about obesity and the built who were supersized human beings, environment to a suburban plan- all eating something that was twice ning board to argue against another as big as their head, with a side of car-dependent development, what French fries and dessert. After these do you think the reaction would be? people consumed these immense JHK: Knowing what I know about the plates of nachos and blooming permitting and approvals process, I onions, or giant French fry concoc- don’t think that it would make much tions, they would bring these barges of an impression on them. There of ice cream and chocolate and stuff. have been plenty of arguments, even It’s just no wonder that Ameri- before this one, that building sub- cans are so huge, and no doubt it’s urbia was not a good idea. But that part of this massive infusion of corn didn’t affect anybody’s project. So it’s products that we hear about that get just another argument among many into everything — meat, and crunchy that have been used to try to break a things, and cookies, and chips, and set of very bad habits. The bad habits

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 40 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere have been so profitable that they You can still drive everywhere in simply can’t be overcome. I don’t cities — you almost need to in some think they will be. I think that what of the smaller cities that don’t have will overcome them will be events good transit. I live in a very urban that mandate changed behavior. neighborhood in a small city. But DC: Just to concede the counterargu- even people who live in this neigh- ment here, it is possible to live a borhood will drive to get to other sedentary life in an urban environ- places in the same neighborhood ment. You don’t have to walk every- that they could easily walk to. where in the city. You can ride the JHK: The condition that these places bus. You can take the subway. You can are in now is also anomalous. It sit on your couch and just watch TV seems like they’ve been that way and surf the Internet. If you’re a kid, forever, and that they’ll continue to there are certain city neighborhoods be that way forever. But I don’t think that aren’t conducive to playing in. so. I think that we’re heading for big I mean it is still possible to become changes fairly rapidly. sedentary and obese even in a great DC: I guess the trick is that we need urban neighborhood. to have an environment that you can JHK: Sure. Especially if you’re still liv- walk through without paying atten- ing in a culture that’s producing a lot tion to the fact that you’re walking. In of corn syrup, and sugary treats, and suburbia, if you walk anywhere, it’s Rice Krispie bars and hamburgers. like you’re solely going for a walk — That certainly would play a huge role. JHK: It’s an ordeal. DC: And still driving everywhere. DC: There’s no other purpose to

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Architecture of Suburbia 41 walking in suburbia other than the something to catch your attention. activity of walking — unless you’re There was something beautiful to walking the dog. There are no desti- look at, something interesting in a nations to walk to. shop window, a beautiful street that JHK: This is precisely the differ- you were on. It’s just such a divert- ence between being in one of those ing and rewarding experience, you really wonderful, old-world cities simply don’t notice. and being in the US. When you’re in In the best places, that’s how it Europe, if you go to Paris for a week’s is for the people who actually live vacation, you go out every day at there day in and day out. It’s one eight o’clock in the morning, and by of the reasons that when you go to the time you get back to your hotel Paris, you just don’t see that many fat room at five, you’ve gone fourteen people on the street. Because walking miles on foot. But you didn’t notice around a place like that is tremen- it, because it was so interesting, be- dously rewarding and it makes you cause your mind was diverted for want to do it more. 90 percent of the time. There was

The Architecture of Suburbia

Duncan Crary: Before we get into James Howard Kunstler: Most of specifics, what can you say in general them aren’t really architecture — about the buildings that make up they’re just manufactured boxes. suburbia? They’re depressing. They give us the

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Where the Sidewalk Ends In America we should change our national motto from “In God We Trust” to “It’s The Thought That Counts,” or “We Meant To.” American life is so full of empty gestures and we see so many empty gestures in the built environment, including the sidewalks that end after sixty feet. — James Howard Kunstler, June 12, 2008 KunstlerCast #18: “Pavement” message that we don’t care about get away from if you could possibly ourselves or our surroundings. manage to do it. So the whole idea of They give us the message that we’re the suburban house is that it’s going incompetent. And these are all to be a country house. But it goes unhealthy things to believe about through this mutation, especially yourself, especially collectively as after the Second World War, where a culture. the whole orientation of everyday DC: What are the defining character- life is no longer a counterpoint istics of the suburban home? between the city and the country — JHK: The whole idea of suburbia it’s simply a place in the service of is that it started out being country the car. So increasingly, the suburban living. It was the counterpoint to house becomes not a country house, city life, which for many decades but a cartoon of a country house in a in America was considered a really cartoon of the country. It’s especially unpleasant, undesirable thing, to interesting that this occurs just at

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Architecture of Suburbia 43 the time in American history where supposition was that you have a we’re becoming a cartoon society picture window so you can see ourselves, where television is start- the picture outside your window. ing to impose its ethos on us and But who wants to look outside the everything is becoming some kind window in Levittown at a bunch of of a televised image cartoon for us. houses that look exactly like your So we naturally morph from a people house across a boring street full of who care about the way we build our Chevrolets? Nobody wants to do that. things into people who just start using You end up having to put on window gestures and suggestions when we dressings and treatments to prevent build things. you from not only looking out, but to DC: There are shutters that don’t prevent other people from looking in actually function, for example. through this vast wall of glass to see JHK: They’re stick-on appliqués on you walking around in your pajamas a box that might as well be a packing at ten o’clock at night. crate. Nothing functions. The porch DC: In the newer suburban develop- doesn’t function, unless you’re a ments, I’ve been in houses that have leprechaun and you’re eighteen these very large entrances. No one inches high — there’s not enough actually enters through the front room to put a chair on it. It’s all a door, though, because you enter gesture. through the garage. But the ceil- For years we’ve been building ings in the front entrances to these these suburban ranch houses with houses are incredibly tall. I like tall picture windows, and the whole ceilings in old buildings. But that’s

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 44 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere not what we have here. It’s not quality Vinyl Siding space. It’s just big. DC: Of course one of the symbols JHK: They’re attempts to proclaim of suburbia is the vinyl siding on your status as a new kind of royalty. the outside of houses. Vinyl siding There are various names for them. sucks, Jim, but I’ve been meaning to Sometimes the builders in the Sun- ask you: why does vinyl siding suck belt call it “The North Dallas Spe- so much? cial.” The other name for this is the JHK: Well, I would attribute it partly “lawyer foyer,” which is supposed to the diminishing returns of tech to be the impressive entrance of an nology, a much overlooked and upper-middle-class squire with a underappreciated phenomenon in twenty-foot entrance and a gigantic our time. What that means is that Plexiglas chandelier that looks like you create some wonderful tool or a spacecraft hanging down. In sub- device or manufactured substance, urbia you have more space in your and it seems to be a wonder material. house than even the kings of medi- And you don’t discover, until you’ve eval Europe experienced. used it for a while, that it has all these DC: I’ve been to some medieval weird side effects and unintended castles, and you’re not exaggerating consequences that you never thought by that much. of. Like we’ve created this whole in- JHK: People today are living in levels dustry for vinyl siding. Fine. People of opulence and luxury in terms of call up the company: “I’ve got a private space that are unheard of in house that’s energy inefficient. We the history of the human race. need to put this envelope around it

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Architecture of Suburbia 45 of plastic stuff that looks like wooden It’s virtually no maintenance.” In clapboards, and wooden soffits — it’s the old days it was assumed that all going to be plastic now.” you had to maintain the exterior of You go put it up, and within five your house. This is just part of the years the ultraviolet light has started human condition. But now you have to attack the vinyl and made it look the salesman telling people, “Oh, it’s splotchy or started to warp it. And no longer part of the human condi- the soffits start to fall apart and hang tion. You don’t have to take care of off, and the window surrounds start your house.” to warp and tweak and twist. It looks Now we have these houses all terrible. It stops working the way it over America that have been acquir- was designed to work, because now ing a patina of auto emissions for it leaks again. We just sell ourselves a decades. You start to see this gray bill of goods that some technological soot accumulating under the eaves wonderful wonder material is going and at the edges and on the porch to solve all our problems. roof. The house gets dingier and There’s another thing to it, too, dingier. But the guys who own it that we don’t take into account. This won’t clean it, because they were told actually started earlier with the alu- as part of the contract for sale that minum siding people and all that “It’s no-maintenance — you never crap — the pressed stone and all the have to do anything to it.” So even applied surface stuff. The salesmen though they see that it’s starting to would come around and they would look crappy and grubby, “By golly, tell you, “Here’s this wonderful stuff. I’m not going to maintain it!” And

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 46 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere that’s one of the reasons that the the siding is phony is if you see the houses covered with these materials wood grain. So why do they even look so crappy. bother? It looks terrible. DC: Even when the stuff’s brand new I don’t like it. To me it’s just not real. A Tremendous JHK: Well it isn’t real. It’s pretending Hunger for Meaning to be something else. DC: There’s a shopping outlet mall DC: Why do I care that it’s not real? in Lee, Massachusetts, that I call Why does that bug me so much? “The Vinyl Acropolis.” It’s an en- JHK: I think that we are disturbed tirely faux New England village on by the inauthentic. Vinyl siding the Mass Pike. The Reebok shoe store pretends to be wood, and we know might be in a building that looks like it’s not wood, and it pisses us off a church with a steeple. The Eddie that we’re being lied to by a physical Bauer store looks like it’s the butcher object. A lot of these plastic cladding shop or a barbershop. There’s a brick- materials for buildings, especially veneer clock tower in the middle the ones that try to pretend that of the parking lot. That kind of in- they’re wooden clapboards — they authenticity is really disturbing. have wood grain embossed on them. But what’s going on there with the The funny thing is, on real wood you architecture? almost never see the grain because JHK: One thing it tells us is that it’s been planed and sanded off, and people have a tremendous hunger when it’s painted it doesn’t really for meaning in the things that they show. So the way that you know that build, but they’re not being delivered

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Architecture of Suburbia 47 in a way that has any dignity. So what only possible when you’re living in you end up with is an undignified a really luxurious culture, which and inauthentic artifact that just is what the cheap energy culture degrades people further. has been. That provides us with the DC: Are the people of the future go- luxury to be ironic about this kind ing to be living in houses shaped like of stuff. Pizza Huts, trying to reconnect with But the main feeling that’s going their culture the way nineteenth- to separate us in the future from century people were building houses what we’ve been doing in the past that looked like Greek temples? is: this shit’s not going to be funny JHK: I doubt it. It’s hard to predict anymore. I think we’re going to have what the nostalgic quality of that the same attitude to Burger King stuff will be, the little of it that sur- and Pizza Hut that the people in vives. The nostalgia that we know Germany now have toward the Nazi now for that kind of thing has some regime. It’s going to be something particular names: “kitsch” is one of that we’re ashamed of. It’s going to be them. “Camp” is another term associ- something that’s going to be a deep, ated with that behavior. What that’s dark, forbidding, awful memory about, really, is celebrating stuff for about the bad choices we made its vulgarity and awfulness. We con- historically. sciously decide that it’s wonderful DC: Another thing that faux New because it’s so bad — it’s so pathetic, England village outlet mall might it’s so bathetic that we celebrate the show us is how we still have a vague bathos in it. That kind of irony is hunger for regional differences

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 48 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere in our architecture. Because we’ve Temples of Acquisition lost any true regional differences DC: Do you ever shop in the mall? in architecture out in the suburbs, JHK: There’s a small mall in Saratoga haven’t we? near me, and I have to go there to get JHK: Sure. One of the historical office supplies. That’s about it. reasons you could tell the difference DC: I try to avoid the place but sooner between being in a New England or later there’ll be something I just town and being in a tidewater Vir- gotta go there for. I always feel em- ginia town in the mid-Atlantic is barrassed when I’m at the mall, like because, down there, their vocabu- I don’t want to get caught there by lary was brick and they developed someone who knows me. Do you a certain set of principles for orna- feel embarrassed when you have to menting that — putting a certain kind do that? of trim on it that was either black JHK: Oh I don’t feel embarrassed or white, and much of it was made about it. For me it’s just a mildly de- along neoclassical motifs. In New pressing experience to see where England you got, basically, neoclas- we’ve come after about thirty-five, sical wooden architecture. And in a forty years of this kind of behavior — way, that’s a whole world of skill and to see it now at the dead end. A lot of methodology that’s been more or the malls are full of all kinds of mar- less lost, but was recorded in things ginal business now, like wig shops, like Asher Benjamin’s The American and stores that sell outfits for motor- Builder’s Companion book of the early cycle thugs, and semi-pornographic nineteenth century. gift stores. The cycle with these

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Architecture of Suburbia 49 places when they enter their phase of it’s disconnected from all the other dereliction is that all kinds of mar- activities of life besides shopping. ginal activities move in. It’s disconnected from the places DC: One of things I always notice where people work, unless you work when I’m in a mall is how much the at the mall in retail. It’s disconnected interior tries to look like a city street. completely from the places where There’s tile instead of pavement, but people live. For the most part, even basically what people are walking the retail there is not necessarily on in the center of the mall is the everyday retail. You wouldn’t go there street. Some of stores have facades to get a loaf of bread or the day’s sup- like normal city buildings facing the plies for daily life or hardware. It’s all “street.” There are even trees growing dedicated to what we’ve come to call in the middle of the mall. the consumer recreational shopping JHK: None of these things are experience. particularly surprising or unusual. Because whether you’re on a real Abolish the Word “Consumer” street or in a mall, you’re dealing JHK: And let me revisit, for a mo- with a corridor of some kind and ment, my campaign to abolish the the best streets, of course, feel like word “consumer” from our discus- comfortable corridors. The best sions about these things. It’s a very streets in Europe, for example, are un-useful, demeaning, degrading fairly intimate. There’s nothing term, because consumers have no ob- particularly wrong with that. ligations or duties or responsibilities The problem with the mall is that to anything other than their desire

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 50 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere to eat Cheez Doodles and drink is leaving the system and vanishing Pepsi‑Cola. into a black hole as we discover that We need to call ourselves some- the American economy can’t really thing else. Maybe “citizens” or run on an endless cycle of debt. So something other than consumers. these huge temples of acquisition It’s a very bad word. Because it also are now completely obsolete. This is suggests that remaining a consumer really the end of the mall era. We’re society is a desirable end. And I think in the twilight of the mall era. that has caused a huge amount of mischief. Retrofitting Malls and Box Stores One of the tragic things going on DC: In Home from Nowhere you dis- right now is that the consumer era cussed retrofitting malls. What do is over. America is so unbelievably you think about these projects now, over-retailed. We don’t need a single to break up the main building into extra silver souvenir spoon shop in smaller parts and integrate living this country. Americans don’t need quarters and things like that? Turn- any more stuff. They have too much ing them into “Lifestyle Centers” stuff. And what we’re going to be see- and such? ing in the months and years ahead is JHK: In some places we’ve demon- less activity both on the part of the strated that you can take a dead mall customers, who we call “consumers,” and infill the parking lots and create and the businesses that sell stuff to streets and deck over the one-story them. It’s going to be fading into the buildings. The thing is, most of background of our lives now. Capital that was done in the late twentieth

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Architecture of Suburbia 51 century when we still had a lot of DC: And how about the retrofit of all capital to invest in this nation. the box stores out there? We’re in a new situation now. JHK: A lot of people have fantasies Capital is leaving the party. And that they’re going to be reused and we’re going to have a lot less money turned into dance museums, and to invest in anything, including the chiropractic hospitals and evangeli- malls. What we’re going to be doing cal roller rinks. But my guess is most is going back to the existing towns of them will be disassembled for that were originally built before the their materials, for the salvage. All of Second World War that are really these things will have value. As we get suited to the pedestrian experience — into more trouble with energy and that’s where the action is going to be. finance, we’re going to be hard up for

Country Living The whole country living deal is kind of a fantasy that does not necessarily work out the way people imagine. The truth is people are social, they want to be around other people, they want to get together with their friends once in a while. In the best of all possible urban worlds you see your friends maybe once a day — not once a season when someone throws a party for spring — and that doesn’t happen unless you’re in some kind of coherent urban organism. — James Howard Kunstler, June 30, 2011 KunstlerCast #162: “Triumph of the City”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 52 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere a lot of building materials, especially you’re going to see there are empty stuff like steel I beams and alumi- parking lots with weeds growing num trusses. So they’ll have a lot of in them. value for salvage. But eventually what

Picturing Suburbia

Duncan Crary: People might be field. I’m interested in the landscape surprised to learn that you spend of our time, and the landscape of our a lot of time creating paintings of time is mostly about the highway. parking lots and McDonald’s and Van Gogh painted the peasants Mobil stations. sleeping next to the haystacks be- James Howard Kunstler: I’ve cause he was in a landscape that was painted my whole life. I went to a populated with human beings. I’m in special school in New York City a landscape that’s populated mostly called the High School of Music and by automobiles, so I paint them. Ed- Art where we received a fair amount ward Hopper did something similar. of decent training. It’s something I’ve Although we look at Hopper’s paint- carried on in the background of my ings today — his paintings from the life forever. I’m what’s called a sur le 1920s and the ’30s when he was do- motif painter. I go out to the motif ing a lot of his highway stuff — and with my French easel and I’m out we recognize that as a landscape that there with the subject matter in the is now bygone because the scale of

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Picturing Suburbia 53 it is smaller and it all seems kind of it’s beautiful, although it shouldn’t quaint. It’s not as overwhelming as be construed as a reason to promote what we’ve got. suburban sprawl. It’s out there. It’s Today it’s very hard to see what what we’re living in. It’s not going you’re looking at out there on a com- to be there the way it is now in fifty mercial highway strip, with all the years. People will look back on these contesting signage and all the visual paintings, if they survive, and will clutter. So it becomes a great chal- see a landscape that looks different lenge to be able to make it legible. from what they’re living in. That’s one of the things that I like DC: When I first heard that you were about painting the highway strip. painting these scenes, I assumed I’m also interested in the contrast your paintings were going to be between the natural light and the ar- sarcastic. But they’re not. tificial light, especially at sundown. JHK: No, they’re not ironic at all. I’m I’ll set my easel up in the juniper not trying to make a joke about it. shrub bed of the Burger King to paint I’m literally trying to be a straight- the K-Mart a quarter of a mile away, forward reporter of the landscape of with the sun going down in a certain our time and its many moods. way so that the lovely kind of violet I do like to paint in the evening. and purple and pink and orange and I found one particular strip mall salmon-colored clouds will be con- nearby where the supermarket had trasted to the bright primary colors a particular lighting scheme under of the electric signage. Sometimes the soffit. It allowed me to see the

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 54 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere colors of my palette and the canvas in their day that they didn’t have any very clearly while the rest of the stuff ruins in this country to paint.12 around was sort of dark. You could JHK: Absolutely, and the figures in paint the McDonald’s in the dark that period — Thomas Cole, Albert and still see what you’re doing. That Bierstadt, Frederic Church — would was a great boon to me. go through this initiation rite of I also found a lot of satisfaction traveling all the way to Italy to paint in the industrial ruins that are all the ruins there as young men. They’d over this area of the Upper Hudson stay for a year or two or three and Valley. In fact, in the time that I’ve they’d make their bones by painting lived here over the last thirty years, the ruins of Rome. Then they’d come a lot of the factories have been bull- back to America, and what they dozed, so that I was able to actually finally settled on was the idea that, witness the process of demolition. “OK, we don’t have ruins here, but DC: I just bought an excellent book we do have this wonderful romantic called Hudson Valley Ruins that goes natural landscape. Let’s make that up and down the Hudson Valley our subject matter.” So that became giving you the history of all of these the subject matter of nineteenth- ruins — many of them are industrial. century American landscape paint- There’s one little nugget in the book ing, in the absence of having ruins. that I especially like. The artists who It became a kind of fetish. belonged to the Hudson River School The situation is different today. of Painters, America’s first formal We have a lot of ruins out there. And “school” of painting, were lamenting when I go out, I feel very privileged,

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Picturing Suburbia 55 like Thomas Cole might have felt of the painting series you referenced on the Roman Campagna, painting in The Geography of Nowhere is “The the disintegrating aqueducts of the Course of Empire.”13 How did it Roman Empire. I go out to Clarks Mills influence you? by the Hudson River and I paint the JHK: I certainly appreciate it, ruins of the wallpaper factory there. although I haven’t done anything It’s sort of thrilling. It’s also a thrill- remotely like it. ing place to be physically because it’s Thomas Cole, the great American a place of nebulous ownership. The landscape painter, was interested Georgia–Pacific company actually in painting series of things. “The owns the site but there’s nobody Course of Empire” depicts the rise there guarding it anymore. They’ve and fall of the Roman Empire in five given up. The fences have big holes panels, although it’s never stated, in them now so you can get in there. from the pastoral phase to the big It’s become a kind of a strange natu- buildings going up. Finally the ral park that has no supervision. climax is this huge pageant that’s So it’s thrilling to be out there going on in this gigantic kind of alone with an easel by the river. It’s amphitheater on the water. It’s like starting to get populated, too. There a harbor but there seems to be some are people who are going through great spectacle of empire going on. the fence and fishing along the river. Somebody has just returned from a Finally there are some human fig- remote land with giraffes and ele ures out there. phants and all this stuff. Then we get DC: Speaking of Thomas Cole, one a little further and there’s nobody

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 56 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere there anymore and the buildings are DC: Do you think Crumb was being disintegrating. Some kind of war has ironic? taken place. It’s left a lot of damage. JHK: Oh, absolutely not, in the sense Finally we see the utter desolation of that it seemed to be remarkably the ruins hundreds of years later. It’s straightforward reportage of what quite a tour de force of paintings. was going on. In fact, in that movie DC: The funny thing is that if I were with Crumb14 they show him draw- to come up with a more recent ex- ing that kind of scene and he’s sitting ample of the same thing, I would there saying, “You can’t make this think of Robert Crumb’s “A Short stuff up. You have to really pay atten- History of America.” Do you know tion to the details.” that cartoon series? DC: At one point in the film, he says JHK: Oh, it’s fabulous — showing the how once you start paying attention development of a little country road to transformers in the air and all into a small town, then into the be- the wires it just takes over — that’s ginning of the automobile age. All of all you can focus on. That happened a sudden the small town starts to fall to me for months as soon as I heard apart. Finally it ends up in the 1980s him say that in the film, that was all I as a convenience store, surrounded could pay attention too — how ugly it by all this crap of technology: the is. There’s so much up there that you horrible broken signage and the just ignore. telephone poles and the condensers JHK: There is! When I’m out there and the electric installations and the painting that stuff, I edit some of it trucks and just all the crap out there. out. But I leave a lot of it in. If you

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Picturing Suburbia 57 tried to put it all in, two things would paintings at a Burger King and the happen; it would become as visually manager guy — this young man with illegible as it actually is, and you a 23-hair mustache — came out and would drive yourself crazy. said, “That ain’t allowed here!” And I DC: I was excited to see that you’re wanted to mess with him a little bit quoted in The R. Crumb Handbook, so I said, “What? What ain’t?” And right after “A Short History of he said, “That there!” I said, “What?” America.”15 He said, “You know! What you’re JHK: Yeah, I didn’t even know that doing there!” I said, “Painting’s not until you showed it to me. But I’m allowed, huh?” very honored to be in R. Crumb’s We went through this for a while book because he’s a great genius of and I thought the situation was so ri- our time. diculous that I really wanted to have DC: Right next to your quote there’s fun with him so I finally said, “Look. a picture of this guy sitting on a milk It’s fine with me if you go call the crate in this dumpy abandoned yard sheriff and he can arrest me for paint- and he says, “I just sort of went with ing at Burger King on their property. the flow, man.” It’s perfect. I’m sure that’ll be great public rela- JHK: I know. Crumb’s really got our tions for your company. Because I’ll number. make sure that lots of people know DC: So Jim, wasn’t there some in- about it. And it’ll be real cool.” cident involving you painting at a DC: Do you know if that actually Burger King? did happen, it’d probably make the JHK: Yeah, I was doing one of my Associated Press wire?

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JHK: Oh, absolutely. him. I should have actually been DC: And you’d probably sell that more provocative because then I painting for three hundred grand. would have made more money on JHK: Yeah. I should have encouraged the painting.

Sprawl Defenders

Duncan Crary: There are people out people choose it, therefore it must be there who actually defend sprawl. the best thing that we’ve got. What kind of arguments are they It’s a circular argument, and it’s making? silly. We did what we did because we James Howard Kunstler: They have could do it. At this certain point in a number of arguments, and they all history following the Second World seem specious to me. War we had a huge amount of our DC: So what are the three main pil- own oil. We had a lot of cheap land lars of the pro-sprawl argument? outside of our cities, because this is a JHK: As I understand it, one pillar is big nation geographically. We had a the idea that sprawl is fine because huge income stream from selling our people like it. manufactured goods to the nations That was the premise of a book we defeated in the war. So we were all about sprawl by Robert Bruegmann, set up for this, and we were predis- a professor at the University of Illi- posed by this idea that runs through nois, Chicago campus.16 Basically his American cultural history that city premise was sprawl is fine because life ain’t no good and that the way to

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Private Property There’s a relatively new idea in America that Americans have a tradition of being able to do whatever they want with their land, and that any impediments placed against that are somehow un-American. This is a fallacy. It’s really been the result of a propaganda campaign from the promoters of suburban sprawl and the real-estate industry who have been fighting against any kind of regulation. We actually have a long history and a fat body of law for land use and the regulation of things you can do on it and with it. There is a whole corpus of respon sibilities, obligations and duties that come with land ownership that simply can’t be ignored. And this all falls under the law — we can indeed tell people what to do with their land. — James Howard Kunstler, December 4, 2008 KunstlerCast #41: “Private Property” go is country living for everybody. they did, even though it only has We liked the idea of country life — it relative reality to it. was consistent with the mythology of The bottom line is that, yeah, it our national experience in settling was a choice. But sometimes cultures the wilderness and fighting bears collectively make tragic choices, and and bison and saber-toothed tigers. we’ve carried the suburban thing too So that in itself was a very strong far. We elaborated it too much, and motivation for people doing what we ran ourselves up a cul-de-sac in

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 60 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere a cement SUV without a fill-up. Now Suburbia is also subsidized by we’re stuck with all this stuff built in government, by the way. Huge wads the wrong place in the wrong way, and of free government money are given it’s going to be a huge liability for us. to build the infrastructure for sub- The second big theme with the urbia — to lay the sewer lines and the pro-sprawl lobby is the idea that water lines, and build the highways sprawl represents liberty — that the and widen the roads. suburban mode of living happens DC: A lot of the mortgages are sub- because we live in a free country, and sidized, and have been in the past. it represents the American spirit Now even the values of the houses in of liberty to do what you want to do suburbia are benefiting from govern- with your land. We’re all free indi- ment intervention. viduals and that’s wonderful. JHK: Then there’s another final ar- What they overlook, of course, is gument, which is the econometric that sprawl is mandated rigorously argument, where they haul out these by government regulation at all reams of statistics to show how “ef- levels, which counts every single ficient” suburbia is. I had a father-in- parking space per square foot of law, a marriage or so ago, who was a retail, and rigorously defines how scientist for IBM. His favorite book far apart the houses have to be, and was How to Lie With Statistics.17 That’s what the setbacks are, and the square what econometrics is all about. Eco- footage of the house, etc. So this idea nomics is getting to be a line of work that the suburban life is free from that’s totally discredited. government regulation is a lie. The experience of any informed

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Sprawl Defenders 61 citizen just reading the news in transit, and in particular against the last several years is a history of restoring railroad service. He’s in seeing how you’re being gamed by favor of building more highways, economists using statistics to prove and widening highways, and doing things that aren’t true — to prove that everything we can to increase motor- the banks are solvent, to prove that ing volumes. Most of the pro-sprawl the housing market is fine, to prove econometric arguments are based that the US government is not broke, on the whole highway and driving to prove that we can keep dispensing equation. Medicaid forever, and lots of other DC: Folks like O’Toole think public things. So I regard the econometric transit is inefficient because we have arguments as being full of falsehood to subsidize it? and trickery, and having very little JHK: Exactly. validity. DC: It’s unbelievable. President DC: How are the sprawl defenders Obama just dropped hundreds of bil- trying to argue through economet- lions of dollars to repair our highway rics that suburbia is efficient? system. But you try to do a fraction JHK: One of the ways they do it is of that for public transit and it’s evil to attack public transit, and to try to socialism. There’s so much public demonstrate that car dependency space in America dedicated to the is, in fact, the best thing that we can use and storage of cars, which are do in our culture. Randal O’Toole private property. has made a kind of second career JHK: Right, and I’ll use a little econo- of campaigning against public metric myself: it’s estimated that the

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 62 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere average cost of supplying a parking idiotic positions, maybe because they space anywhere is about $8,000. can’t make a living any other way. I Either the real estate company that really don’t know. owns the strip mall is going to pay There aren’t that many of for it, or the government’s going to these guys out there. There’s Randal pay for it, or some combination. It’s O’Toole and there’s Robert Brueg- hugely expensive, not to mention mann. They’re the two main guys. the cost of building highways. And Then of course there’s Joel Kotkin,20 compared to railroads — or even who was featured in a David Brooks’ light rail or any other form of public column in The New York Times, which transit — it’s a joke. had the incredible headline “Relax, At the same time, we have to un- We’ll Be Fine.”21 The whole idea of derstand that a lot of these guys de- Brooks’ op-ed piece was that we don’t fending suburbia are paid shills for have a problem with our economy. the sprawl-building industry.18 It’s We don’t have a problem with the not as though they’re just selfless, American population. We don’t have misguided citizens. They’re essen- a problem with housing. We don’t tially rogues who are in the service have a problem with suburbia. We’re of evil enterprises. just going to stick everybody in sub- DC: How come you don’t often debate urbs, and they’ll be fine. The suburbs these pro-sprawl figures in public?19 will be retooled and improved and JHK: Well there are only a few of made even better than they are now. these guys out there who are shame- And we’ll all just keep on driving less enough to get up and take these around. No problem.

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David Brooks is probably the pressure to suburbanize their most fatuous opinion writer that habitat? The New York Times has. He’s the guy JHK: At this point, I don’t really who wrote Bobos in Paradise,22 about think we have to worry too much. the Bohemian, yuppie generation Because it’s becoming self-evident — settling into suburbia, and about how and it will be more obvious every wonderful that was. David Brooks week — that we can’t support this himself has been a champion of suburban lifestyle. That, in many suburbia with no awareness at all ways, it’s simply failing. People can’t of its shortcomings or its destiny. pay their mortgages. People can’t These are the kinds of people who commute long distances to jobs, if are leaders in the media. So when I they’re lucky enough to have them. say that we have a comprehensive The schools cannot continue to failure of leadership in America, I operate in the way that they have don’t mean just politically. I mean been. The gradual impoverishment we have a failure of leadership in of the suburban governments is business, the media, academia and in going to be another enormous the profession of economics — every problem. So I think that the trends where. We’re not doing too well will reveal themselves and it won’t in terms of understanding where require a strenuous battle to go out history is taking us. and argue with these pro-suburbia DC: What are small cities supposed guys. to do when confronted with these DC: Is it even worth arguing about? I pro-sprawl arguments and this constantly find myself getting riled

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 64 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere up and arguing with people about JHK: I think it’s tremendously suburbia. I’m not a politician. I’m frustrating, and usually feels like not in any position of authority. an exercise in futility. It’s very dis- Why the hell am I even arguing with couraging, and sometimes you’re people about the suburbs? Should I tempted to lose your temper, or just just laugh and live my life and stay get so emotional that you can barely out of it? articulate or even state your posi- JHK: Well it’s kind of sad and annoy- tion clearly. And at the same time, ing to see people, especially your you know that they don’t even care. relatives, clinging to ideas that are They’re tuned out. They don’t even just going to get them into trouble. want to hear it. So it’s a hard thing Right now we have a public that is to do. full of delusional ideas that are not But a public consensus is an odd helping us get through this period creature. I think the way this finally of hardship and difficulty that we resolves is in the way that the phi- face. Personally I think the most losopher Schopenhauer stated — that important thing that we have to do new ideas are first ridiculed, then in this country is form a coherent violently opposed, and then they’re consensus for action so that we can accepted as self-evident.23 We’re take ourselves into the future. seeing that now. DC: So you think it is worthwhile Let’s not forget the huge factor to have these discussions and mini of the practical investments that debates with people then? Americans have in that way of life.

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They’ve got their suburban house, true that suburban houses really which for many households repre- are pretty luxurious compared to sents the place where most of their what you get in the city. If you read wealth is imagined to be stored. the real estate ads in The New York Even if the value of the house is Times, for example, or in The New York going down, they’ve put most of Observer, you see that a four-bedroom their savings into it. So people can’t Manhattan apartment with two or conceive of letting go of that. It’s three bathrooms and a fireplace goes terribly difficult for them to enter- for eleven million dollars. You don’t tain any idea that even remotely even get a basement with that. But in threatens that. suburbia you can have the same darn Then, secondarily, there are all thing for $500,000. People naturally the investments that we’ve made in view their private space as being very the infrastructures for daily life in important. suburbia, including the schools and What you get in New York City the roads and the municipal tennis these days is a pretty small living courts and everything else — we don’t space and storage space, but you have want to lose those investments. We’re access to all the marvels and wonders also afraid because we have no real and amenities of being in this great legacy of affection for urban places cosmopolitan city. The same is true, in America. We don’t want to move of course, in Paris or London or Rio back into Ralph Kramden’s apart- de Janeiro or really any great metro- ment in The Honeymooners. And it’s politan place.

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Duncan Crary: I want to try to sort 1995, when you were writing for out the politics of place with you. The Planning Commissioner’s What I want to know is if suburbia Journal.24 is a conservative place and if cities James Howard Kunstler: Doesn’t are liberal places. I’m very confused everybody get that magazine? by political allegiances in America DC: I only found the article after right now. And I think you summed clicking through links on various up what’s confusing me, back in blogs. Here’s what you wrote:

Places Not Worth Defending We have about, you know, 38,000 places that are not worth caring about in the United States today. When we have enough of them, we’re gonna have a nation that’s not worth defending. And I want you to think about that when you think about those young men and women who are over in places like Iraq, spilling their blood in the sand. And ask yourself what is their last thought of home? I hope it’s not the curb cut between the Chuck E. Cheese and the Target store! Because that’s not good enough for Americans to be spilling their blood for. We need better places in this country. — James Howard Kunstler, TED 2004 Filmed February 2004, Ted.com

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The town where I live, Saratoga with — or they were just part and Springs, New York, like practically parcel of — the whole community every other town in America, is of builders and bankers, and the under assault by forces that want highway guys, and the development to turn it into another version of people. And it became quite a force. Paramus, New Jersey, with all the Also, because financing was highway crud, chain store servi- so cheap and our technology had tude, and loss of community that reached a certain point, you could pattern of development entails. make pretty severe changes in a Ironically, the forces who are town very quickly just by following ready to permit the most radical the mandates of conventional zon- damage to the town’s historic ing laws. character consider themselves In our case here in town, we the most conservative; while the replaced some great historic fabric groups most concerned with pre- with a bunch of shitty 1950s subur- serving the town’s best features, ban crap. We tore down the Grand and even enhancing them, have Union Hotel — a huge building — in been branded radical. 1954 and put a strip mall on the site in the middle of the city with park- JHK: Yeah, this was quite an inver- ing all around it. That was before my sion of the assumed roles. It was time here. But in my time, the same weird, because the Republicans in stuff was going on. We built another a small-town setting like the one I strip mall a block away from that in live in had become very much allied 1982 or something. So you saw this

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 68 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere happening time and time again. DC: I don’t think that’s uncommon And yet, these were the people who throughout the entire country. claimed to be conservatives. What JHK: No, it’s the template for how were they conserving? They weren’t things worked all over America for conserving anything. They were fifty years. It’s just been worse in destroying stuff. some places than others. And the people who were trying DC: What exactly do these “conserva- to defend the old existing character tives” think they’re conserving? of the town, they were branded as JHK: Really, the only thing that radicals, communists — people who they are conserving are their busi- wanted to turn the social order ness practices, which enable them upside down. Because the people to make lots of money and to be the in charge of the social order had high-status people in their commu- become agents of destruction. So nity, the people who make the rules it was a very strange thing. But it and the decisions. I don’t want to was interesting that these agents get into a whole kind of academic, of destruction, who were generally politically correct power rant about Republicans around here, were able the oppressors and the victims, be- to brainwash the voting public into cause I don’t quite see it that way. But believing that they were, in fact, the it is really a matter of theleaders in pillars of the community. They were a given culture developing a consen- really just a bunch of opportunists sus about what’s OK and having that who went to rip off whatever oppor- lead to a pretty undesirable outcome. tunity they could. DC: I can see why business leaders

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Politics of Place 69 would adopt this brand of politics in liberal about those things. I tend to suburbia. But why do the individual think of myself as more of a tradi- residents? tionalist. I kind of feel like, “I’m a JHK: As far as I can tell, the big deal conservative,” and the people calling about suburbia politically is that themselves conservatives are using the people who live there have so the term wrong. much of their own personal wealth JHK: We’ve got a lot of sorting out to tied up in the value of the real estate do about these things, and they’re not that they own, that the defense of going to come out of the wringer the the value of that house becomes the same way that they went in. In fact, overwhelming political preoccupa- we may not even use these kinds of tion — whether it’s reflected in the terms anymore to describe the new kind of school that your kid is able situation that we find ourselves in. to go to, or just the money value of DC: Which is? the building itself that you bought. JHK: We are facing the wholesale dis- So many of the struggles of suburbia integration of the suburban arrange- boil down to the preservation of the ment. It doesn’t have a long horizon. monetary value of your house. It’s in trouble. Anybody with a little DC: I find it interesting that people bit of sensitivity can pick that up al- often assume that I’m a liberal ready and sense it. And it has made because I’m interested in urban people desperate. planning, or environmental con- I think the threats that these peo- servation or historic preservation. ple feel, at perhaps some subcon- But I don’t know what’s actually that scious level, may make them very

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 70 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere frightened, deep down, and inse- me that part of the whole suburban cure. I think that fear and insecurity dilemma is that as a culture, as a is getting so extreme that it’s lead- nation, as a people, we are tremen- ing to some really crazy political be- dously homesick — not just for a box liefs. And it accounts for a whole lot that we call “a home,” but for a real of the anger that’s out there and for dwelling place for our society that is the anger that’s expressed by people worth caring about. like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, The chief characteristic of just who — to my mind, what they really about everything we built in subur- stand for is the fact that the America bia is that it ended up being stuff that of 1963 doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe wasn’t worth caring about. And that it was the America of their childhood had tremendous cultural implica- when Rush and little Glenn were tions for us. fourteen years old, and it’s all gone. DC: What are your political beliefs, They’re desperate to either reinstate Jim? You have referred to yourself conditions that are lost, or to save as a being a dissatisfied registered every fragment of anything that’s Democrat. still around. JHK: Yeah I’m sort of a mainstream DC: But your own views are a little sixties Democrat. nostalgic for the way life was before DC: What does that mean? suburbia, aren’t they? JHK: It means I believe in social jus- JHK: The word “nostalgia” itself is tice and equality. It means I am not interesting because it literally means in favor of starting wars frivolously. homesickness. It became evident to It means that I have a healthy respect

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Boomers: Back to the Burbs 71 for the depredations of big business DC: What does that mean? and big money. I suppose that’s broad JHK: I don’t truck with the cutting enough. edge of my culture. I think that DC: I would think you are also a they’re mostly a fallacious cutting conservative in a way — not in the edge and that they’re not really tak- way the term has recently come to be ing us anywhere. The cutting edge of defined — but you are a conservative architecture and art, I think, is largely as far as resources go and ...? nonsense in our time. So yeah, I’m JHK: I’d say I’m a conservative in the very conservative in that sense. sense that I’m an anti-avant-gardist.

Boomers: Back to the Burbs

Duncan Crary: I want to talk with 1971 after a protracted senior year, you about your generation, the Baby which I did over again. And I sort of Boomers. You’re thirty years older saw it all. than me. You’re sixty-two and I’m DC: Can you explain to me how your thirty-two. So you got a firsthand generation went from the hippie- look at the 1960s scene. nature-peace-love thing to doing James Howard Kunstler: I went to the yuppie-Saab-driving-suburban- college during the absolute heart of stockbroker thing? the Age of Aquarius. I got there in JHK: Yeah. It’s kind of unfortunate. 1966. I was on the five-year plan for The really best pieces of the Aquar- various reasons, so I graduated in ian revolution were the back-to-the

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So-Called Free Thought The thing that astonishes me the most about my generation is how this generation that espoused free thinking and free inquiry and freedom of everything ended up becoming the thought police. And they ended up being the people at Harvard and Yale who said, “Well, we believe in diversity and multiculturalism as long as your diversity and multiculturalism is just like ours. And if you have a different version of the world, we’re going to actually stomp on you if you express it.” — James Howard Kunstler, August 7, 2008 KunstlerCast #26: “From Hippies to Yuppies” land parts, and the idea of living solar energy and things that would locally and living independently have been useful if we had continued from the great corporate Moloch them. But unfortunately what we got of America — not being dependent instead was Reaganism and the idea on all that stuff. That was a really that you could get everything and healthy part of our culture, and it got have everything and be everything. an extended life — the Aquarian age So a new consensus developed that segued into the OPEC oil embargo you could have everything at once age in 1973. The hippie thing was still right now. And that developed into sort of going on, and a lot of those the yuppie kind of syndrome that I young people at that time got into think you’re describing.

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DC: What happened? Why ditch it all were bad schools. And that’s a whole for the suburbs? other area of discussion — why were JHK: One big element, of course, is they bad schools? We often gloss this that my generation was largely raised over. It’s not just because the kids in suburbia, so they’re just returning were being taught badly by bad teach- to the mean, returning to normal, ers, it was largely because of the be- which is a very common condition havior of the kids in the schools — in many of the things of life — that they were out of control. They were they return to the mean after visiting being unkind and abusive and vio- the margin. It happens to the stock lent to their fellow students. This is market, it happens to people’s social not a milieu that any thoughtful per- behavior — returning to the norm. son wants to subject their child to. The Baby Boomer generation was So, OK, what’s the next step? You raised largely in the suburbs and behave to default to some other living came comfortable and accustomed arrangement, and as a practical mat- to the comforts and conveniences of ter that ends up being the suburbs in it. So it was easy for them to return to the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s in America. that as a living arrangement, espe- So my generation defaulted to that cially when prompted by a number of and they went out there. They didn’t incentives and disincentives in their pay a whole lot of attention to the practical life. For example, when my shortcomings and downsides of that generation started reproducing, they choice — and the enabling device for were faced with the problem that the that was the fact that the price of oil schools in the urban environments went down consistently after 1985

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 74 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere and made it more and more afford- people my age, in 1968, who didn’t able to live in that milieu. It removed want to get conscripted into the army the imperative for thinking about and sent twelve thousand miles away the alternatives that the hippies were to get blown up and shot. This made thinking about in the late sixties and people mad but it also created a lot of early seventies. social inequity where the people like DC: What about the anti-war activi- me, who were enrolled and matricu- ties? Was that a heroic moment in lated in college programs, got a 2-S your generation’s history? deferment and were not subject to JHK: The anti-war movement is not the draft until they instituted the something that I would dismiss cava- lottery in 1970. lierly. It’s hard to understand that, When I went to the Democratic perhaps, without having been there, Convention in 1968, the draft was because it was for real. The war in still on, the war was ramping up to its Vietnam was a terrible thing. I would absolute height and its greatest level even go as far to say that it was more of craziness. Lyndon Johnson was of a phony war than the Iraq war. As still in the White House, and we were bad as it seems, you could actually still being told that there was light at see where our strategic interests lie the end of the tunnel. And remem- in the Middle East a lot more easily ber, the casualties from the Vietnam than you could see where they were War were way beyond what we see in in Vietnam in 1967. And then there Iraq. Over 50,000 Americans died in was the additional level of the draft the Vietnam War. So far, a little more problem where you had a lot of than 4,000 Americans have died in

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Iraq and many more have been badly were twenty years old. And then all wounded. But Vietnam was a whole of a sudden we’re out there buying other level of death and violence. Mercedes Benzes and McHouses and So, yeah, that was the real deal McMansions. We were queering the and the protest against it was the stock market, doing all these terrible realest part of the whole Aquarian things and running the United States revolution. Everything else going on into the ground. My generation, around it — the oriental mysticism, which climaxed with George W. Bush, the “Turn on, tune in, drop out” has basically destroyed the United heavy drug scene — all that stuff was States. Yeah, we really did a bad job. just sort of the icing on the cake. A lot By the way, apropos of that, I of that, to me, was kind of disturbing. would recommend the wonderful DC: We’re all by now familiar with and underrated book The Fourth Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Gen- Turning by William Strauss and Neil eration and how he gave that moni- Howe. It was a generational theory of ker to the World War II generation. history, as well as a discussion about Do you think your generation is the the characteristics of generations “worst generation ever,” which is an within those cycles of history. One accusation floating around out there? of the points they made is that the JHK: Well, I suppose I see them as generation coming up in the early being somewhere in between but twenty-first century is going to verging more toward the disappoint- inevitably have to be heroic. They ing end of the scale. Because we will be faced with such enormous talked a really good game when we problems just as they come into full

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 76 The Kunstlercast: The Geography of Nowhere adulthood. And they are going to be and we’re Number One and we’re ex- like those 1940s type generations. ceptional.” They really bought into the DC: Even though they were heroic, Ronald Reagan fantasy of American didn’t the 1940s generation help exceptionalism, and, consequently, create a lot of the problems that I think they set us up — their chil- we’re in now with suburbia and dren — to do all the damaging things our cities, with the economy, with that we continue to do. I think both our oil dependency? generations are very much at fault. JHK: I have a very vivid sense of the DC: That’s a point that Michael Kins entitlement of my parents’ gener ley made in an article in The Atlantic ation. For them, all the stuff that magazine25 — that you can also blame we take for granted — things rang- the parents of the Boomers for cre- ing from happy motoring to air- ating a mirage of prosperity and get- conditioning on demand to every ting us addicted to debt and so on. But comfort that modern life has af- he went on to pose that, even though forded us — for them it was the ut- the Boomers do seem to have failed to most normality, especially later in live up to their ideals, it’s not too late life. And part of that entitlement for them to make some grand gesture grew out of this World War II experi- of selflessness for future generations. ence where “We paid such a price — JHK: I appreciate the guilt that un- we spent four of our years in the cane derlies the wish or the idea. Behind breaks of the Solomon Islands fight- this is obviously a tremendous gen- ing the Japanese. Therefore, whatever erational guilt for having screwed up these comforts are, we earned them the planet. It’s especially disgraceful

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Boomers: Back to the Burbs 77 considering our idealism of the 1960s, perhaps their culture, they’re not which ironically led to this disgrace- going to take care of us in our old ful orgy of moneygrubbing of the age. We’re going to be sitting there late twentieth and early twenty-first hoping to be put on the Medicare centuries. It’s been quite a transition dole and be taken care of in nurs- for us Boomers and the one thing ing homes — having our bedpans that I can imagine really happen- changed when we’re eighty-five years ing — making sense — is that the Mil- old. And the younger generation is lennial generation will be so steamed going to say: “No. Sorry. You screwed by what we’ve done that they will up the world. We’re just going to put simply deny us any elder care. “For- you out in the street in a shopping get about having operations and hav- cart. Good luck! And meanwhile, ing a comfortable hospital bed when we’re going to attend to all the di- you’re eighty years old Mr. Boomer, sasters that you created by your we’re just gonna put you out on the incredible energy profligacy, your curb like an old broken television wastefulness, and the terrible choices and forget about you.” that you made in your lifetime to The Millennials will be heroic, impoverish the future.” but they’ll also be perhaps a lot more DC: ...Jim, I have a nice little shop- hardheaded than we are. They’re not ping cart over here I’d like you to going to have a therapeutic approach take a look at. to everything in life and try to make JHK: Would you just change my everybody feel good. In fact, because diapers before you put me in it, we’ve destroyed their country, and for God’s sake?

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Charging Our Way to Suburbia

Duncan Crary: So much of suburbia ment loans” — you can make install- was bought on credit — the cars, the ment payments where you don’t have houses, the stuff to put in the houses. to buy the whole thing up front. If a This all culminated in the economic Ford Model T costs three hundred crisis that’s unfolding throughout dollars, you can put down fifty dollars the world now. When did we start now, pay a half a dozen other pay- buying everything on credit and ments of fifty dollars, and before how did that end up creating such you know it you’re a car owner. That an economic disaster? was all pretty straightforward and James Howard Kunstler: It’s an uncomplicated. interesting phenomenon. It really DC: And that’s also how these new begins in the 1920s when people are houses out in the burbs worked, too? starting to get car loans or “install- You take a mortgage loan...

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The Modern Mortgage and the US. And the term of the mort- the Housing Bubble gage was pretty short, ten years or JHK: Mortgages really started with under. the idea that you have this thing But as we got comfortable with called your house which you’ve that as a culture — once we emerge bought, but you need money, so from the Great Depression and you’re going to put it up for col- the Second World War — you have lateral and get a loan against your a nation that’s now attuned to the house. That was the original idea of idea of a mortgage as being a normal a mortgage — it was just a way of get- thing. And we start to elaborate. The ting out of financial trouble using federal government gets in the act, collateral. especially where returning soldiers But eventually it was turned of World War II are concerned — they into kind of a consumer device. get various mortgage subsidies from You didn’t have to just need cash the federal government.1 And the to get a mortgage on your house. If whole thing becomes routinized you want to go out and buy a new and systematized so that the nor- house, you can do it on installment mal mortgage now is a thirty-year payments, which they eventually mortgage at 5 percent or 6 percent, called a mortgage. In the beginning, and that becomes our basic reality you had to put up a substantial for the next thirty, forty years. down payment — 50 percent was Then we get into an interesting expected when they first started in situation. We start to get rid of our

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Charging Our Way to Suburbia 81 manufacturing economy beginning praisers, and the realtors, and the in the 1970s, and the process accel realtors’ associations all conspiring erates through the eighties. A lot to continue the racket of selling of people think we replaced manu- suburban homes and to elaborate facturing with the post-industrial this credit system. The unintended digital informational economy or consequence of that is that they these other things that you call it. ramped up this horrendous bubble But that was never really true. Really, in suburban real estate — in all real what we replaced the manufactur- estate in the US — including the ac- ing economy with was a suburban cessories of suburban houses, which sprawl/suburban house-building are the office parks, the commercial economy — that was the basis of it. As stuff, the strip malls, the power that occurred, it required more and centers, the malls, etc. And we way more elaborate credit methods to overbuild all this stuff using credit. continue the growth so that you got The banks and the large finan- all kinds of new engineered mort- cial institutions start to develop gages, balloon mortgages, adjustable all these weird new engineered rate mortgages. instruments and pathways for di- DC: This is how we created the recting this mortgage money into housing bubble that just popped strange places. There’s a whole al- in 2008? phabet soup of these new things JHK: Right. So you get the bankers, called “mortgage backed securities,” and the homebuilders, and the ap- “collateralized debt obligations,”

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“structured investment vehicles,” no prospects of paying them back — “credit default swaps.” They all have people who lied about their incomes. littlealphabetized nicknames. You The companies that originated these know, SIVs and CDOs. mortgages also behaved illegally themselves. They didn’t do due Ponzi Schemes and diligence on their customers. They Hallucinated Wealth didn’t check to see if their incomes DC: You might as well be speaking were real or if they were really quali- Martian to me right now. fied for these mortgages. But they JHK: The whole point of these things were raking in huge fees for collect- is that — rather than representing ing them, so it was to their advantage productive activity — they represent not to do due diligence. a sort of Ponzi scheme of getting All along the line — from the something for nothing. Rather than people who were applying for the representing the generation of real mortgages, to the people who were wealth, they represent swindles, basi- giving them out, to the people who cally, because they are not producing were bundling them and reselling real wealth. But they seemed to for them in tranches or bunches — there a while. is a tremendous amount of fakery, We do know that the mortgages and fraud, and people looking the that were bundled in these invest- other way, and people knowing they ments were, in many ways, swindles are doing the wrong thing, and, at in and of themselves. They were con- the same time, generating enormous tracts made with people who had fees for all this. Pretty soon you’ve

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Charging Our Way to Suburbia 83 got a whole financial system that is amount of presumed wealth that is totally out of control. actually leaving the system. The mortgages were so dodgy — And we are now going to be a so many loans were given out to poorer society, overbuilt for houses. people with no hope of being able The existing houses are losing their to pay back the debt — that they have value at a very severe, steep rate, and to be foreclosed. That becomes an the people who own them are in ter- enormous problem because nobody rible trouble — they’re “underwater” knows where the mortgages really re- on their mortgages, as they say when side anymore. We found out as the the amount you owe on your mort- systems started to come apart that gage is more than the value of your mortgages of people in Freemont, house. This has led to a fantastic California, were owned by pension fiasco. funds in Norway and all kinds of By the way, similar things were places all over the planet. going on in the car industry where Then all the securities that were you start to get car loans in which the created by the banks start to blow up payment schedule really exceeds the and go up in a vapor, and all the bad value of what the car is going to be debt that that represents is simply worth before the payment schedule going into a black hole — it’s disap- is over. For example, you get a forty- pearing. It’s going to a place where eight month loan on a Chevrolet and loaned money that is welshed on you’re still paying for it in month goes to, which is oblivion. So what forty-six and forty-eight, but by then you are seeing, really, is a huge the car’s value is next to nothing.

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The Great Bailout of 2008 There’s a wish at many levels for DC: So with the bailout in 2008, the the value of houses to stop sinking. federal government steps in to back But my guess is that nothing they these bad mortgages. I can under- can do will really stop it. I think that stand the goal, to keep people in their the prices will continue to go down homes. But why is the government no matter what happens. And I think also trying to prevent the value of all the truth is that we shouldn’t want it these homes from dropping? Why to stop, because it’s very important would our government intervene to clear out all the clutter of unsold in that? houses and to reach a point where JHK: What we’re seeing, in a way, is the median price of a house is equal one manifestation of what I have to the median income in America — identified as this campaign to sus- because that’s the baseline norm for tain the unsustainable, which will how these things work. Until we get extend to all the areas of contem- back to that point, this is just going to porary life — the happy motoring be an artificial process of attempting realm and the retail blue light fiesta to prop up the price. of shopping, and all the things that But events are really in the driver’s we associate with normality. There’s seat now — not personalities and going to be a tremendous attempt policies. And this thing is going to to keep the suburban system going go where it needs to go regardless at all costs, to rescue it all and prop of what people, or governments, or it up. institutions wish for it to do.

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The Religion of idea is also proving to be fallacious — Homeownership the idea that a home is necessarily DC: I can’t help feeling like the an investment. It’s not necessarily. A trouble we’ve gotten into with the house is a place to live, which is also mortgage scandal and economic an article that you are buying that crisis has a lot to do with this almost requires enormous amounts of rein- religious dogma that says everyone vestment and maintenance on a reg- in America needs to own his own ular basis. It was only in this weird house. period in the last ten years that we JHK: Well that’s nonsense. It’s kind got the idea that buying houses was of a nice sentimental thought, but like buying IBM stock in 1957. in practice it just doesn’t work out DC: I can’t believe some of these that way. There are an awful lot houses out in suburbia are valued at of people who, for one reason or half a million dollars. They’re made another, probably shouldn’t be in of particleboard and plastic! a house. JHK: Yeah, I think we’ll see quite DC: They might be better off renting. a steep decline in the value of this JHK: Of course! stuff. We may even see a lot of older DC: I’m an apartment renter, not a people on fixed incomes having to homeowner. People are always chid- leave their property and move in ing me — “You’re just throwing your with their children for one reason money away on rent!” or another. People are going to be JHK: Well, that’s the rap. But the other doubling up in households, which is

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 86 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia only going to create a larger supply of JHK: Oh God, I don’t have any kind unlived in, probably for sale houses. of real moment-by-moment con- And we’re going to see that this is scious sense of gloating about any- going to turn into quite a downward thing. I’m too busy to really get off spiral. on that. We’re just not going to see the DC: You don’t see this economic kind of orgy of mortgages and credit collapse as payback to all these idiots that we experienced in the last twenty who’ve been driving SUVs around years. We’re done doing that. and living in McMansions? There are an awful lot of shoes JHK: Well, I’m not — I don’t feel venge- left to drop, though. As I said in one ful about it, you know, like some of my blogs, it’s going to sound like character out of a Tony Soprano the All American Clog Dance out drama trying to whack his adversar- there because so many shoes are ies. The way I feel about it is that we going to be dropping. have a manner of life that produces a tremendous amount of discom- Feeling Vindicated fort, distress, unhappiness, anxiety, DC: Jim, you’ve been saying for years depression, hardship, violence. And that building suburbia was the great- when circumstances compel us to est misallocation of resources in live differently we’re going to benefit human history. Do you feel some- hugely from making these changes... what vindicated by the housing from getting away from a lot of the bubble collapse and the economic habits and practices that we’ve been crisis it caused? engaged in.

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Duncan Crary: Jim, you never Mostly they get trained in statisti- formally studied urban planning or cal analysis, and traffic engineering, architecture. How do you respond to and mitigation of water runoff. These the practitioners who try to discredit are issues that are not unimportant. your analysis of suburbia because But given the kind of education the you don’t have a planning or design professionals received — look at the degree? environments they created. Look James Howard Kunstler: Well, it’s at how awful they are to be in. Look certainly fair for people to wonder at how unpleasant and fearful they what my credentials are. I mean, I’m are. Think of children having to be mouthing off about these things on an eight-lane highway on the and here are all these planners with shoulder on their bicycle going to credentials — they resent it. I under- Baskin-Robbins from their housing stand that. subdivision. Was that a great job of But it’s pretty obvious that the urban design? I don’t think so. They kind of training that so-called urban disgraced their profession and they planners have gotten over the last deserve all the opprobrium that is fifty years has included almost being heaped on them. nothing about real urban design. DC: Would you describe yourself as And certainly nothing about the real a generalist? historical methodologies of how to JHK: I suppose, in terms of the construct and assemble a human books I’ve written about cities and habitat that’s worth being in. suburbs.

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DC: It sounds like you’re reluctant to my strong point to be prose compo- be labeled a generalist. sition. JHK: I’m reluctant to be labeled DC: You do have some thoughts anything — a doom-and-gloomer, a on the built environment and the hippie... If I have to define myself as direction our civilization is heading one, I would say that I am a generalist in that are unique, though — that by default, because I never went to you express through your prose. graduate school, and I was never JHK: I don’t know that they’re certified in any particular discipline. unique. They’re thoughts that I just rambled and blundered and are — at the moment — counter to lurched around as a young person. the conventional wisdom of my My college experience had nothing culture and counter to the prac- really to do with what I do in profes- tices and habits of my culture, and sional life. My pathway was from with our physical surroundings college to journalism. and the places where we live. These Just by happenstance, I ended are things that have concerned me up not being certified. I wasn’t an ever since I became an adult and architect. I wasn’t an urban designer, became aware of being dissatisfied thank God probably. All I was, was a with the places that I had to live writer. But I was interested in certain in — whether it was Boston, Massa- things and I had to educate myself. I chusetts, orthe suburb that I spent don’t consider myself a great expert three years in as a kid, or the Man- in any of these disciplines. I consider hattan that I knew in 1964, or the

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Small Town USA that I’ve lived in has gone on in American graduate for thirty years. schools and in the professional planning practice in the last fifty years The Dangers of Hyper- has been so extreme that there are Specialization very few generalists out there who DC: Do you feel that the urban are even willing to look at the big planning profession needs more picture. You have the parking experts generalists? who are only concerned with car JHK: Perhaps another way to ap- storage — they don’t care about what proach that is to look at the danger the quality of the street is like out- of hyper-specialization. Our culture side of their parking structures. You is getting hammered from hyper- have the municipal officials who end specialists who are absolutely won- up being more concerned with eco- derful at what they do and disregard nomic development issues — which ful of the larger picture. So you get themselves are perverted because a lot of preoccupation with stuff they tend to involve national chain that has nothing to do with how we stores, or chain hotels, or convention feel about the places that we live in center schemes. That whole eco- and whether we care about them, nomic development field is full of and whether they really provide a “voodoo” economics. dwelling place for us to have a civi- Probably the exemplar of all this lized life. are the traffic engineers, who are The hyper-specialization that solely concerned with the geometry

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 90 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia of the turns and banking the freeway end up with a street that’s dead and ramps. They don’t care about what a neighborhood that’s dead, because your experience is in the city of it’s composed of nothing but one- Milwaukee or Oklahoma City — all way, four-lane streets. So the traffic they care about is taking care of the engineers have done their job and cars, and they have these exquisitely carried out their specialty exactly as fine-tuned formulas for doing what they have been commissioned and they do. They can build highways directed to do, and they’ve ended up with all the right curve ratios and destroying the city. grades. They can design streets that We’re entering a new period, move huge numbers of cars flaw- though, where it’s not going to lessly through places. But as they do just be about water mitigation and that, they tend to screw up our cities handling traffic, and counting the and towns pretty badly. number of so-called consumers You go to a place — whether who pass from point A to point B on it’s Providence or Minneapolis a given day. We’re going to have to or St. Louis — and there’s always return to methodologies that were some set of important streets that lost, and that’s one of the reasons have been turned into four-laners that I was so attracted to the New or six-laners in the heart of town. Urbanists. Because these were people They’ve removed the parallel park- who realized that their training was ing. They’ve made them one-way so inadequate. They’d come out of the that the cars can move with great architecture schools and the urban efficiency through the city. And you planning schools, and realized they

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The New Urbanism 91 knew nothing about designing and crappy suburban environments we assembling places that were reward- were coming up with. ing to be in. These were some well-intentioned, well-educated, smart, savvy people. The New Urbanists In a way they were the best of their DC: Tell me about the New Urbanist generation. The New Urbanists in- movement. What is New Urbanism? cluded people like Andrés Duany, How did it get started? one of the founders of New Urban- JHK: What happened was a bunch ism — a fabulously interesting and of Boomer-generation architects rather heroic figure in this field and and planners, even developers, in our culture — and his wife Eliza- started to realize that the built beth Plater-Zyberk, who went on to environment in the United States become the dean of the University was such a fiasco — and it was get- of Miami School of Architecture, ting worse, and it was going on a one of the few really great schools track that was going to take it in of urban design in America now. really dangerous directions of total And Peter Calthorpe out in Berke- unsustainability. Americans were ley and Doug Kelbaugh, who was at building places that had no future, the University of Washington at the that people hated, that oppressed time. And a lot of very cool people. them in every way and punished The list is very long. them for living in them. The New They dove into the garbage can Urbanists knew we had to build of history and they started looking places that were better than the around for the stuff that we had

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 92 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia thrown away in our zeal to become a that were, to use the cliché of the day, suburban nation. They read Vitruvius2 “sustainable,” in the sense that they and read Hegemann and Peets’s great weren’t built to be thrown away or civic art compendium3 from the trashed and didn’t have to be radi- 1920s. They visited the places where cally transformed every nine years people still lived in wonderful habi- when the economy changed. They tats. And they measured things — the realized they had to reestablish what early New Urbanists were freaks for the parameters were going to be for measurement. They would go to a Eu- creating an environment that people ropean town and they would mea- wanted to be in. sure the heights of the curbs and They found some partners in the the distance between the shop front other parts of the American econ- and the street, and how big the me- omy — namely the developers and the dians were, and the ground floors of bankers — who would go along with the buildings — where the transition them in building these new kinds lines began, and the depth of the bal- of things, which came in the form conies and the porticoes. of whole new towns like Seaside in They discovered all these prin- Florida. A lot of people saw Seaside ciples and ways of building things and they thought, “You know, gosh, that had tremendous value and we can do this in other parts of the that would allow us to actually get country. You can build this in Iowa, back on a different track of build- and Connecticut, and New Jersey, ing places that were worth living and North Carolina.” And during in — places that had a future, places this whole period from the late

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1980s on, we entered this incredible Andrés Duany and his wife last orgasm of the cheap energy era, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk — and their which was also the cheap-and-easy firm DPZ — they’re really the leaders credit era. So there was an awful lot of in this kind of work in America. money to finance these things, and Their work is wonderful. there was a lot of work for these guys.

Seaside

Duncan Crary: Why is Seaside artists and architects would come important? together, and it wouldn’t be so grand. James Howard Kunstler: Seaside It was just about eighty acres on the was the original, iconic demonstra- seacoast, in a desolate corner of the tion project of the New Urbanism. Florida Panhandle between Panama It became in many ways the model City and Pensacola. It never had any for what the Traditional Neighbor- pretensions to be anything other hood Development would be. than a beach town. Originally when the owner and But as it began to get built out, the developer of the property, Robert quality of it was so outstanding that Davis, first hired Andrés Duany and it became recognized almost over- Liz Plater-Zyberk and a bunch of night as prime real estate. It attracted other architects, the idea they started the attention of orthopedic surgeons with was that this would be a kind from Birmingham, Alabama, and of Bohemian beach town where wealthy lawyers from Tallahassee....

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Developers from Atlanta started ful project. But I think what people buying property there. They bid up miss is that the really great achieve- the prices of not just the buildings, ment of these New Urbanists was not but the empty lots. necessarily just building a successful So it was a fabulously success- real estate venture — or even a new

At Seaside At Seaside, all the houses are made of wood with peaked tin roofs and deep porches. No two are alike, but all share a congruity of design that is soothing to eyeballs scalded by the chaotic squalor of the strip. The pastel-colored houses stand along a coherent network of narrow streets paved with brick. Cars parked parallel-wise line the streets, as they might in any small town. Otherwise, there are no parking lots or special accommodation for cars. Picket fences enclose small front yards. At the center of the town stands a grocery store, an open-air market, a couple of beer joints, an upscale eatery — no illuminated plastic signs, thank you — and a little Greek temple-style post office. At spacious intervals along the crest of the dunes stand three columned pavilions with graceful wooden steps leading down to the Gulf of Mexico. They look like gateways to the sea, which is just what they are — it’s that simple. — James Howard Kunstler TheGeography of Nowhere4

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Seaside 95 town — but proving that something didn’t confound our sensibilities new could be wonderful. America enough for them. It catered too much had been conditioned so profoundly to making people feel OK in their for half a century to believe that surroundings, and that’s a no-no in every new thing is horrible. Because the architecture racket these days Americans had lost faith that anything new that was built would be Seaside as the any good. Their expectation was “It’ll Emblem of Unreality? be just another piece of crap that DC: What are some other complaints will make my life worse and make about Seaside? my property worse and devalue my JHK: Seaside eventually took on home,” whether it’s a strip mall or some unreal characteristics. It a housing development. And Sea- became overpriced. And, to some side demonstrated that you could extent, Robert Davis operated part of produce something new from the the project as a deconstructed hotel, ground up that would be a wonder- partly because they wanted to get ful human artifact and a wonderful people down to see it and how it op- place to live. erated. Instead of having a big hotel It had a lot of lessons for the public building, his property office would and for the architecture profession. lease out or rent individual houses Although I’d say by-and-large the or parts of houses to vacationers who architecture profession disdained it had access to the town center and for its traditionalism. It just wasn’t amenities like the community pool. cutting-edge enough for them. It So people drew the conclusion that

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 96 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia it was phony. But most of the real class construction of some kind. If estate in Seaside actually ended up you delve into that just a couple of being either private houses or small centimeters, you realize it’s the elit- businesses, restaurants, shops. ists complaining that other people The other thing was that over the are elitist. years Seaside was criticized for being DC: Many people might not recog- “elitist.” That was always strange to nize Seaside by name, but they’ve me, because it’s as though the people seen it if they’ve watched The Truman who were criticizing it expected it to Show, because it was the filming turn out to be a Welsh coal-mining location for that movie. town, or a United Auto Workers JHK: Oh sure. And it suffered from vacation spot, or something that it that for years. That was the emblem wasn’t. It was a beach town. Of course, of unreality that was stuck on it. people didn’t live there year round — DC: In the movie, Jim Carrey played it was their vacation town — just like a character who was living in a giant a lot of people don’t live on Martha’s sound stage, and the entire town was Vineyard all year round. The funny fake, and all the people in the town thing was that a lot of the so-called are actors in a reality TV show. right-thinking progressives — exactly JHK: And he didn’t know it. the type of people who have places DC: He didn’t know. He was the only on Martha’s Vineyard — would dis one who didn’t know he was being Seaside. They were the people who filmed the whole time for reality TV. seemed to be disappointed that it That was all shot in Seaside. I’ve only didn’t turn out to be some working- seen the place in pictures and in

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The Truman Show. But from what I’ve Martha’s Vineyard. These are places seen, it seems a little bit.... I wouldn’t that were also built out within a short want to live in Seaside. period of time. JHK: It’s actually a very wonderful But when Seaside was first built — place, though there are elements of and with other new towns that the it that make it unreal. As I said, it’s a New Urbanists were then undertak- vacation town — ing — people were complaining that DC: But it’s not just the vacation town they were no good because they were aspect that makes it seem unreal to all new. And Andrés Duany had to re- some people. I have a quote of yours mind them that when you’re making from The Geography of Nowhere about an omelet, you can take the eggs and your own impressions of Seaside: the onions and green peppers and the “At first, one catches a fugitive whiff cheese and put them in a bowl, but you of theme park cutesiness on the wouldn’t serve them that way. You ac- balmy sea breeze.” Then you go on tually have to cook the ingredients a to write: “If Seaside seems a little too little while ot produce the omelet. A perfect, it is only because everything town has to cook for a while, too. there is so spanking new.”5 So there’s It takes a long time for all these a newness about the place that makes little individual decisions to modify some people feel like it isn’t real. things and change things. The house JHK: Seaside was all built within that was originally built to be a high- about a fifteen-year period. You could classical Greco-Roman building will say the same thing about Cape May, eventually take on other character- New Jersey, or about Oak Bluffs on istics. Some people will take better

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 98 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia care of their property. Some people hostages of the production home- will take worse care of their property. building industry, and they hitched Some of these places will become themselves to the methods and the rundown corners of the village practices and financing increments or the hamlet. Some will remain the of that industry. great parts. They may not agree with me, but a lot of their projects were essen- Criticisms of New Urbanism tially much better suburbs than the DC: I’ve heard other criticisms of conventional subdivisions — the so- New Urbanism that seem to have called Traditional Neighborhood merit to a guy like me, who lives in Developments were greenfield devel- and loves old cities. A lot of the New opments. But they attempted to do Urbanist projects are located out in them better. They attempted to incor- suburbia. And even though these porate town centers. Another thing new neighborhoods follow good the New Urbanists tried very hard urban principles, you’re still depen- to do was to accommodate the auto- dent on the car. mobile in a way that wouldn’t wreck JHK: The New Urbanists are often the public space in these places. criticized for the greenfield develop- They took great pains to accommo- ments that they did, which is to say date the car wherever possible be- they were built on so-called undevel- cause they saw that overcoming the oped land, in pastures and cornfields. American dependence on and love I understand that criticism. The New for cars would be impossible. So they Urbanists, in recent years, became did everything possible to accommo-

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Seaside 99 date, but still discipline, the car — to or to the conventional suburban store it in places where it would be scheme and methodology. Now that unobtrusive, to allow for on-street the conventional suburban guys are parking, to get the garages off the biting the dust, so to speak, the New front of the house. Urbanism really becomes just good DC: To build alleyways... urbanism, or urbanism per se. JHK: To build alleyways and lanes to DC: After reading your latest book, put the garage on. But when all was The Long Emergency, I wanted to said and done they were left with the ask if you’ve given up on the New essential paradox of contributing to Urbanism? more ex-urban development, which JHK: I haven’t given up on the New required people to drive. Urbanism at all. If anything, the New DC: Maybe you could say they were Urbanists were among the reformers building neighborhoods on training who had the most comprehensive wheels... Trying to reintroduce and kindest vision of a possible posi- people to living in better places — tive outcome for the set of changes JHK: That’s a good way of putting it. we’re heading into. DC: That’s probably why I grapple But for a number of reasons, I with the term: am I a “New Urbanist”? don’t think we’re going to see much I don’t think I necessarily am. I think more of their stock and trade of the I’m just an “urbanist.” last fifteen years — the Traditional JHK: “New Urbanist” as a concept, in Neighborhood Development run- some ways, only really had meaning ning about four hundred acres, built in opposition to the suburbanists out in a cornfield or cow pasture.

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The New Urbanist movement age and whatever follows, and they was, in part, an attempt to compro- didn’t make the complete leap. Some mise with the habits and practices of these places may have a brighter of America. I viewed them for a long destiny than the conventional sub- time as being a transitional move- divisions — places like Kentlands ment between where we were at in and Seaside, and there are a couple the late twentieth century and where in the Carolinas that are pretty good. we’re going. On the whole, I think the It depends on where they are geo- New Urbanists did a pretty good job, graphically in relationship to public given what their aim was. But still it transit and the cities or the towns doesn’t get to the heart of the matter, that are nearby. which is that reality is not going to But they were a compromise. And let us live in the suburban manner I know the New Urbanists compro- anymore — whether they’re good mised strenuously when it came to suburbs or better suburbs or eally,r doing hybrid projects. Like when really great suburbs. We’re done they attempted to retrofit shopping with that. malls for town centers. There were I view a lot of those projects that quite a few of those done in the last the New Urbanists did — the new twenty years. They always included neighborhoods and towns that were massive amounts of structured park- built in the suburban areas — as ing and careful attention to provid- being kind of transitional forms. ing parking spaces on the streets. It They were places that had to make was all about parking, because no the leap between the automobile matter how you cut it, even if you

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Seaside 101 wanted to design a really great street But it also points to the fact that in or a really great neighborhood, at some ways we’re going to be a more that point in history you just couldn’t austere society in a more difficult get away from the public consensus economy. that the car was indispensable. The American public could not imagine The Next New Urbanists not having a car or not having to deal DC: What’s the next phase for the with it and not having to store it and New Urbanists? park it. So the New Urbanists bent JHK: We’re certainly going to be do- over backwards to accommodate ing things differently in the decades the car and they still produced ahead. If nothing else, the scale of good work. the way that we build things and I admire them a lot for doing assemble them is going to be much what they could with what they had more modest because we’re going to to work with. But the reality that be a less affluent society. We’re going we’re presented with now is quite to have less energy to indulge in. We a bit different. That will involve are not going to be able to traverse moving back into truly traditional these pharaonic distances. And that’s neighborhoods and towns that are going to influence the next genera- not going to be dominated by the tion of people who get into urban car, and in which the automobile is design. They’re already out there. I simply not going to be as much of a meet them in my travels — many of presence as it has been. I think that them are members of the Congress will be a good thing in a lot of ways. for the New Urbanism, the official

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 102 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia professional society of the New Ur- to design and assemble real towns banists. and real cities. And I think that it will A lot of these young people have now be applied to the existing small very laboriously self-educated them- cities and towns, in places like Troy, selves in the things that they’re not where you live. It’s already happen- getting in their schools. And they ing in Saratoga. And increasingly, come into this cohort of people who that will be the case. The increment think similarly. They get a lot more in development will be smaller. In- training from the older guys who are stead of doing these four-hundred- around. But the economies of scale acre new town projects, we’ll be lucky that those first New Urbanists en- if we can do a new intersection or joyed are disappearing now along a new corner in a town, or a new with a lot of other economic rela- block — or, for that matter, one or two tionships that are leaving our soci- really good building lots on a block. ety and our economy. I saw evidence DC: You think New Urbanism is of it at a recent Congress for the New going to be about filling in the gaps Urbanism, when I met several archi- in our cities — the parking lots and tects who were very unhappy at the vacant spaces — and fixing up the ldo fact that their work was drying up. downtowns? But the real achievement of the JHK: I do think that our towns and New Urbanists was not building the small cities are going to redevelop. projects like Seaside. It was retriev- But it may be a much more haphaz- ing that important principle and ard process going forward, especially methodology for understanding how in the years directly ahead, because

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Seaside 103 we’re going to be really hard up for more expensive to build that way, and money. you might just see builders. Or what In the Great Depression of the you might see is that the profession 1930s, the industry that was hit the itself changes so that architects have hardest was the construction indus- to do the building themselves. They try, and very little was built of any may have to become the contractors, kind. The suburban ventures that as was the case in early nineteenth- were begun in the 1920s during the century America. boom pretty much ceased, and not In fact, a lot of the great domes- a whole lot was done in the cities, tic architecture of early America which became kind of rundown in was done by guys who were builder- that ten-year period which adjoined designers. They had a tremendous another five years of the Second amount of skill, and they actually World War. collected their knowledge in books DC: So how do you see the archi- like the building companion books tecture profession changing as this that every carpenter knew about. recession rolls on? This included a lot of really arcane JHK: We don’t know whether the information about things like pro- architects will be brought into the portioning Greco-Roman columns program in the future. Because un- and how to do the returns on the der the best circumstances it’s fine to gable ends and all those things, which have architects and buildings that are most builders don’t know how to do designed by people who really know correctly anymore. I think that skill how to design them. But it’s also may be reorganized with the business

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 104 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia of designing and building, so that process as a journalist, really. And we end up getting builders who have I’ve absorbed a tremendous amount more skills — who for all practical of information and methodology. purposes are architects. What the I have to add, I don’t practice as a architects probably won’t be doing is consultant in urban design and designing a lot of forty-story condo when people ask me to, I make a real skyscrapers and lifestyle centers point of saying that’s beyond my and malls. competence. I’m not a professional DC: Jim, do you consider yourself to consultant and I don’t ask to be paid be a “New Urbanist?” for it. I will come to a university or JHK: I am a New Urbanist, and I am to a civic organization and I’ll give in pretty thoroughgoing agreement a speech or a talk, or I will inveigh with their principles. against their past practices. But I DC: How do you define your role in don’t fob myself off as a practicing the New Urbanist movement? urban designer. JHK: I’ve just been part of that

From Suburban Sprawl to Peak Oil

Duncan Crary: You have what you this situation were heading into “The call a “Long Emergency” view of Long Emergency” because I think it’s where civilization is heading. What going to be a protracted experience is “The Long Emergency?” for mankind and for us in the United James Howard Kunstler: I’ve labeled States in particular. It’s really about

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION From Suburban Sprawl to Peak Oil 105 how we are heading into a period of energy to run it the way it’s been de- resource scarcity and the disruption signed to run. For that reason I refer and depletion of our oil supplies. It’s to suburbia as the greatest misalloca- about the allocation of this crucial tion of resources in the history of the resource all around the world, and world. We took all of our post-world the geopolitical implications of war wealth — and actually quite a bit those inequities. And how these of the wealth that we had accumulated problems are going to combine with for decades before that — and we in- climate change to cause problems vested it in this living arrangement with everything we do, from how we that had no future. And now we’re produce and distribute our food to stuck with it. And to make matters how we’re going to have trade and worse, we didn’t build it very well in manufacturing when Wal-Mart dies. the first place. So as it begins to decay And not least, the destiny of the sub- it decays very rapidly and becomes a urban, car-dependent, happy motor- very unrewarding place to live in. ing living arrangement. Which is DC: Jim, it seems almost impossible probably, for me, the biggest part of to persuade suburbanites that there’s the equation. anything wrong with suburbia or DC: And you don’t see good things that it could ever “fail.” I’ve tried, in store for the suburbs in the Long and it almost feels like arguing Emergency? with someone about deeply held JHK: Suburbia is going to fail a lot religious beliefs. worse than it’s already failing, be- JHK: One of the unfortunate reper- cause we’re not going to have the cussions of building suburbia, is:

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 106 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia now that we’ve built it, it provides a suburbia only works when you very powerful psychology of previ- have a cheap fossil fuel supply, and ous investment. Which means that you say that supply of cheap fuel is you put so much of your wealth into running out. How do you counter the this system already — into this struc- “Drill, Baby, Drill” camp? The folks ture for daily life with no future — who believe there are “Saudi Arabias” and you’ve invested so much of your of oil right here in the US just wait- national identity in it, that you can’t ing to come out of the ground? even imagine letting go of it or sub- JHK: There’s this general misunder stantially changing it or reforming standing that there are huge amounts it. And that, I believe, is what’s behind of oil reserves in and around North our inability to have a coherent dis- America that are waiting to be ex- cussion about what we’re going to ploited. North America is one of the do about our problems in America. most thoroughly explored regions Because the psychology of previous on the Earth for oil and we pretty investment has got us trapped in a much know what’s down there. And box — we will not allow ourselves to when you hear people saying we think about how we’re going to do gotta “drill, drill, drill” for ANWR — without this crap. well, I was never even against drill- DC: You give lots of reasons in The ing in ANWR, the Arctic National Long Emergency and in your other Wildlife Refuge. My idea was that writings for why suburbia is going Obama should get behind it just to to fail. But the biggest one is that disarm the stupid Republicans so

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION From Suburban Sprawl to Peak Oil 107 they wouldn’t keep yakkin’ about it, There is also a lot of wishful thinking because there’s such an insignificant about switching our truck fleet over amount of oil up there. to natural gas, because we have “a DC: What about the tar sands, shale hundred years” or “three hundred gas and shale oil? years” of natural gas.6 That’s just not JHK: A lot of people think we’re true. All of these ideas and programs going to compensate our losses else- aren’t going to work out the way we where. But the tar sands will prob- wish they would, because so much ably never produce more than three of this is about wishful thinking and million barrels a day. And I think fantasy. Look, we use twenty million we will discover a lot of gas trapped barrels of oil a day in the USA. And in that tight rock. But that’s very what we’re talking about here are expensive and difficult to get out. very expensive mining operations,

Climate Change The problems of climate change are going to ramify the problems of our energy predicament and vise versa — they’re going to mutually reinforce each other and amplify all the problems associated with both of them. The coming permanent oil crisis is going to change everything about how we live, and we’re sleepwalking into the future. — James Howard Kunstler, February 10, 2010 lecture hosted by the Stakeholders, at Sage College, Albany, New York

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 108 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia which also happen to be fantastically pal. We’re all broke at every level. We environmentally destructive. don’t have money at our disposal any DC: In the past few years, you’ve more so we’re going to have figure become increasingly focused on out some other strategies for creat- how our financial problems may be ing a post-fossil fuel economy, for a more immediate catalyst for the carrying our civilization forward, Long Emergency than energy. for enabling us to remain civilized. JHK: It was kind of a surprising thing. Many of us who were follow- From The Geography of No- ing the oil problem and the energy where to The Long Emergency predicament over the last ten years, Duncan Crary: Tell me how you got we thought the situation would come from The Geography of Nowhere to The to a head over energy supplies and Long Emergency. When did you first prices. And in a way they did. But re- start thinking about the connection ally the salient effect of all that was between oil depletion and the fate of that we destroyed the banking sys- suburban sprawl? tem. The net effect of that right now James Howard Kunstler: I guess we’d is that the USA is broke at all levels — have to really go back to the 1970s. I including the household level at the had come from the hippie newspapers bottom, the corporate enterprise in Boston and I had just gotten a full- level in the middle and the govern- time job on the evening paper in Al- ment level at the top — and that in- bany, New York.7 The newspaper had cludes all levels of the government: just established itself in a brand new federal, state, county and munici- building on this heroic boulevard

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION From Suburban Sprawl to Peak Oil 109 of strip shopping, about ten miles reporter — about twenty-five years- outside of Albany. It had moved old or so — and I saw the world-as-we- from a building downtown out to had-known-it stop. It was especially the suburbs. peculiar seeing this happen in the I got there in August of 1973, and new burgeoning suburbia, as it was about three months later, we got into being built out and elaborated. So the OPEC oil embargo. It was a huge it made a huge impression on me: local story everywhere, but it was “This is important — how we live in pretty severe in our region. A lot of America and what it’s going to mean the gas stations were not getting gas, for how we get to where we’re going and there were lines at the gasoline in the future in America. I’ve seen a stations everywhere — tempers were little glimpse of the future now and flaring, people were beating each I wonder what’s going to be happen- other up, guns were brandished. ing.” And then it was over. It came to The whole thing only lasted a an end. couple of months. I think the worst It did provoke a lot of changes of it only ran about three or four and troubles for the rest of the de- weeks. But for that time, there were cade. We had an economy that was very few people driving, if they could badly upset by oil prices that rose possibly avoid it. The highways were very quickly, very steeply. We had empty. The streets were empty. It was stagflation, which was a new phe- like The Day the Earth Stood Still. nomenon that nobody had ever seen It made a huge impression on before, where you have inflation plus me, because here I was a young a stagnating economy. You began to

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 110 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia see the American manufacturing not enough money to live on. So I re- sector fall apart. The first manifes- turned to nonfiction and journalism. tation was when the Japanese car The New York Times Magazine sent makers started to get the upper hand me out on a bunch of stories about over Ford and General Motors. The suburban development in New Eng- American carmakers were all tooled land, because a lot of the editors up to build these giant cars the size owned summer houses in Vermont of ferry boats, and in comes Nissan, and Massachusetts and they were get- and Honda, and Datsun, as it was ting hip to the idea that the country- called at the time — they’re selling side was getting “overdeveloped” as cars that are three-feet shorter, and they would put it. use one-third of the amount of gas, and all of a sudden the Americans Why is America are buying them like crazy. You saw So Fucking Ugly? all kinds of other changes going on. JHK: One article that I was writing I moved on in the meantime. was called “Why is America So I went to Rolling Stone for a while. Fucking Ugly?” That was sort of the Then came back to Saratoga to em- working title between the editors bark on my Bohemian adventure as and me. That wouldn’t have been the a novel writer. I wrote a whole bunch title they published but that’s how of novels. They all got published by we understood the theme, because major trade publishers, although I the most obvious manifestation of wouldn’t exactly call them successful. what we were doing and how we were I would get advances. But it was just building America was that it was ugly.

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The story was killed, not because JHK: Yeah, like Where the Wild Things of the title but because they had in- Are or something. So I just switched stituted a new rule at the Times that around the title of the first chapter the stories could not exceed 4,000 with the title of the book. The first words. This one went way over that chapter became “Scary Places” and and there was no way of even touch- the title became The Geography of ing on the subject in less. So I took Nowhere. that story that was killed and turned In that book, I was touching upon it into a book proposal which sold the idea that sooner or later we were pretty rapidly. going to run into problems with oil. It wasn’t a huge contract but it I based that on this experience I’d was more money than I had made had, as a young man, of the OPEC oil before. The working title of the book embargo, and knowing the propor- was going to be Scary Places because tion of oil we imported would only America was getting scary and to go up and become ever larger and it me it was inducing placeaphobia. would become ever more of a threat Because all of a sudden there are all and a problem for us. Here’s one these places you don’t want to be in passage, for example: anymore. They are just so horrifying. So “Scary Places” was written. It took Even after 1990, when the savings me about three years. They decided and loan catastrophe left the they didn’t like the title because it commercial real estate market sounded too much like a horror novel. in shambles, and the American DC: Or a book for three-year-olds... economy began to slide into a

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malaise resembling the Great Bay discoveries would extend that Depression, developers were still cheap oil interlude through the building some major projects nineties. In fact, oil got just cheaper in the same old foolish manner: and cheaper. single-family detached homes What happened was the North Sea on half-acre lots out in the hills, and Alaska took the leverage away minimalls along the connector from OPEC and other oil-producing roads, accountant’s offices out nations who didn’t like us. in the old cornfields. But these DC: So peak oil was something you are the mindless twitchings of were thinking about even back when a brain-dead culture, artificially you were writing The Geography of sustained by the intravenous Nowhere? feeding of cheap oil. Indeed, JHK: I wouldn’t say that I was think- the continuation of a cheap oil ing of things with that term “peak supply through the 1980s — a oil.” The way I thought of it at that temporary quirk of politics and time was we have an oil import prob- history — has been a disaster, lem that is just going to get worse and allowing us to postpone the worse. Indeed it has. My understand- necessary redesign of America.8 ing of peak oil came about a different way. I went on to write a sequel to The So you can sort of see the ways things Geography of Nowhere called Home were shaping up out there. What I from Nowhere, published in 1996. didn’t realize was that the North Sea That book was largely a result of my discoveries and the Alaska Prudhoe meeting the New Urbanists, the guys

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION From Suburban Sprawl to Peak Oil 113 who were the real reformers out dustry. As soon as they established there in the urban design, architec- their pensions safely and retired into ture, town planning fields. I started comfort, they started to publish their hanging out with them a lot. They secret, dark thoughts about where the were so interesting and stimulating oil industry was headed. These were and intelligent. I just got such a bang characters like Colin J. Campbell and out of seeing what they proposed as Kenneth Deffeyes. Deffeyes had been a remedy for this crazy way of life we a Texaco geologist who then went developed. It was hugely stimulating on to Princeton and became an aca- to find these guys. demic. Colin J. Campbell worked for Home from Nowhere was concerned the European companies, Total and with the remedies to suburbia in terms some others. of urban design and architecture. Re- What they were saying was: “Here ally, how we were going to rebuild the we are in the mid 1990s. We know, human habitat in a way that would from the models that our teachers have a future that would be sustain- in geology devised before us in the able, that would be more rewarding 1950s and ’60s, that there is a certain to be in. profile to the oil story — that it has a beginning, a middle and an end. And Peak Oil we’re going to call this the peak oil JHK: Around the same time that Home story.” The model was mostly devised from Nowhere was published, in the by this one particular guy, Marion mid-1990s, a group of senior geolo- King Hubbert, who was an industry gists started retiring out of the oil in- geologist and an academic. He was

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 114 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia at Columbia. He was at the Colorado gone through its peak in 1970. That School of Mines. He worked for a was the year we produced the most number of the major oil companies. oil that we will ever produce. It was He devised what came to be called something like ten million barrels the Hubbert Curve, which is a bell a day. Now we’re down to under curve that says: “The oil industry five. Our production had peaked in starts and you are producing very 1970, which you could see through little. Then you are ramping it up. the rearview mirror by looking at The curve goes up and you are pro- the production figures from ’71, ’72 ducing a whole lot. Then you reach and ’73. a certain point of maximum all- It began to be evident that we time production, and from there could not produce more oil than you enter the arc on the other side we had in 1970. It not only became of the bell curve. That’s the Arc of obvious to us and to our engineers Depletion. That is how the oil story and our military people, etc., it also will play out. It will probably begin became known internationally. We to peak in the late 1990s or early needed it so badly, we were getting 2000s.” it from the guys overseas. So all of a Hubbert lived until 1989. So his sudden we’re deathly dependent on career spanned a very long time, them. And when the OPEC nations from the infancy of the oil industry figured it out, they seized the pricing to near peak. He called it pretty well. control. One of the things he was famous for Mr. Hubbert had also gone on to calling was that America had already model the global oil peak and the

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION From Suburban Sprawl to Peak Oil 115 beginning of global depletion. He that we are now entering the robust predicted 1995 would be the begin- period of depletion. ning of this. He was off by a few years. So these guys like Campbell It now appears that we produced the and Deffeyes retired out of the sys- most conventional crude oil ever in tem and started to publish their 2005 and haven’t really exceeded it. thoughts about where the oil indus- DC: Do you think it’s a widely ac- try was headed. That was about 1996. cepted fact that 2005 was the global It was still a rather esoteric issue. It oil peak? certainly wasn’t being discussed in JHK: I think there’s a general under- the mainstream media or even in standing from looking at the figures the most esoteric journals, really. that — at least since 2005 — we have The intellectual places like The Atlan- entered what we call the bumpy pla- tic Monthly and Harpers, they weren’t teau period, which is how the peak really talking about it either. looks close up. If you looked at the But the Internet was starting to tip of a hypodermic needle under ramp up around that time. And peak a strong microscope you would see oil was a subject that was coming up that it is not exactly smooth. It has on the Internet, along with, by the little imperfections in it. Well, the way, Y2K. These are two interesting tippy top of the peak of oil is not to- phenomena that the media weren’t tally smooth either. It’s composed really paying much attention to. of little bumps and that’s where we One of them, Y2K, turned out to be have been at for the last few years or a problem that was solved because it so. But we are getting a lot of signals was a very specific, limited problem.

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It was a large problem but it was the world was controlled by people limited and specific. who didn’t like the United States, and if you combine that with the The Geopolitics of Peak Oil idea that production is peaking in JHK: The peak oil problem, the more the whole world, then this doesn’t you looked at it, it presented really bode very well for how we’re going horrendous implications for us. The to get on — especially in relation to biggest one being: how is an indus- a society that has completely been trial society going to run itself when sucked into car dependence of the we run into a supply problem with most extreme kind, that has created oil? Hand-in-hand with that went an entire living arrangement based the idea that oil is not distributed on car dependency, which represents equitably around the world — it tends the investment of all of its post–World to be in certain places and not in War II wealth in the strip malls and other places. Unfortunately, some the housing tracts and all of the of the places that have the most oil equipment of daily life. You can see are the places that we don’t get along in the swirl of all these issues a very with very well, namely the Islamic disturbing picture beginning to world and Russia. present itself. So that problem stimulated the DC: So the peak oil story came onto geopolitical issues of peak oil. A lot your radar in the mid-1990s. But you of these issues were self-explanatory. wouldn’t really start writing about You didn’t have to be PhD to under- it extensively in The Long Emergency stand that if 75 percent of the oil in for a few years still. What about your

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION From Suburban Sprawl to Peak Oil 117 third book, The City in Mind — were we’re going to have to contend with you influenced by the idea of peak the fact that it will fail. oil while you were writing that? So it’s been a long haul for me JHK: I published The City in Mind with this issue. It is weird, to me, how in 2002 while I was being exposed the journey that I took from writing to the whole peak oil thing. I wrote about the suburbs led me to writing quite a bit about the prospect of about what is starting to be a com- places like Atlanta and Las Vegas prehensive collapse of life as we’ve not being able to function. It became enjoyed it. I don’t think this is the self-evident that these were tremen end of the world. I don’t think life is dous problems. After that book came over. I don’t think American culture out I was dwelling more and more on is over. But I do think that we are go- the petroleum story and it seemed ing to be living it very differently in to me that it deserved a book. the years ahead. In The Long Emergency, which was the result of that, the oil story World Made By Hand and its implications for daily life in DC: After The Long Emergency you America is in the foreground. Then, returned to fiction to explore how in the train behind that thought, Americans might be living very dif- comes the issue of the way our life ferently in the not-so-distant future. depends on this increasingly scarce JHK: I did write a post-oil novel, resource, including suburbia. I had called World Made by Hand, that was written about suburbia in detail and published in the spring of 2008, and described its shortcomings, and now a sequel called The Witch of Hebron in

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2010. So I’m trying to take another It’s about the breakdown of the com- look at the post-oil American future. plex systems that we depend on for But I also have a contract to write the activity of everyday life. Because another nonfiction book about the we’ve reached such an elaborate state diminishing returns of technology. of complexity and relative luxury in That’s something that I think is our living standard, we’re going to be one of the great underappreciated going through a difficult transition elements of the story of our time: that will require us to de-complexify how we are screwing ourselves with the systems that we depend on. And our grandiose over-investments in we’ll probably experience something complexity and ignoring the blow- like lower living standards, although back from them. it doesn’t necessarily mean that the This whole energy story has never quality of our life has to be worse. been about running out of oil, really.

Keep the Car Running?

Duncan Crary: In The Long Emer- nately there’s a tremendous body of gency, you go through a lot of the fantasy that has now grown among alternative fuel projects out there the American public about how we’re to keep the cars running. And you going to keep on running our cars at dismiss them all, for one reason or all costs by other means than gaso- another. line. Virtually all of these things are James Howard Kunstler: Unfortu- fantasies. You can do them as science

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Keep the Car Running 119 projects on a small scale, but they the interstate highway system, and don’t scale up to two hundred mil- Wal-Mart and Walt Disney World? lion vehicles. You can run X number Forget it. It ain’t going to happen. of vehicles on ethanol, or biodiesel, All these alternative fuels, as far as or French-fried potato oil that’s been liquid fuels for cars go — they’re all used and thrown out, but can you run net energy losers. I don’t want to the entire US automobile fleet, and be misunderstood. I’m not against

In the Not-Distant Future... DC: There’s something I’ve noticed about these apocalypse movies like Mad Max. Do you notice that even in Mad Max they’re all still driving cars? JHK: Absolutely! One of the queerest things about that is that people are always imagining that my version of the future is like Mad Max, which couldn’t be more wrong. Mad Max is a car chase. DC: Even in Kevin Costner’s Waterworld — there’s no land left on Earth but they’re still driving Jet Skis. JHK: It’s hilarious. In World Made By Hand, there’s really only one car in the whole book, and it’s moving under rather peculiar, pathetic and tragic circumstances. And it’s not on stage very long before it stops running. — James Howard Kunstler and Duncan Crary, February 28, 2008 KunstlerCast #3: “World Made By Hand”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 120 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia alternative energy. But we’re going to a cocktail of alternative fuels? Let’s be disappointed in what these things use many different types of alterna- can do for us. tive fuel. DC: What about these hydrogen JHK: It’s an understandable wish that fuel cell cars that Honda is already we would want to keep our happy leasing in California? motoring system going, because JHK: I don’t think the hydrogen car we have invested so much in it, and is ever going to really happen. Now, it’s almost inconceivable to most look: you can’t stop the big car com- Americans that we would have to do panies from producing these stunts without it. But I think the truth of the and PR shows that they’re putting on. matter is that the automobile and all But just because they can produce of the things associated with it are one — or maybe twenty — hydrogen going to be a diminishing presence cars doesn’t mean that a system is in our lives, whether we like it or not. going to be in place for us to run one This is a symptom of our even hundred or two hundred million larger inability to have a coherent of them. So I think that people who discussion about our problems in have invested their wishes and hopes this country. As you go around the in the hydrogen car are going to be country, what you realize is the only very disappointed. thing that we’re talking about is how DC: What do you say to the idea we’re going to run the cars by some that you can’t replace gasoline with other means than gasoline or diesel one alternative fuel, but how about fuel. To me, this is tragic, because

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Keep the Car Running 121 we have to talk about a lot of other about is walkable cities or walkable things. neighborhoods. I gave a lecture at Rensselaer It doesn’t require any heroic new Polytechnic Institute, and one young technologies or new discoveries. In student got up and was going on at fact, it is, when all is said and done, some length about all the techno- absolutely the most pleasant way logical means for producing new to live and to get around. Anybody transit systems and new elegant who’s spent more than an hour and ways of getting people from point A a half in the center of Paris under- to point B. My response was that the stands this — or for that matter, a one thing that we’re never talking dozen other European cities.

The Colbert Nation Colbert: What oil dilemma? I go the gas station, I pay money, they put gas in my car. What’s the dilemma? Kunstler: You’re probably one of these people who thinks that the world has a creamy nougat center of oil, but it doesn’t. Colbert: No. When you go past the crust of the Earth you get to the Land of the Lost where the Sleestaks live. Kunstler: That’s right, but the trouble is that they’ve eaten up all the oil. — James Howard Kunstler and Stephen Colbert, May 1, 2008, The Colbert Report

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Duncan Crary: I gotta ask you about responsible for the Internet boom the Y2K thing. It seems to surface a in the 1999–2000 period, just before lot during discussions about your that sort of blew up. peak oil, Long Emergency ideas. But I didn’t really predict that the Stephen Colbert got in a jab about it world would collapse. What I said when you went on The Colbert Report was that Y2K was something that and it’s on your Wikipedia page so it’s seemed to be pretty dangerous, and not going to go away. Do you regret that we ought to pay attention to this, making predictions about what because a lot of systems could get into would happen after Y2K? trouble. I don’t think I said more James Howard Kunstler: I took Y2K than that. seriously, largely because there were DC: You did say that Y2K would rock a lot of obviously intelligent people our world.9 on the Internet who were taking JHK: I thought it would rock our it seriously. And there was a broad world in that sense that water sys- enough array of them to persuade tems would break down, there would me that this was something that be serious banking problems — es- should be taken seriously, that you pecially when you are living in an shouldn’t just dismiss it. era where so much money is digital From what I understand, in the and doesn’t really exist in any other aftermath, we spent an enormous form except as a pixel on a screen amount of money on IT during or a couple of digital numbers in a that period. A lot of it was actually server.

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So it seemed to me that, under JHK: I’m not really running a cam- those circumstances, that was pretty paign for people to fix things. I am perilous. What happened was that we more interested in describing a situ- didn’t encounter huge interruptions ation than prescribing. Societies will in daily life, and everything seemed go where they wanna go. Sometimes to go pretty well. What many scoffers people in those societies make poor don’t really take into account is the choices. Under the stress of the eco- amount of work and investment that nomic dislocations of the 1930s, some went into mitigating the problem. European countries made some bad Just because we didn’t have prob- choices and decided to become fas- lems in banking, or municipal ser- cists or authoritarians of one kind or vices, or electric power, or water another. And they ended up creating treatment doesn’t mean that we a lot of mischief for the world, and a weren’t in danger of having prob- lot of misery, and a lot of tragedy and lems in those crucial areas. I said cruelty. what I said, and I have to be respon- We are entering a period of eco- sible for it. People will probably con- nomic dislocation, and I hope that tinue to twang on me about it, but I we can greet it like grown-ups and re- don’t think it was a mistake to take it spond to it intelligently, and be kind seriously. to our fellow human beings, and not DC: Do you think that in order to get be cruel, and not the make the tragic people to take a problem seriously so choices that other groups of people that they can fix it you need to ramp have made. But there is no guarantee up the rhetoric? of that.

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DC: Jim, you’ve been predicting the me of being like the broken clock downfall of suburbia for quite some that’s correct twice a day. But as time because it’s an unsustainable I said, most of the work that I’ve way of living — done in terms of writing books JHK: Yeah, but not as a kind of about stuff for the last fifteen years, Godzilla-like process. I haven’t said since I started with The Geography a three-hundred-foot tyrannosaur of Nowhere, most of that stuff has is going to come through Levittown been, more or less, describing reality, and breathe on it and burn it all down. more than necessarily predicting it. DC: But people still use your previous I understand the danger of making track record with Y2K to discredit specific predictions, but I think there your views on peak oil. They think are some things that you can prob- peak oil is your new Y2K and that ably see the broad outlines of. after peak oil doesn’t bring suburbia I think you can see the broad to its knees, then you’ll find some outlines of a society that is not going new threat to it. But given what’s hap- to be preoccupied with driving. I pening around us, it’s getting harder don’t really know whether it will to ignore your general forecast for be in eighteen months or eighteen America. Even some of your short- years, or one hundred and eighty term predictions that you make in years. I am quite confident that we your Annual Forecast on your blog will be in a society at some point that are panning out. will not be cluttered up with cars, JHK: Yeah, and some people accuse that will not be about driving.

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Is the Long Emergency a Peak do is to manipulate and mislead the Oil Conspiracy Theory? American public — not for sinister DC: One of the things that you say reasons, but because they’re desper- often is that you are allergic to con- ate and they don’t know what else spiracy theories. But you also believe to do. that President Obama and other au- They’re afraid that if they actu- thority figures are lying to us about ally reported reality to the Ameri- our energy predicament. And that can public that it would disrupt the they’ve been lying to us for a long economy and in particular the finan- time...which kind of sounds like a cial markets. The interplay between conspiracy. Why are your ideas about the government and the financial peak oil not a conspiracy theory? markets now is so complex and frag- JHK: I guess you could say it’s a ile that I think our oil situation has quasi conspiracy. I do think that the capacity to get out of our control Mr. Obama is probably lying about enough to make the unemployment our energy predicament, or at least rise much further than it is now and the finer points of it. really drive down the American stan- The people who work with the dard of living. US government and the people who So it’s perhaps a soft conspiracy — are involved with American bank- one that’s not malign, although you ing have their various interests and could say that having good inten- reasons for doing what they do. And tions isn’t enough. It’s not enough I do believe that a lot of what they to just want America to be OK. By

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 126 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia propping up longstanding deceitful place. We’re kind of stuck with the practices that are getting you into infrastructure that we have at huge more and more trouble you eventu- cost plopped there on the landscape. ally risk actually collapsing your DC: So you’re saying that the psy- society because you’ve made so many chology of previous investment is bad choices. creating some kind of mass delusion DC: Even beyond the energy issues, about the health of suburbia? it seems like there’s a soft conspiracy JHK: It’s simply a consensus — it’s an in propping up suburbia as well. The agreement among a critical mass of government is lying to us that we individuals that something must can keep this system going through be a certain way and that the story bailouts and banking tricks and must be told a certain way. For us, the alternative energy sources. consensus is that we are a suburban JHK: Yes, but I’m quite convinced nation and we can’t imagine letting that the consensus of the American go of it. And we’re not going to. We’re public cannot imagine any other dis- going to prop it up at all costs. position of things except suburbia So if that’s a conspiracy, it’s more because that’s what we’ve invested all like a conspiracy between leadership of our wealth in. It’s not like people and the public to mutually lie and are going to just pack up their stuff accept each other’s lies and put out and put a padlock on the garage a narrative that people can live with. and leave their homes in suburban It’s a strange kind of dependency- Schaumburg, Illinois, or suburban enabling relationship between the Milwaukee or any other suburban American public and their habits

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Doomers 127 and the leadership which enables story, and when leadership continues them to continue thinking that it’s to tell the old story, that’s when you OK to keep on doing that. get cognitive dissonance and polit But when large numbers of ical uproars and revolutions and people start to accept a different disorders.

Doomers

Duncan Crary: Jim, a lot of people from a fear that these familiar com- call you a “Doomer” because of your forts and ceremonies that we’ve en- “Long Emergency” predictions. How joyed from the final blowout of the do you feel about being called a industrial experience and the final “Doomer?” fiesta of cheap oil — people regard the James Howard Kunstler: I don’t like loss of these things as a catastrophe, a the term applied to me because I collapse, as Armageddon. Human life don’t consider myself a Doomer.10 I can’t possibly go on without Cheez consider myself to be a fairly cheer- Doodles, cable TV and SUVs. I sort of ful guy with a certain point of view understand where they’re coming about where we’re heading. But I’m from, and have a certain sympathy not an Apocalyptarian. I just think for it. But it’s not my point of view. that our way of life is a limited expe- DC: Some people use the Doomer rience that is going to be changing. I label as a pejorative. But there are don’t consider that doom. also people who wear the badge I think the accusation comes proudly. There are people who are

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 128 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia into doom and gloom, right? On I put myself in that group. I would peak oil websites, even on your blog, like to see the consumer economy you find people with screen names discontinued as we’ve known it. It like “Dr. Doom.” doesn’t mean I don’t want people to JHK: Yes. Just as there are people who buy things again. But we obviously are cheerleading for the consumer got this thing going at a level that was economy to get back on its feet and so destructive that it can’t possibly continue, there is also a coterie of continue without us destroying the people who are cheerleading for the Earth, destroying all the other beings consumer economy to fall on its ass that we share it with. Destroying, and for us to get away from it. perhaps, even life itself. Who could

Doom and Gloom Kunstler, in his book The Long Emergency, skips the evidence and the policy and decides that the end times are upon us...he takes clear glee in imagining the punishments Americans will endure for their profli- gate ways... His gloom is almost religiously deterministic; Americans have squandered their opportunities to repent. They have continued to drive and suburbanize. So now it is too late. Now is simply the time to suffer. — Michael Manville, July 6, 2005 “Bomb The Suburbs: Bleatings of a reactionary environmentalist”New York Press

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Doomers 129 possibly want this to continue the be hardwired into our human sen- way it has? So yes, I’m in favor of sibilities — that we like fresh starts. taking a different path. There’s a certain appeal in wiping the I certainly enjoy a lot of the bene slate clean. It comes up constantly fits of modern life. I wonder how we’re in popular culture, even if it’s just going to get along without some of an interview with some pop star in these things. But I’m prepared to go Vanity Fair who says, “Oh yeah, I was in that direction. I think we’re going a junkie then, but I went through re- there anyway, whether we like it hab and now I’m a successfully high- of not. functioning individual.” Or some- DC: I enjoy a good zombie flick, or one who goes bankrupt and gets out apocalypse movie. And I wonder from under their mountain of debt how many people are turning to the and is able to resume their life. “Doomer” authors and websites just That’s a big theme in human af- for entertainment, for what you call fairs from time immemorial. The “Doomer porn.” How can someone more complex life has become for be taking this stuff seriously while us, the more there is to sweep away, they’re clacking away on their key- the more dross and the more junk board posting comments to a blog that we need to clean out. So I think all day? that that’s a human wish, which is ex- JHK: Well everybody has a slightly pressed at its most extreme in some different worldview and sense of of the Doomer sensibilities. where destiny is taking us. There is, DC: Take a drive down the worst part I think, a general sense — which may of, say, Central Avenue in Albany,

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New York, and look at all the crap buses and the cars to stop. For the av- there. The car dealerships, the strip enues to be free of cars and noise. For malls. What would it take to get rid of everything to just be still for a while. that stuff? A meteor? I think there are many of us who JHK: Exactly. You have the same don’t necessarily get bummed out by sense when you go to Florida when an approaching storm. There’s some- you see all the crap on the landscape thing wonderfully exciting about it. out there and you say, “Wow, it would There’s the idea that you’re going to really be great for a Category 5 hur- retreat into your shelter. You’re going ricane to hit Vero Beach.” to view this interesting spectacle in safety and then you will emerge in a A Cleansing Spectacle clean, fresh-smelling, rain-drenched, JHK: I have a vision from childhood, rain-cleansed world afterwards. which persists in my memory, of be- I think there’s something in our ing a nine-year-old boy in New York human nature that very basically City and waiting for a big blizzard vibrates to these narratives and these to hit. I remember the thrill of wait- patterns. There’s obviously a condi- ing for that storm to occur and then tion in the world itself that we’re very the joy of having the whole city just attuned to, of creation and destruction, stand still for half a day after the life and birth, decline and death. We storm had hit. It was just so wonder- may affect to fight them, like, “I’m ful for that silence to take over the going to fight death. I’ll live until I’m huge bustle of Manhattan. For all the 130 years old. I’ll follow this diet so

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Doomers 131 that I’ll never age and I’ll be in great really. It’s just about pruning out the shape when I’m ninety-seven years plastic and the garbage. Letting the old. I’ll still be running marathons.” storm come and letting the rain come But when all is said and done, every- down. Cleaning out the system and body has to succumb to the overarch- going on. ing cycles of reality. Resurrection and redemption are I think we all suspect that — even great themes in the human story. I at the greatest scale — out of death think we’ve got a few more cycles of comes rebirth. We’re involved in it to go. a human system right now that’s DC: Doesn’t getting obsessed with reached a point that many people the doom side of things also absolve probably think needs to die. I think us of some personal responsibility? it needs to die back some. I’d maybe JHK: Yeah. I think you’re quite right. give myself the pruning shears. I That’s one of the reasons that I don’t don’t necessarily want to go and pull even want to be grouped with people it out by the roots and toss it in the who say, “Well it’s all hopeless. I give garbage heap of history. But I would up. I don’t care about the human like to prune it pretty severely. race. I don’t care about where we go From my point of view, my from here. It’s just all screwed up and brand of Doomerism isn’t about hopeless. Forget about it.” Because putting an end to human activity or I don’t feel that way. I’m very inter- the human race or civilization or ested in the project of civilization a root canal or any of these things and I’m interested in the good things

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 132 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia that the human race has created. I JHK: I guess I’m not overly concerned would like these things to go forward. with how well they get it or whether they get it. I’m just doing my thing Spreading the Word and if they get it, fine, and if they DC: When you go around the country don’t get it, then I just go onto the telling people this story of suburbia next bunch. and “The Long Emergency,” how do One thing I encounter is people they react? Do they “get it?” saying “Give us solutions.” Most JHK: I go in front of all kinds of of the people asking for solutions groups including some who really want to be able to behave exactly the don’t get it. I remember talking to way we’re behaving now. All of this the International Council of Shop- delusional thinking is preventing us ping Center Developers. They really from finding a way of life that we’re didn’t get it. But they weren’t obnox- going to be able to carry on. ious about it. They politely listened DC: But do you ever offer advice to to what I had to say. When I finished these people who ask you for “solu- talking to them, they just started chat- tions?” ting up all of their plans for building JHK: You bet. You know, the college more parking structures, after I told audiences universally complain them that car storage is probably not that they want hope. “Can’t you give going to be the programming of the me some hope?” I am not a hope future. They didn’t hear a darn thing. dispenser to passive consumers of DC: Does that upset you when that hope. But I think I’m a very cheer- happens? ful, upbeat person. I’m not neces-

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Doomers 133 sarily a rosy-eyed optimist, but I’m thing, all the marvels and technologi- a happy person and I believe that cal miracles of the past one hundred we’re going to continue on. So what I years have only ended up produc- tell them is that the main thing that ing a society which is profoundly un- distinguishes a successful adult from happy, depressed and anxiety-ridden. a child is that an adult knows the We really have nowhere to go but up difference between wishing for stuff from here. and making it happen. DC: Do you think that if you had There’s a whole long list of intel- children, you’d have a different world ligent things that we can respond to view about all that’s going on here in this set of circumstances with. We America? need to be out there actively fixing JHK: I suppose that I would. Most our civilization, reforming the way of the people I know have a kind of we do our farming, our commerce, desperate feeling about their chil- our schooling and our trade. And dren, and so far as I don’t have any, I building our cities and designing don’t have that kind of desperation. our homes and our buildings and all DC: ...because their kids are going to the things that are necessary to be be around for this mess. part of a civilization. We’re going to JHK: Yeah, I understand that. I’m not have to put a lot more thought and an idiot. work into that. DC: I didn’t mean to imply you were. As we do that, I’m serenely con- JHK: I know plenty of people who vinced that we will become a much have children, and I see how they feel more hopeful people. In fact, if any- about them and act around them. It’s

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 134 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia human nature to want to feel that DC: You’ve said that “The journey you’re going to be OK. That you’re from point A to B needs to be reward- going to occupy a safe place. That ing,” and that “To entice people into there’s going to be some warm hearth the cities you need to reward them.” for you somewhere and a warm and In some ways, do you feel that our soft tranquil place to curl up and go leaders need to reward and entice to sleep. And that there will be peo- the people with some hope, because ple with you and you will hear music they’re not going to motivate them in the next room. These are all very by scaring them and depressing human. But it doesn’t mean we have them? to have Wal-Mart to do that. We don’t JHK: I don’t know. Winston have to have two hundred and forty Churchill got up in front of the million cars to feel OK about being British people and said, “All I can alive. offeryou right now is blood, sweat I’m confident that the human and tears,” and they responded race is going to go forward. I just to that because they understood think that the human adventure goes the urgency of the situation. He through different story lines, and didn’t get up and say, “You’re going we’ve come to the end or nearly the to have more salad shooters and end of one storyline — the high-tech marshmallows and ranch dressing industrial fantasia. Now we’re enter- next month.” So again, we really need ing something else. I think it’ll be to stop being softheaded softies and just as exciting. We’ve just got to re- harden up a little bit, and grow up a member to wash our hands and stuff. little bit.

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T. Boone Pickens T Boone Pickens: I don’t know whether you’ve seen this guy...his last name’s Kunstler and it’s not the guy that was the lawyer back years ago.... in the Chicago Seven.... I went over to SMU and heard him the other night. He is worth hearing. He is a generalist, but he tells us where we made the mistakes. We didn’t develop our rail system. You know, you look at the world today. We go places and we want to ride on a two-hundred-mile-an-hour train. We have to go to a foreign country to do that. We don’t have that. Why don’t we have it? Because they had cheap oil. It didn’t make sense for us to. It was expensive. We were going to subsidize it and you know it just didn’t make sense for us. And ...we built too far away from our work. He says you’re going to...move to your work now because the cost of energy. And it was really interesting because this was two years ago and the guy nailed it. I’ve listened to what he’s had to say. I watched what’s happened and he’s right on. — Billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, July 22, 2008 Testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee

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Duncan Crary: I want to hear your actual downtowns — places like West- thoughts on retrofitting suburbia for port, Connecticut, or Larchmont, or a post-peak oil future. Or just a future Brookline, Massachussetts. As you go with less driving. But we should into the South and the West you get probably begin by acknowledging less of that, and the suburbs are just that not all suburbs are created one mass of sprawling strip malls equal — they’re not all just endless and collector boulevards. These are housing tracts. Some of the older places of varying quality and they ones have some sort of downtown lend themselves to varying degrees areas that could be built up. for retrofit. James Howard Kunstler: All suburbs DC: But even in the worst plastic cul- are not identical. There are wide de-sac in a typical suburban devel- variations in the quality of them. opment — couldn’t you still convert In the East you have many suburbs those houses into a grocery store, a that started as railroad suburbs with carpenter’s place, a hardware store?

The Future of New Urbanism The future of New Urbanism is in urban villages and rural communities — in both. It’s in the extremes. It’s no longer in the in-between. — Jaime Correa, May 28, 2009 KunstlerCast #67: “The 40 Percent Plan” interview with Duncan Crary

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JHK: You could, especially if you effectively for people, because people changed the zoning laws so that it aren’t comfortable venturing further was permitted. However, it raises a lot than that. We have all these places of troubling implications. Sure, you in America that simply defy that could put a corner store and a few formula. It’s not even that I’m being other things in the middle of a giant so psychologically rigid, because I subdivision of one thousand houses certainly can imagine that people in California. But I really wonder would adapt to something if they whether the rest of that organism is really had to. But I’m not convinced going to work at all without the kind that it’s that workable. As I said in The of cheap motoring that it was de- Long Emergency, the Jolly Green Giant signed for in the first place. If you’re isn’t going to come along and move in a subdivision of one thousand all these houses closer together.11 acres in California or Colorado or They are where they are. Georgia, and it’s three-quarters of a DC: I get a decent number of emails mile to a little store at the center of from people who feel trapped in the thing or at the edge of it, I’m not suburbia. sure it’s going to work for people. JHK: They’re even more trapped The basic template among New now than they were a year or so ago Urbanists for a workable neighbor- because their situation has gotten hood or urban quarter is based on worse. Not only is the value of their the idea of the quarter-mile walk. property going down, but now there’s That’s the radius of the size of what the whole question about whether that neighborhood can be to work they’re going to have any job at all,

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 138 The Kunstlercast: The End of Suburbia or any income at all, or even be able traction and shrinking back of stuff. to stay there. The stuff that doesn’t work very well Some of the more catastrophic will not necessarily be retrofitted or places in America are simply being rebuilt, it will simply be abandoned abandoned, like in Florida where the for a while. real estate market collapsed. So that’s already begun in some parts of the Suburban Ghettos of the Future country and we may see it creeping DC: You believe that the suburbs of from the margins to the more nor- today will become the ghettos of the mal places, whether it’s the suburbs future. outside Minneapolis, Dayton, Dallas JHK: I think that suburbs as a general or wherever. I personally believe proposition are going to become that the majority of these suburban devalued. In the natural course of places won’t make it, at least not in things, the old real estate — the stuff the optimum way that we wish they getting beat up — becomes the cheap would — by being retrofitted. That’s real estate. That’s why the poor partially because we’re going to be people tend to gravitate toward it. less affluent, but it’s also because There’s something else about re- I think that our populations, after tooling suburbia, and that has to do a certain point, are going to start with the question of, “Will Ameri- declining, not increasing. cans be able to grow any significant We’re not going to see any more amount of food in suburban places?” expansion or growth of things. We’re By sprawling out all over the land- going to be seeing a generalized con- scape, we’ve destroyed some of the

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Retooling Suburbia 139 best agricultural land close to the old three thousand miles, etc. That’s our cities. That land is no longer avail- system of producing food. And it’s able. Instead, the way we grow food in about to get into a lot of trouble be- the United States, for the most part, cause the money’s just not there to is in huge monocultures of corn and fork over for the fertilizers, the her- wheat — produced by way of huge pe- bicides, the diesel fuel and all the troleum and fossil fuel inputs and things that you need to get up and diesel fuel to move it around and running every April. plow the soil and move the products

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Social Critic

Duncan Crary: You’re better known However, I just like composing prose as a commentator than as a novelist. and I like doing it in nonfiction as James Howard Kunstler: And the well as fiction. I get a bang out of it. publishers will tell you that nonfic- And I’m very fortunate that I can tion just sells better than fiction does. choose my own subject matter. Fewer people read novels nowadays. I think what a lot of people don’t That’s just the way it is — it’s not the quite get about me is that my writing nineteenth century anymore. is much more about prose artistry DC: Would you rather be writing than it is about dredging up facts fiction, creating art? about the petroleum industry or JHK: I would rather be writing politics or resource issues. I’m much fiction. I’d rather be writing the next more interested in exercising my two installments of World Made By skills — particularly my malicious Hand, which I fully intend to get to. sense of humor. My books are as 141 ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 142 The Kunstlercast: American Culture much about comedy as they are We have become a ridiculous nation about the subject matter.The Long lurching around through an impos- Emergency, as dire as it was, was very sible situation. It’s close to a Charlie consciously crafted to be full of Chaplin movie. We’re literally be- gags — because, as I said in one of my coming a slapstick clown nation, if earlier books, it’s the unfortunate we weren’t before. Perhaps we were fate of the ridiculous to be ridiculed.1 just as bad in 1932, I don’t know.

“The American Way of Life is Not Negotiable.” This was the basic mental algorithm for the United States in the first eight years of the twenty-first century, the idea that the American way of life is non-negotiable. One thing the American public doesn’t realize is that when you don’t negotiate the circumstances that the universe sends your way, you get assigned a new negotiating partner called Reality. And then it negotiates for you. You don’t even have to be in the room. You can go watch Internet porn, or play poker online, or eat Cheez Doodles and drink Pepsi, or watch NASCAR. And then your life will be negotiated for you. — James Howard Kunstler, February 10, 2010 lecture hosted by the Stakeholders, at Sage College, Albany, New York

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Mencken, Wolfe and Beckett circus for him to observe. One of DC: H.L. Mencken was a writer from the greatest acts in the many rings that era who was commenting on of the American circus back then the ridiculousness of America at the was “The Scopes Monkey Trial,” time. You and he are similar in ways. which he famously covered in Ten- You have your “NASCAR morons” nessee, where they tried to convict a and he had his “Boobus Americanus.” biology teacher for teaching evolu- JHK: I was influenced by Mencken tion. Mencken went down there and when I was a kid. I remember the first savagely covered the proceedings. book of his that I just stumbled on — a The attorney recruited to prosecute collection of his essays. That was this biology teacher named John the summer of 1967. It was a really a Scopes was a former presidential galvanizing moment, being eighteen candidate, William Jennings Bryan, years old and being exposed to that who had run as a Democrat at the extremely muscular comic prose. He turn of the century and lost three really had it down and he really had a times. Bryan was a religious nut. style that was his. He was sick and seedy and his hair Mencken was a journalist who is was falling out in patches and he almost completely forgotten, whose looked weird dressed in weird an- heyday was from 1910 to about 1945, tique Midwest costumes that were when he kind of faded away. He was kind of laughable to big-city people. especially popular during the 1920s, So Mencken took great delight in which was a wild era of excess in mocking him. He had a malicious the USA and it was a great kind of sense of humor, too.

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The cherry on top of the whole to be an unappetizingly pro-German thing was that poor William Jen- character, and the public sentiment nings Bryan died five days after really started going against him. He the trial ended. Mencken wrote a sort of faded away. Then in 1948 he vicious obituary. It was one of the had a massive stroke. He lived on more vicious things ever published another seven years, and passed away in American journalism — but also unnoticed in Baltimore in 1956. very funny. That was pretty much his DC: Do you find yourself using high spot. any of his techniques in your own The twenties came and went, and commentary? the standard view of Mencken was JHK: I have consciously done every- that he wasn’t really able to adjust his thing I can to not copy the way he ex- views to the realities of the Depres- pressed himself. I use the em dashes sion and the hardship that people a lot. But otherwise I’m trying to were suffering — his humor didn’t go avoid anything that smacks of him. over very well as that went on. He was DC: Are there any other critics out also fairly pro-German because he there or writers who have influenced was proud of his German ancestry. your style? He had carried on quite a bit during JHK: I had a similar galvanizing the First World War about the acts moment when Tom Wolfe exploded that had been legislated against the on the pages of the Herald Tribune German-Americans at that time, Sunday supplement back in 1963. I 1917–18. So when the Second World was just getting to the point of being War rolled around he was considered a young adult, fourteen–fifteen years

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Social Critic 145 old, and reading a lot. Growing up in playwright who ended his days with New York City, I was exposed to a lot the twentieth century. He was very of high and low culture of exactly the prominent and popular in the late kind that he was covering. So I was sixties, his best-known play being familiar with some of it. Waiting for Godot, which people make His prose was spectacular. He reference to still. I was in that play was able to put it across funny and and toured in it quite a bit. We got also make a point. That was before some kind of grant from the state of I encountered Mencken by maybe New York to take it all over. So I was three, four years. I discovered with on the road with this play living like these two guys, Mencken and Tom a vaudevillian at the age of nineteen. Wolfe, that I wanted to write comic Waiting for Godot is an absurdist discursive prose about issues that 1960s abstract piece, but it’s full of were important and interesting. It wonderfully written dialogue and was still a little bit hard for me to truly beautifully composed images — sort out the issues, though — I mean Beckett asw a wonderfully lyrical I wasn’t sitting down and writing writer. One of the things it taught essays about American culture. me was that it was possible to incor- I spent my college years being a porate lyricism with comic writing. theater major, so I got sidetracked I became interested in that. So by from my interest in literature, al- the time I graduated from college though it ended up helping because and dumped my theater career and one of the big influences on me was got into the newspaper game, I was Samuel Beckett. Beckett was an Irish interested in writing stuff that was

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 146 The Kunstlercast: American Culture comical and lyrical about things that ing about what’s going on politically matter. Eventually, I became a social and economically in the country. critic in the mold of what Mencken This has to do with the fact that my had been doing in the twenties, but personality is largely that of a come- I’m living in a very different world. dian. When all is said and done, I’d rather be funny and crack jokes than Managing the Critic Persona be serious. It takes effort for me to be DC: Do you separate your critic serious and my way of being serious persona from the person you are often involves me trying to be funny. when you’re not wearing your critic’s DC: But the people who know you hat — Jim Kunstler, the guy who lives through your public critic persona — in Saratoga and shops in the grocery some of them are disappointed or store? maybe even looking to attack you JHK: I don’t know if it’s psychologi- if they see you driving your pickup cally healthy or not but my persona truck or flying around. So how do does feel compartmentalized, al- you deal with that? How do you react though it’s not difficult for me to go to the criticisms of the critic? in and out of the different personas JHK: I’ve been kind of a low-rent that I’m familiar with. The guy who public figure. I put stuff out there — goes downtown to the supermarket DC: You put stuff out there that hits and meets his friends is very differ- certain nerves, so people want to ent from the guy who sits in front see: where does this guy live? What of a video display, pushing pixels does this guy drive? What does this around, making sentences and think- guy eat?

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JHK: I think that the public is almost while I am in a bad mood or they always disappointed when they run catch me in the wrong time and I’ll into a public figure of some kind, say something mean back. whether it’s Brat Pitt or me. They’re always disappointed to discover Pass the Cheez Doodles that you’re wearing a certain kind DC: So what do you say when of sneaker or that you’re diving a someone finds you at the strip mall pickup truck or that you’re flying in suburbia buying a bag of Cheez three thousand miles to Seattle. Doodles and hopping in your car? DC: Do you feel any obligation to live JHK: I don’t feel hypersensitive up to the expectations of Kunstler, about it. I’m perfectly comfortable the critic? with the idea that I’m a creature of JHK: I feel an obligation to be a de- my time and place. We all do tend to cent human being. I feel an obliga- be hostages to our time and our place tion to pay attention to people who and the manner and modes of our are asking for it under reasonable time and place. So I’m not embar- terms. I answer all my email, even rassed about that at all. I bought a bag from cranks. Even if it’s only a two- of Cheez Doodles the other night to sentence response. go to a little cocktail reception for a DC: Or two words: Fuck you. friend who was starting a new job. I JHK: I very rarely say that — usually just felt like, it’s never a party unless only when someone writes to me the Cheez Doodles are there. So I got calling me a Jew bastard faggot me a bag, and you know what? I ate moron or something. Once in a a few of them. Hardly anyone else

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 148 The Kunstlercast: American Culture would touch them because they seem lous. But I refuse to submit to being to be radioactive, but I had a few. a victim of the ridiculousness of it. DC: Every year I go to your holiday So I’m not going to just stand by and party and there’s usually a bowl of say, “Oh, isn’t all our ridiculous shit Cheez Doodles or something like cute?” That’s why I’m not into kitsch. that. At this recent one you had a Because I believe if something was bowl of Cheez Doodles. really stupid and shitty the first time, JHK: I always have ’em. You just don’t you shouldn’t bring it back and cel- really sniff ’em out. They’re there. ebrate it for its shittyness. So I don’t DC: This year, people were standing do that. It doesn’t do anything for me. around them thinking, “Oh, he’s DC: How has being a social critic being ironic.” And I was thinking, “I affected your personal relations? think he’s just putting out a bowl of Do you find your friends are getting Cheez Doodles.” upset with you sometimes with the JHK: Yeah! things you’re saying about America DC: I don’t know that you’re deliber- or the suburbs? ately being ironic, are you? JHK: My close friends where I live JHK: No. I don’t even like the ironic have very little connection with my stance that has been so popular in writing life. They’re not necessarily my generation. You can’t really de- reading everything I write. They’re velop that overall ironic stance about people who think that my Long life unless everything in your life Emergency ideas are crazy. Some of is fucking ridiculous. There is a lot them think that I’m nuts thinking about American life that is ridicu- that there’s some kind of a problem

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Throwaway Culture and the Plastic Fantastic 149 out there with America. Now I don’t DC: — about suburbia. But they think necessarily hang out with the kind the Long Emergency energy issues of suburban people that you’d find are a little whacky? in one of these boom cities of the JHK: They’re not necessarily paying last fifty years. I don’t live in Dallas attention. They’re not familiar with or Orlando or Phoenix. If I lived in a Jeff Brown’s Export Land Theory. place like that, I’d probably encoun- They don’t look at the EIA figures.2 ter people who are more defensive or They’re not paying attention to angry about a viewpoint that opposes TheOilDrum.com. They’re really what they’ve invested in. But I’m just going about their lives. And the not. I know very few people who live supermarket’s still full of stuff. And in anything that I would remotely despite all of the disarray in the fi- call standard-issue suburbia. I have nancial sector, they’re still getting very few friends who are violently paid. I don’t know many people who defending anything that I’m yapping have been tossed out of their job. about.

Throwaway Culture and the Plastic Fantastic

Duncan Crary: I think a lot about who are so lazy and entitled that we our sense of entitlement to con- can’t be bothered wiping off a metal venience in America. Take all the spoon and saving it for tomorrow. throwaway plastic bags and plastic We create utensils for one-time use. spoons out there — we are a people And now the spoon that you ate one

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 150 The Kunstlercast: American Culture plastic cup of yogurt with, and the you throw a party, and it’s been a big plastic bag they came in, are all going party. It’s largely a petroleum party, to be around for eternity in some a cheap oil party. And it created a lot landfill. of trash. So what we’re seeing is the James Howard Kunstler: That’s how trash that’s being thrown out from extravagant the plastic fiesta was. the party we threw for ourselves. You get a certain period of history, DC: You often refer to “Our throw- a brief hundred-year period, where away culture” in America.

Redundant Acquisition We’re leaving a time in our economy when a huge amount of making money was concerned with getting people to redundantly acquire the same machine so that everybody had to have their own lawnmower and laundry machine on the premises. It is nice to be able to wash something instantly when you need it, but that’s the kind of thing you can work around — you discover that you can systematize the way you do laundry if you plan ahead. And it’s the same thing with transportation, you can plan ahead to get to a place if you don’t have our own car if your culture is intelligent enough to design systems that allow you to do that. —James Howard Kunstler, June 16, 2011 KunstlerCast #160 “Housing Bubble Update”

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JHK: It’s one of the appalling features That concerns me, largely of our life, and for me it’s not just the because it’s so depressing. It damages plastic spoons and the old sneakers our spirits so badly, and this is apart and the faded broken Barbie dolls — from whatever the plastic is doing DC: — and the inflatable alligators — to our mitochondria or whatever JHK: — and the Frosty the Snowman diseases that it’s causing. Just the Christmas ornaments and all that daily surroundings of all these crap. For me it’s much more a matter terrible crappy buildings, and all the of the buildings that we built, and the signage, and all the crap connected things that have really become the to automobiling, has a tremendously hardscape of our everyday world. corrosive effect on our spirit.

Americans are Scary-Looking and Infantile

Duncan Crary: There are an awful in the margins, not on Main Street. lot of tattooed Americans out there So it’s disappointing to see the main- these days, which is something streaming of tattoos, today. you’re not happy about. What’s your DC: Was there a particular moment beef with tattoos? or incident that set you off? James Howard Kunstler: Tattoos, JHK: I started to develop a bad at- historically, have been the calling titude about tattoos when I started cards of cannibals, whores and going to a particular gym in town — sailors. This is activity that belongs there are all these muscleheads there

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 152 The Kunstlercast: American Culture who are covered with tattoos and We look like fierce warriors with all there are more and more of them these tattoos. every week, including many females. JHK: I think we are trying to make Some of the tattoos I’m seeing ourselves scary-looking. What it these days are just so alarming. There tells me is that we are a very insecure are guys who have flames tattooed people right now. We’ve got to make up their necks. I saw one kid on the ourselves look like characters out street in front of the tattoo parlor on of a Road Warrior movie or make our main drag and he had a dotted ourselves look like some kind of line tattooed on his neck with a pair barbarian culture in order to feel of scissors tattooed on one end and secure and OK about ourselves. the words “Cut Here” tattooed on DC: Why? the other end. It was just sickening JHK: We have a lot of reasons to be to see that a young man had such a insecure. It’s very hard for young desperate and depraved view of his people especially to imagine some own value that he was advertising for kind of a plausible career for them- someone to cut his head off. It was selves. There are a lot of things that appalling. I think this is an attempt have been foreclosed to them. There for the marginal to invade the center is very little possibility of many of and I am all for keeping the marginal them ever finding blue-collar work on the margins. that will pay them a decent wage. DC: One of your observations is There are a very few jobs that are that Americans are scary-looking. appealing to a young man. You think

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On the death of Michael Jackson I don’t want to be cruel about it, because he was a pathetic man — he had feelings like everybody else, and wishes, and things that he loved, I’m sure. But he did represent a lot of weird things about us, especially our tendency to lie to ourselves about who we are, what’s happening and what we’re doing. I did notice over the last couple of weeks that whenever they showed a picture of him in the media, it was always one of these pictures from about 1982, before he put himself through this really monstrous transformation that made him look like a character from another planet or from a horror movie or something. That’s the way that people want to remember him. But it’s just amazing how much we’re sweeping under the rug, just as we sweep all these things about our current predicament as a nation under the rug — the damage we’ve done to our culture and the bad choices that we’ve made. To me, Michael Jackson represents a lot of the bad choices that America made about itself and its difficulty in telling the truth about it. — James Howard Kunstler, July 16, 2009 KunstlerCast Grunt: “Jacko”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 154 The Kunstlercast: American Culture a young man wants to be a Wal-Mart hat and sneakers that aren’t tied and associate? Right now, young men you really look like an infant. are being foreclosed out of any kind DC: I’ve seen grown men dressed like of meaningful role in their society. that — with an oversized polo shirt. And I think this insecurity is being And yeah, I thought it was a kid until broadcast now in the way they are he turned around and it was actually presenting themselves to the public. a 45-year-old man. JHK: The infantilization of young Hip-Hop Costuming and men in our culture is becoming the Infantilization of Men really striking. JHK: It’s not just the tattoos. Another DC: I’ve never heard anyone ap- thing that fascinates me is the cos- proach the topic that way. I have tuming — the costuming that has heard that the droopy jeans come come out of hip-hop, for example, from prison culture. which features oversized shirts and JHK: I think they did originally. Then pants that make you look like your they circulated through the ghetto legs are very short. What this tells me for about twenty years. But in the is that American men feel like babies ghetto you have a situation where you and they want to portray themselves have children who are being raised like babies. Babies have very large in households where men are not torsos and short legs. So American present. Why are they not present? young men are dressing up in cos- Partly because a lot of the fathers are tumes that make them look like in prison. So you have men who are babies and then you add a sideways in prison, you don’t have male role

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Americans are Scary-Looking and Infantile 155 models and you have male children last fifteen years that what became being raised by mothers. And those mainstream hip-hop was really a men dress up in costumes that make warrior culture. But notice that it’s them look like babies. being masked and concealed behind Eventually it led to some very a uniform of baby clothes... so that it strange cultural manifestations. Es- looks like it’s harmless. But in fact, it pecially as that programming moves is a warrior culture. through the whole broad culture, not Let me clarify something. Young just the black community but out men tend to gravitate to warrior cul- into the white former working-class tures. I think we are hardwired for community, where they are suffering that as human beings who have only terribly from lost incomes and not recently emerged from the hunter- having any plausible idea of what to gatherer stage of development. So we do with themselves — what kind of are really hardwired to be warriors as vocations to go into. males, and yet you have a whole generation of warriors who are not being Warrior Culture trained to be warriors. They are being DC: And you also believe there is a trained to be babies — to be helpless, warrior culture message being added to not know how to do things, to be to the mix through the “gangsta” rap, illiterate, to be not conversant with which is not just in the ghettos but is their own history. That has an effect being massively consumed by white on your destiny. suburban teenagers, of course. DC: It seems like you stirred up the JHK: I have maintained for the hornets with this topic after you

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 156 The Kunstlercast: American Culture wrote about it on your website.3 self as a violent clown.” Because that There’s been quite a reaction online. is what young men in America look JHK: What interests me is the indig like now: violent clowns. nation that my attitude provokes DC: I don’t have one, but I know a from the tattooed people and the lot of people with tattoos. Everybody people wearing the hip-hop clothes — seems to have one. To me, tattoos are that whole cohort of young people. just another empty gesture in Amer- It’s as though they are saying, “We ica. People are just broadcasting their have a right to present ourselves this “individuality” — externally — in lock way. We like presenting ourselves step with what’s hip and cool today. this way and it makes sense to us to JHK: Sure. It’s like saying, “I’m a present ourselves this way. So don’t nonconformist, just like you.” get down on us for doing it because DC: It does seem like the “emos” and we have every right to do it and we the “goth” people and even the bikers feel good doing it this way.” all shop at the same store. All the What I would have to say in re- emos go the emo store. All the bikers sponse to that is, “Yeah, if you are fac- go the Harley-Davidson store. And ing a very uncertain destiny, and you they purchase their outfits that all are very insecure, and your society is look the same. not giving you much to feel hopeful JHK: They’re all just bullshit con- about, and your society is not prepar- sumer cultures of one kind or an- ing you for the kind of life that you other. Tattoos are just another kind of are going to be facing in your later consumer item. It’s just a service that decades — then sure, present your- you pay for. It doesn’t make you a bet-

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Dude, We’ve Got Technology 157 ter person. It doesn’t make you some- yourself saying, “I’m a lover,” “I’m a one with more knowledge. It doesn’t fighter,” “I’m a valiant warrior.” make you more heroic. It just makes DC: Or “I’m a sojer”...but they’ve you someone who went and spent never been in the army before. $150 on a picture that’s on your skin. JHK: To some extent, I can accept DC: Does anything else bother you that a tattoo can just be another kind about tattoos? of ornament. I think that within JHK: There’s an interesting element limits there is nothing wrong with of it that we see in other areas of life. that. It’s just that when you turn Having become such a television- yourself into a grotesque billboard ized culture and people, what you and you start projecting messages see is an impulse to put a picture like “Kill me now” or “I hate you” on everything. You use yourself as a or “I’m a vicious thug,” that ends up television to broadcast stories about being socially unhelpful.

Dude, We’ve Got Technology

Duncan Crary: Something you try James Howard Kunstler: I was to impart on your audience is, “You invited to give a talk at the Google can’t put technology into a gas tank.” headquarters in the Silicon Valley a People don’t always realize that — that few years ago. It was really a typical you need juice to run the gizmos. You jive plastic office park building in caught that attitude firsthand at the a wasteland of off-ramps and free Google offices. What happened? parking and all the other crap that

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California is so famous for and America for a while that the more that has spread everywhere else in childlike you are, that means you’re America. more creative. So there’s a great striv- The building itself was tricked ing out there now to be as childlike out like a kindergarten inside. They as possible. had foosball games and ping-pong The executives and senior en- tables and Nok Hockey and Lucite gineers were all dressed like skate- boxes full of gummy bears and board rats — they’re wearing sideways yogurt-covered pretzels. And you hats, their ass crack was showing be- could see where they were coming cause they’re wearing pants that are from — there had been this whole falling down...because they’re being idea in corporate enterprise in creative and childlike and playful.

Jiminy Cricket Syndrome Probably the biggest impediment to our thinking is what I call the Jiminy Cricket Syndrome. This is the belief that’s now become normal for all Americans, that when you wish upon a star, your dream comes true. This used to be a normal belief for seven-year-olds in America. It’s now become a normal belief for everyone in America. And it’s a dangerous idea. — James Howard Kunstler, February 10, 2010 lecture hosted by the Stakeholders, at Sage College, Albany, New York

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So I went into the auditorium and it’s coming from Google! That tells gave a talk about oil. At the end we you something. If they can’t think had questions. There were no ques- straight about that, what about the tions, there was only one comment people at the ball bearing factory that was repeated seventeen times: or the people who make bowling “Like, dude, we’ve got technology.” trophies? Subtext: “You’re an asshole, we’ve got The general psychology of technology.” America these days is that some It’s scary that at the highest level mythological mad scientist “they” of American corporate high-tech en- will come up with some miracle terprise, they don’t know the differ- rescue remedy to get us out of this ence between technology and energy. problem. It’s not likely to happen. Do you know how fundamental that is, and how dangerous that is, to not The Virtual is Not an Adequate understand the difference between Replacement for the Authentic these things? Most Americans don’t DC: Something in the back of my understand that technology and mind, as we talk about sprawl and the energy are different — that they’re built environment, is that there’s a not interchangeable. That if you run whole other public sphere we inhabit out of one, you just can’t swap it out in this modern life — the virtual with the other one. You can’t just realm. The Internet has become a plug in technology where you were public space of sorts, and I wonder once using energy. This is one of what effect that has had on the pub- the great delusions of our time. And lic spaces in our tangible world.

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JHK: It’s been a very interesting and We used to complain about how inef- in some ways magical adventure that ficient that was and how much better we’ve taken ourselves on. Like any- it would be if we all had Internet at thing in the human experience, it’s our desktops. Now that everyone going to have repercussions and un- does, I feel like it’s not more efficient intended consequences and dimin- after all. It was more efficient to only ishing returns. I think we can begin have fifteen minutes to look some- to see them start to resolve pretty thing up online. clearly now. One thing is of course JHK: Right, because now everybody that there is probably nothing that is spending three-quarters of their destroys time in your life more than time looking at Internet porn, or do- the Internet. ing video poker, or reading interest- The one thing that the Internet ing things on Wikipedia, or emailing doesn’t do is give you more hours their grandmother. It tells us a lot in the day. In fact it gobbles them up about why we’re having such a hard like Pac-Man so that we all become time even constructing a broad- hostages — if not to the alternative based social agreement about what universe of stuff out there, to some of reality is about these days. We’re in the routine functions of it, like email desperate need of attending to real- and messaging and stuff that you just ity, and yet by some happenstance can’t get away from. we’ve created the world’s most amaz- DC: I used to work in a newsroom ing distraction from reality that has almost ten years ago now where there ever been invented. We’ve created a was one computer with the Internet. way for the entire population of the

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USA to not pay attention to what’s JHK: Although the sense of place in going on in our culture, and in our the USA was pretty damaged well economy, and our society. It explains before the Internet came along. In a lot about how paralyzed we are and fact it may actually be that because how unable we are to form any kind we were already in that situation, of plan of action for what we’re going the Internet became all that more to do. You’ve got a whole nation now appealing — because the public realm that’s mentally masturbating for in America had been destroyed, and huge amounts of time every day. it became nothing more than this DC: How do you think this emphasis universal automobile slum. on the virtual realm affects the Then all of a sudden the Internet tangible realm? comes along, and here’s a landscape JHK: What it’s doing is impoverish- of the mind that will take you any- ing us. The virtual is not an adequate where, and you can spend endless replacement for the authentic. As amounts of time exploring it. The much as we may like it or find it one thing about human cognition, appealing or find it ingenious, it’s the human mind, though, is I think just not good enough. And we’ve got that we are hardwired for exploring. to stop kidding ourselves that virtual This is a very important character- life is as good as real life. istic of the human mentality — we’re DC: I don’t want to sound hypocriti natural explorers, and when pre- cal — I’m on the Internet all the time — sented with interesting opportuni- but the Internet is just one more ties for exploration, we will tend to thing that is eroding a sense of place. take them. Even if they happen at the

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 162 The Kunstlercast: American Culture expense of real life, which is what’s something, you will never see them. happening to us with the Internet. You’ll never see these other people except by accident on the street. The Third Place DC: I’m fortunate in my little city DC: Has the Internet become our where I can just go out and meet Third Place?4 those five people. Not the same five JHK: For sure.... Even in my town, people, but there are always a reliable which is pretty high caliber — with number of folks out that I know and some educated people and a small enjoy being with. college in it — there really is no JHK: Do you have a hangout bar? watering hole that I would go to at DC: Sure. We bounce around, but five o’clock in the afternoon to meet there’s one bar in particular called kindred spirits to sit around and talk. Ryan’s Wake where we tend to meet There’s nothing like a pub where I up regularly at around five p.m. It’s could reliably go to find people who right on the river, by the drawbridge. I could have some meaningful social My friends who are my age don’t exchange with. understand how I can have a social That really needs to occur in an life without a cell phone and text organic way. You need to have those ing — because I don’t have those five or six people actually show up things. But I can always find a friend in a geographic location or it just out and about in town and it feels doesn’t work. So in my world, unless more natural and exciting that way. you make a concerted effort to invite That seems so old-fashioned and ar- six of your friends over for dinner or chaic to my peers.

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JHK: It’s funny. I see you frequently, coffee shop that much, although but never drunk on your ass. Is that I kind of like to go there. But I get a condition that I don’t know about hungry for human society, and it’s a that you’re mostly in or something? little hard for me to get to. DC: That’s my third place, the pub. DC: I get hungry for that human It’s an old-fashioned kind of arrange- interaction, too. But I’m very for- ment. tunate that I can walk out my front JHK: Both of us are guys who work door and get it. That’s what I really on our own, where we have solitary love about working and living in a workspaces. I don’t know about you, business district. I’m surrounded but I go through whole workdays by other little shops and offices and where I don’t really talk to other friends. And I can make little trips people or meet them in the flesh. around the neighborhood to visit my In spite of the fact that I’m getting a accountant, or buy office supplies, or lot of electronic communications, I check in on a client, or grab lunch. get hungry to see real people in real I actually look forward to doing my situations. I don’t hang around bars, chores because of that. really. I don’t even hang around the

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The Starchitects

Duncan Crary: What’s the story stupid, but what they’re hoodwinked behind these scary techno-futuristic into is a status fashion contest buildings in just about every big with other cities. And the big status city? Like the Seattle Central Library, symbol for the last twenty years has what’s up with that building? It looks been to get a museum or a library like a droid transport carrier from a designed by one of a certain roster George Lucas flick except it’s made of star architects or “starchitects,” of glass. It also looks like it’s about to as they’re called. It’s a revolving fall over. door of Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhass, James Howard Kunstler: It’s not Peter Eisenman and a bunch of that hard to understand what’s going other people. The results have been on. The city officials are...not that disastrous for practically every place sophisticated. They’re probably not that’s done this.

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Rem Koolhaas: The been dumped on him, including the Architect of Menace Seattle library. JHK: The case of the Seattle Central It’s a pretty monstrous building. Library is interesting. It’s designed On the outside it’s this big chunky by Rem Koolhass. He’s a Dutch ar- crystalline UFO that looks like some- chitect who is much esteemed as thing that Keanu Reeves should step the great wizard of whatever post- out of to inform the world that civi- post-post-modern condition we’ve lization as we know it is ending. It’s a entered. He was given a chair at the monstrous, hard-edged, glassy, steely Harvard Graduate School of Design, heap that communicates very poorly their architecture school. And for the with the street. last ten years, just about every great The inside of it is organized so commission internationally has weirdly that the whole idea you get

Beautiful Buildings A businessman would not have dared to put up a hideous building in Troy in 1911. It was part of the software in the hard drive of their brain that required them to do this. We didn’t have to twist their arm with design review boards or codes that forced them to do stuff. They did it because it was the right thing to do and because it was part of their culture. — James Howard Kunstler, June 11, 2009 KunstlerCast #68: “Historic Preservation”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Starchitects 167 from Rem Koolhaas is that he’s striv- staircases that actually get smaller ing to confuse the person using the as you go up the stairs, like the building and create as much anxiety psychotic buildings in that German as possible in the users. The object expressionist movie The Cabinet of of this whole exercise is to make the Dr. Caligari. German expressionism architect seem more supernaturally was used a lot in the sets of horror brilliant for having created all these movies that emanated from the mystifications — the more mystifica- Weimar Republic — The Golem and tion they create, the more it suppos- Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. It all grows edly means that they know things out of the early fascination with that you don’t. psychotherapy and the dark side of The starchitects say that this human character, and the discovery anarchic idea of trying to disturb that the subconscious is a weird and the citizen over the building, or defy ominous place. So of course they their expectations, is supposed to be tried to express that in the movie a healthy strategy. But I don’t find it sets they designed. And Koolhass has healthy at all. I think people need to caught that and done it beautifully. be oriented and comfortable in their But I don’t think people want that surroundings. The buildings need to done beautifully with their build- inform them about where they are, ings. I don’t think people are seeking and who they are, and where they’re to be disoriented and confounded by going and what they’re doing. buildings. If anything, they’re look- For example, in the Seattle ing to be well oriented and assured library, he’s got some things like that their culture is a meaningful

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 168 The Kunstlercast: Architecture protective thing. Not some kind JHK: Exactly. That’s the word that of menace. Koolhass specializes in I’ve been using a lot. People may being an architect of menace. not understand what typologies are So this is all in the service of gran- in buildings, but they’re classifica- diosity and narcissism and architects tions of buildings by their type and making themselves appear to be somewhat they’re intended for and what thing that they aren’t: supernatural their programming is. Throughout wizards. We don’t need supernatural history, there has been a tendency in wizards. We need competent archi- architecture for buildings to present tects who will give us buildings that themselves typologically in relation are neurologically comprehensible, to what they do — which enables us to that satisfy our needs for orientation identify them. In the simplest sense, and our even deeper needs for cul- in American culture, we know what tural orientation — to know who we a church is supposed to look like, or are, what culture we’re in and what’s has looked like over the years. It’s a going on in it. rectangular building with something DC: If you go to a city or town where elevated in the front — we call it a the buildings were built before the steeple. That’s become our signifier 1940s, you can pretty much identify for that. Obviously, you don’t have the post office, the library, the school to do churches like that. You can do and the church by the way the build- them in other ways. The way we’ve ing looks. Rem Koolhaas’s buildings, chosen to do them now, in our time, and buildings by other starchitects, is we make them look like muffler defy these “typologies,” as you say. shops, which isn’t so groovy.

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DC: What I don’t understand is: not Seattle, the Experience Music Project, only have these guys like Koolhass which is an interactive museum for conned all the mayors of these cities rock ’n’ roll. around the world, but the American JHK: The exterior is a wavy, weird, Institute of Architects is giving this torqued-out, tortured-looking facade. guy awards. Koolhass got an award One of the things Frank Gehry got for the Seattle Central Library. real excited about was computer- JHK: All the big architecture prizes aided design, which has allowed are going to these horrendous, des- architects to torture every surface potic, high-tech buildings that look because the computer does all the like they’re constructed out of Gil- math and figures out exactly what lette Blue Blades or some other re- the engineering has to be for all ally frightening material. these tortured metal claddings and It’s a con game. It’s also a game of steel structural stuff that has to be “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” These fabricated. It goes straight from the guys are all trying to support an ide- computer to the fabrication com- ology which says, in essence, “The puter and then they make it. more we can mystify the public, the DC: It looks like what you might get more brilliant we will appear to be.” if you made a building out of Salva- dor Dali’s melting clocks. Frank Gehry: JHK: Plus it’s got all kinds of weird Tortured Metal Blobs colors. It’s literally what the building DC: Another starchitect is Frank affects to represent: “experience Gehry, who also has a building in music.” The idea is that’s what you

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 170 The Kunstlercast: Architecture see in your mind when music is mid-sixties incarnation with the playing, so there are all these weird Frank Sinatra-type hotels which are shapes and colors. I’m sorry, my all gone now. They were reveling in mind is not a roller coaster blob of the glories of the parking lot and the tortured metal. way that the car related to the town DC: It’s in a fairground type area in and all the mid-twentieth-century Seattle, though, so it’s not disastrous crapola which they elevated to iconic to have a building like that in a set- status and formed another absurd ting like that. Unfortunately a lot of branch of modern or post-modern Gehry’s other buildings, which are etiology. They were famous for that similarly bizarre, are not sealed off in kind of stuff and yet they lived in a amusement park areas of the cities. very traditional neocolonial house And they look freakish and terrible. in the Philadelphia suburbs. That’s JHK: By the way, the starchitects true of a lot of architects. promote incomprehensible buildings. But when it comes down to The Role of it, they want to live in traditional Monumental Architecture buildings themselves. People like DC: Instead of trying to mystify Robert Venturi and Denise Scott the public, what should these star Brown, who were famous for their architects be doing with these huge polemical tract in the1970s called projects? Learning from Las Vegas, this seminal JHK: There’s a different path. One book about how wonderful Las way of understanding the urban Vegas was in its early sixties or principles involved is to know that

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Starchitects 171 there’s a difference between back- realm by speaking to us in languages ground buildings and monumental and vocabularies and syntaxes and buildings. Monumental buildings grammars and rhythms and patterns have a certain obligation to help us that we understand from our own feel oriented, to know what they are, culture. to be typologically consistent with So when you bring into that our expectations, and also to present setting this effort to mystify and a sense of decorum to the city. confuse everybody and deliberately The city can be an intimidat- create more anxiety, you’re doing ing place. It’s a place where you’re a real disservice, not only to the meeting a lot of strangers, constantly. individual people who inhabit the There are a lot of exciting, stimulat- place, but to the idea of civic life as a ing, but also intimidating things general proposition. that happen to you in the city. So one of the purposes of architecture, for The Mother Ship a few thousand years, has been to DC: We have a new galactic battle- reassure us that when we’re in the ship that just arrived in my city here city, we’re in a place that is safe, in in Troy. It’s the EMPAC building on which transactions occur that we can the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute understand. We’re in surroundings campus. EMPAC stands for “Experi- that are coherent. The outsides of mental Media and Performing Arts the buildings embellish and honor Center,” by the way. It was designed the public realm. Good architecture by a minor starchitect.1 Have you honors our presence in the public seen this building yet?

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JHK: Yes, it’s the mother ship. feel that their existence has purpose DC: It’s a big glass box on the hill and order. The experience in these with a large wooden sphere inside settings is enhanced by being sur- it, which is a concert hall. To get into rounded by buildings that reflect a this giant spider egg in the center, certain amount of coherence. Into you cross over a chasm on these this, they’ve now introduced this catwalk-bridges like you’re Obi-Wan mother ship UFO. But it’s perfectly Kenobi deactivating the tractor consistent with the trend of what’s beam. The main stairs of the build- gone on in every campus in every ing get narrower as you go up them city in America. and it feels like this huge orb is going DC: It’s not just disrupting the coher- to roll over and squash you at any ence of the college buildings, though, minute. because the campus happens to be JHK: The tragic thing about it is that perched on top of a hill — so the col- the RPI campus is one of the more lege buildings are the skyline of my coherent ensembles of urban college city. And now we have this structure buildings in the United States. Most up there that they’ve been blasting of it is a Beaux-Arts period, Greco- green and red spotlights on at night, Roman, neoclassical ensemble of like, “Look at this thing.” buildings. It’s very handsome, very JHK: Yeah, it’s like if you were to put orderly. It creates a sense of coher- on a clown suit and jump up and ence, which helps young people — down on the highest part of your city who are struggling to develop a and point at yourself and say, “Look point of view about the world — to at me, I’m special.” By the way, we

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Starchitects 173 should now have a Special Olympics tecture societies and the Pritzker for architects so they can jump up Prize are doing it by dabbling in and down in their clown suits and be high-techism. There is not necessar- as a special as they want. ily anything wonderful about clad- DC: They have a school of architec- ding a building with titanium, from ture at RPI. What are these architects a technical point of view. It doesn’t learning in school? improve the insulating or heating JHK: You can probably count on properties or air-conditioning one hand the architecture schools properties. It’s just a stunt really. around the country that are actu- DC: Jim, you lecture all around the ally teaching something that has country and you do speak to — a future. Most of them are stuck in JHK: I actually call it “flapping my the fashionista/mystification racket. gums.” And RPI, unfortunately, is one of DC: But you do speak at some archi- them. Although there they have an tectural institutes and things like that? even heavier emphasis on some of JHK: Yeah, I’ve been to many of the the technical considerations, like biggies. these claddings that are made out DC: So have you talked to these archi- of rare metals like titanium, which tects? What the hell are they learning is an unbelievable squandering of in school? Do they feel ashamed of resources. They’re really into a lot of their profession when they hear you the high-tech stuff. speak? Or do they argue with you? Many of the buildings that are JHK: They argue with me strenu- getting these awards from the archi- ously, especially at the more elite

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 174 The Kunstlercast: Architecture universities. I’ve been to Harvard they think that this is a joke that I’m three or four times. They think that complaining about it. mystification is wonderful. It makes DC: College campuses seem to be them feel more superior. They’re fertile ground for your monthly totally along with that program and critiques of architectural eyesores. they’re certainly prompted and sup- JHK: I frequently feature college ported in it by their professors, who buildings, especially new ones, on also get a huge lift out of feeling like the “Eyesore of the Month” depart- superior supernatural beings from ment of my website, because they another planet. They’ve succeeded in seem to represent what’s worst in mystifying people and making them current architectural practice and in feel uncomfortable in the buildings our culture as a whole. that they have to go to everyday. And

Brutalism

Duncan Crary: There’s another style Hall, which is in the process of being of modern architecture out there taken down. that’s pretty awful called “brutal- James Howard Kunstler: Yay! There ism.” These are the buildings made might be a celebration when you’re entirely from poured concrete. I finally rid of this despotic presence have a brutalist building down the in your town. block from where I live, Troy City DC: It’s already started. Tell me how

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Brutalism 175 this particular style of architecture form meets function and supposedly came about in the first place. giving an honest treatment of the JHK: It’s funny that it even got that materials that you’re using — not name, “brutalism.” It derives from trying to disguise them behind any a French term describing the use of decoration or ornament. raw concrete as the main motif for So these are typically those raw the building’s design — the brutal concrete buildings all over America raw concrete. It’s also in the spirit of that date from about 1965 to 1980.

Hysterical Historical Preservation Why has the historic preservation movement been as hysterical to save things as they have in the last thirty years? The answer, I think, is pretty clear: we’re not capable of putting new things up that are as good as the old things we’re losing. It’s hard to account for that. We’re not dumber than our great grandparents, and we’re certainly a lot richer than they were, or at least we have been for the last three or four or five decades. So it’s not as if we lacked resources. But there were forces in our economy and culture that have prevented us from putting up buildings that are as worthy of our affection as these things that we’re losing. So consequently, there’s this hysteria to save every scrap of anything, really, before the Second World War. — James Howard Kunstler, June 11, 2009 KunstlerCast #68: “Historic Preservation”

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My college campus was full of them, boxes, concrete boxes. It’s funny and they were ghastly. I have a vivid because Troy City Hall looks like a memory from back in 1969 of being mini Boston City Hall. They’re both in a stairwell in the new communica- just square boxes with a lot of raw tions building at my college, which concrete defining the doors and win- was a classic brutalismo, and feeling dows. Boston City Hall kind of floats. like I was in the elevator to hell — that It was designed to look as though it this thing was designed absolutely was levitating on its site. Once you on purpose to make you feel bad as get above that, you get these massive you were going up or down the stairs, concrete members. to be as grim and dreary as possible, DC: And the texture, the surface of like going into a dungeon.2 There the concrete is unfinished. You can was certainly a lot of cache at the see little holes and imperfections. time about this whole idea of ex- JHK: Yeah. What you get on the pressing the strength and rawness of surface is from the forms that were the concrete and the honesty of it all. used to mold the concrete as it was But it ended up producing buildings poured in. that were broadly disliked. DC: It looks unfinished. DC: How would you describe a typi- JHK: That’s the whole point. It’s sup- cal brutalist building — what it looks posed to be honest. Of course that’s like, the texture and the size and the the strange thing, because you would shape and the structure? think from its appearance that this JHK: They’re very emphatically stuff is massively strong, but in fact

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Brutalism 177 the iron rebar at the center is melt- construction that these brutalist ing away month by month and year buildings were not going to last long? by year. JHK: I think that, to some degree, DC: Yeah, Troy City Hall has this they just didn’t care because we had massive parking accessory unit that really entered the heart of the period goes along with it. But the city had when we just disposed of stuff. We to close it a while ago because large didn’t care about how long stuff chunks of concrete were falling from lasted, whether it was automobiles the ceiling onto the parked cars. You or houses or institutional buildings, could see the exposed and rusting because we were going to throw them rebar. away anyway and build something JHK: Exactly. This kind of raw con- else within a couple of generations. crete construction tends to disin- DC: You believe it’s unacceptable for tegrate surprisingly fast. It looks so buildings to only last one generation. strong that it’s like the Führerbunker, JHK: It’s pathetic. So much about or some kind of massive thing meant contemporary architecture has been to withstand cluster bombs. Then experimental that the people who you turn around and thirty or forty design and build these things don’t years later, the building’s shot. So we really know what the outcome is end up being surprised that these going to be. This is one of the prob- big massive things have such poor lems when you’re not emulating integrity. prior success. It becomes even more DC: Was it known at the time of problematical now as we face really

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 178 The Kunstlercast: Architecture serious resource constraints that are A lot of this stuff may be the ruins of not going away. the future. So we do all this innovation, but DC: Maybe we can line the train track we don’t necessarily know what the beds with it when we start to rebuild outcome is going to be with some our rail system. new material. It’s only been in the JHK: That’s one possibility. There’s last hundred years that we recovered an interesting story, by the way, about enough skill with concrete to even Adolf Hitler’s building adventures get to the same place where the in Berlin — or at least his ambitions, Romans were at. which were mostly not realized. He was going to rebuild Berlin into a Ruinenwert, Nazis great German Reich capital that he and Neoclassicism called Germania. It included these DC: What happens to all that con- enormous halls for his public ap- crete once they knock down these pearances, one of them a giant dome buildings, or these buildings fall three times the size of the Astrodome down on their own? Can you reuse in Houston. it for anything, or does it just get Hitler was going to do all this, thrown into a landfill? and he was very close to his pet ar- JHK: You can’t grind it up and make chitect, Albert Speer, who later went new concrete. I don’t know what on to be an important functionary we’re going to do with it. It may in the last years of the Nazi party. He resist any of our wishes because it was Hitler’s kind of soul mate in ar- will be too expensive to demolish. chitectural ambition. They arrived

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Brutalism 179 at a theory, which they called ruinen- up an imperial venture like that, I wert, which is one of those German guess those kinds of considerations compound words. It means “ruin come in. value” — the value of ruins. They were DC: Were the buildings that the Nazis thinking about what the residue of created ornamented in a more classi- the Third Reich would be in a thou- cal style, like Roman architecture? sand years when, like the Roman JHK: Sort of. The Beaux-Arts had Empire, it came to an end. They passed by when Hitler came along, wanted to leave some really wonder- and what was left in the 1930s was ful ruins behind. And they knew that stripped down neoclassicism, which reinforced concrete was not going to was kind of like art deco, where you work very well — that it was going to still get gestures and forms toward leave unattractive ruins. So they de- classicism, but they’re simplified. cided that they weren’t going to build That’s the last iteration, the last gasp in reinforced concrete, and instead of classicism within western civi- just do everything in limestone and lization, whether it represents the granite. demonic Nazi party or anybody. DC: That’s a pretty fascinating long- When the war is over, even the term outlook. remnant of classicism is identi- JHK: The fact that they got down to fied with tyranny and Nazism and such a level of insane detail about despotism, and we reject that. By the worrying about the quality of the time we’re getting into the 1950s ruins that they left behind — it’s so in the United States, neoclassicism fantastically weird. When you ramp is so discredited because it’s been

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 180 The Kunstlercast: Architecture thoroughly identified not just with the street network or Berlin. In fact Nazism but also with the Commu- the concert hall was such a bizarre nists. So nobody wants to get near building that it has been nicknamed it. Modernism in all of its various the pregnant oyster ever since.3 styles and iterations becomes the architectural expression of decency The Effort to Save Brutalism and democracy. from the Wrecking Ball DC: It’s ironic that modernism ended DC: It’s hard to believe but there are up producing so many despotic forms historic preservationists out there of architecture — concrete bunkers, trying to save brutalist buildings glass fishbowls, menacing blobs. from being demolished. There was a JHK: It’s incredibly ironic, and I had story on NPR about a group who ef- that feeling when I went to Berlin. fectively blocked the demolition of On the west side of Berlin, which was a brutalist church in Washington, the free democratic side, they had to D.C., called the “Third Church.”4 It’s rebuild all the cultural infrastructure a ridiculous building from the 1970s that had been on the Communist with one window, no steeple. The side of the city — the great art mu- church bells are hanging from a slab seum, the great symphony hall, the of concrete sticking out from the opera house were all behind the wall. side. The poor congregation wants to And they rebuilt it not only accord- replace the building with something ing to modernism, but along this that better serves their needs and street network that was all curvi- actually represents their practices linear and made no sense within and beliefs. But they claimed in this

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Brutalism 181 news story that they can’t demolish in a particularly strange time in his- the building — or even change it — be- tory. Where it’s coming from prob- cause a group of preservationists had ably is that the historic preservation- the building designated a historic ists have ties to academia. Historic landmark ...unbeknownst to the preservation is now a profession, congregation itself. and it’s often taught as a subgroup That’s the other part of the in the architecture schools. And the story I find kind of hard to believe, academic architecture professors personally. Because there are plenty all have an intellectual investment of buildings on the National Register in supporting the stuff that was of Historic Places that get knocked done in the last fifty years, in sup- down all the time. But the preserva- porting the legitimacy of it. So you tionists have somehow prevented get a mutually reinforcing system that from happening in this case. where the academics are tied in with JHK: Yeah, this has become a trend the historic preservationists. The in certain parts of the country. situation might be quite different in DC: To save this stuff? thirty years or fifty years when the JHK: Yeah, because the fact of the brutalist buildings themselves are so matter is, itis historic now — “his beyond repair and really represent torical.” something that comes to be despised DC: Ugh. by future generations. JHK: I know it’s sad to imagine, but DC: I should add that the story about that’s where we’re at. I remind you the church — it’s not just an aesthetics that this is something that’s going on issue.

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JHK: It’s an ideological issue. say aesthetics are subjective and DC: Yeah. It is an ugly building. therefore they discredit legitimate But the aesthetics are creating a complaints. functional problem for the church. Churches are supposed to be wel- Arguing Aesthetics coming. But this building doesn’t JHK: So many of the common welcome. You can’t even tell what it arguments you hear on a small-town is from the outside, so people don’t design review board end up being even know it’s a church. No one just personal taste biases or fashion who doesn’t already belong to the biases, and it’s unfortunate. It ends congregation is coming inside to up being a solipsistic issue. pray or worship or to see what this DC: I do want to address the issue of congregation is all about. Even if beauty itself, though, beautiful build- you are worshipping inside, it’s like ings. I know it’s slightly subjective, worshipping in a parking garage. but it’s also an important matter that And apparently the concrete the I don’t think should be dismissed. building is made of is so porous that These buildings are almost univer- it reeks of mildew inside. sally recognized as being ugly. And So the arguments against this you have said before that we must particular brutalist building, and build beautiful buildings to honor against brutalism in general, are not our existence — that’s the purpose of just about aesthetics. That’s the way beautiful buildings. Why is it impor- some people try to dismiss arguments tant to honor our existence? against this type of stuff, right? They JHK: We have to feel that our mis-

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Brutalism 183 sion in existence — not just as ani- question as to why raw concrete may mals on some third-rate planet, but or may not be beautiful. To some this whole project of civilization — people no doubt it is. There are cer- has some dignity and some meaning. tain kinds of Japanese ceramics that So we want to confer a sense of dig- are designed to be very raw on pur- nity and purpose on it. I think that’s pose and are considered to be very understandable. We want to make it beautiful in their own way. There something that’s worthy of our af- probably are elements of even some fection. Even if it’s just among us, let of these brutalist buildings that we alone what the cosmic forces, like the detest that have some kind of appeal hypothetical figures like God, might to them. They are not totally devoid think of what we’re doing. of appeal. But on the whole I think I think we want it to reflect the there are things about them that best of all we’ve discovered about we recognize as being not friendly our own cognitive processes and the for us, and not friendly for our fu- human brain, and our values, and ture and for our spirits. They drag us everything that goes into making us down and degrade us, and they have worth being here and worth continu- a baleful kind of personality. ing. I don’t think it’s a good thing Aside from the sheer cynicism of at all for a group of beings to have a the fashion-directed impulses of the self-esteem problem, to think that architecture scene in the late twen- they’re not worth being on the planet tieth century, it is a little bit hard to they inhabit. understand why people would get There’s perhaps an additional off with fashioning things that are

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 184 The Kunstlercast: Architecture inherently baleful. I suppose it’s part to tear it down. Even though there of the whole ethos of being cool. may be some historic preservation DC: Brutalism does not honor our strictures against doing that, I don’t existence. think very many tears are going to be JHK: I don’t think so — we can tell shed when these things go. from the eagerness that people show

Turquoise, Panelized Crap from the 1960s I go to towns all over the United States and there’s still this residue of these turquoise panels over everything. Every town in America bought a ton of this stuff and they slapped it on all their old buildings, rather than maintain the older ornaments. We’re still peeling that stuff off all over the United States. To some degree, we’ll probably be returning to regional materials found in nature. The more important buildings will be made of ma- sonry, stone, brick — the traditional materials. Once you get into that you start getting back into levels of skill which can produce something more interesting than a turquoise aluminum panel-clad four-story motor vehicle bureau. — James Howard Kunstler, June 11, 2009 KunstlerCast #68: “Historic Preservation”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Chapter 5: Getting There

Making Other Arrangements

Duncan Crary: I have a car, which I James Howard Kunstler: The Zipcar don’t really drive very often. I keep it is an American manifestation of parked on a city street several blocks the “car clubs” which are popular in outside of downtown where I live. It’s Europe. The idea of the car club is a convenience sometimes, but most you don’t have to go through all the of the time it’s a nuisance. I have to grief of car ownership and mainte- keep checking on it and moving it nance and payment. You join this from one side of the street to the club for like $800 a year and anytime other. I have to pay to maintain it and you need a car to go on an excursion, to have insurance. I’ve been thinking or go on a picnic in the country, or go about other options for car owner- to a store and bring something bulky ship. We don’t have any around me, home, or move to a new apartment, but I’ve been looking into things like you go out and you get one of these Zipcar and car clubs. vehicles from the car club. They have

185 ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 186 The Kunstlercast: Getting There many kinds of different vehicles — apartments fairly close together and sporty vehicles for excursions, well integrated with all the shopping, pickup trucks if you need to move entertainment, civic, cultural and your stuff and so on. educational stuff, all mixed in very It would seem to be a sensible richly. They’re not prevented from thing here in the US. But, remember, making an excursion by living like you have to have the whole social that. Any time you want a car, you go urbanistic and architectural infra- down and get a car from the car club structure in place for that to work. It and you drive out to the countryside. works fine in Amsterdam, Holland, You know, in America we all have because Amsterdam is a wonderful, our own cars at our disposal all the walkable city. They never destroyed time, but because of that, there’s their traditional urban pattern. almost no place in America that’s People are living in row houses and worth being in or going to. That’s one

Segway The Segway was a good idea for people who are disabled, let’s say, for one reason or another; too old. But the idea that normal people need a prosthetic extension for walking around, that was also kind of nuts. It’s just another personal transportation device that costs a huge amount of money, like $3,000 or something. Was it better than a bicycle? — James Howard Kunstler May 8, 2008 KunstlerCast #13: “Green Buildings”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Making Other Arrangements 187 of the unintended consequences of oil problems and the problems of mass automobile use, you actually people affording cars in any form, destroy the terrain so voraciously the failure of the car-dependency that nowhere is worth driving to. The system is going to be epic. We’re go- other one, of course, is it’s estimated ing to be able to mitigate it somewhat to cost somewhere around $8,000 with schemes to work around it, like a year to keep any car on the road, the jitney busses in the third world between the payments, the mainte- where people take their personal nance, the insurance and the fuel. transportation and turn it into That’s generally the going rate.1 So if some kind of a shuttle. But the final you’re only paying a thousand bucks reckoning with car-dependency and a year to belong to a car club and the suburbia that goes with it is go- you can have one anytime you need ing to be one of those epic changes in one — and you don’t have to worry human affairs, at least for America. about storing it, parking it or insur- DC: I met some people at the Con- ing — great! gress for the New Urbanism this DC: If they could only get a critical summer who worked for car-sharing mass for the need in my town, I companies here in the in the US. would join a car club. One was a small local company in JHK: In the United States, it’s going Madison, Wisconsin, and the other to be a problem because by the time was a national outfit based in Chi- we have a critical mass for that stuff, cago. Apparently car sharing is on the whole motoring scene may be the rise in the US. So is ride sharing, in complete disarray. Between the which is like a formal hitchhiking/

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Road Trip! For me, most of the enjoyment of the road trip actually comes in the anticipation of it. In a way, it’s an anticipation of being liberated from the routines of your humdrum everyday life. What we’re talking about is just the same age-old American Dream of the liberty of the road — the freedom of the open road. It even goes back to the pre-automobile age, with Walt Whitman singing the “Song of the Open Road.” This is a very strong theme in American life. Now for us, the practical reality of it is, yeah we’re on the open road, but it’s the New York State Thruway. It’s flat. It’s boring. There are almost no human artifacts to see except the broken-down residue of a farm or something. We don’t even have the experience of stopping to get something to eat or drink in a place that has any character, because they’re all just thruway rest stops and they’re all the same. So even that element of it is monotonous and boring. But I guess part of the romance of the open road is the idea that you’re going to have a sequence of new adventures and that you’ll encounter strange, interesting and wonderful new things. We’re not likely to do that on the New York State Thruway — I mean unless we see an incredibly gruesome accident, or get in one ourselves. — James Howard Kunstler, January 12, 2010 KunstlerCast #96: “Road Trip!” En route to Rochester, New York

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Reinvesting in Rail 189 carpooling program where you don’t we’re just discovering how you necessarily know the people you’re work around stuff. I do think that riding with. One place where they the bright side of workarounds is do this is Washington, D. C., with the that they exercise your ability to be “slugging.”2 creative and resilient. And that’s one JHK: These are workarounds and of the things we’re going to see more we’ll see that for a while. Right now of: very interesting local resiliency.

Reinvesting in Rail

Duncan Crary: One of the projects est effect on our gas consumption that you advocate for is restoring of anything we could do. It would passenger rail in the US. put scores of thousands of people James Howard Kunstler: As I am to work at meaningful jobs at all fond of saying about the American levels. It would benefit people in all railroad situation, we have a train ranks of society. It does not require system that the Bulgarians would any new technology, and the fact be ashamed of. But the railroad that we haven’t been talking about situation is serious in a number of it shows what a nation of clowns ways. There is probably no project we really are, how unserious we are that would have a greater effect on about our problems. I can’t overstate reducing our oil use right away than how important this is, because the fixing the passenger railroad system airlines are dying — they are visibly in America. It would have the great- disintegrating around us. You’re not

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 190 The Kunstlercast: Getting There going to be able to visit granny in of the rolling stock that we need to Louisville if we don’t get the train run on the rails. Because obviously, system running again. they’re not tooled up for it now. But DC: At least President Obama has it wouldn’t take that much. They do started to pay attention to passenger have the large assembly buildings, rail. Too bad the money he’s putting and lines, and the robots and the toward it is only a tiny fraction of equipment. what he’s putting into fixing the DC: When the Obama Administra- highway system. tion first announced their plans to JHK: I wish that we could have made reinvest in our national rail system it a condition of bailing out the there was some confusion about auto companies that they would their use of the term “high-speed.” start some kind of manufacturing JHK: I was deceived myself when

Mass Transit I prefer to use the term public transit rather than mass transit. Because just in casual conversation with people, or in formal conversation in city council chambers, whenever you invoke the word “mass transit,” it seems to summon up the idea of communism and Joseph Stalin and pushing people around. That’s not what public transit is all about. It’s not about forcing you to do stuff. — James Howard Kunstler, September 16, 2010 KunstlerCast #125: “Cassandra”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Reinvesting in Rail 191 the Obama proposal for rail was in the US that was the envy of the released. They billed it as “high- world. We had a lot of trains running speed” rail. What I said at the time over 100 mph in 1925 on tracks that was that it’s crazy to build a separate were then not very old. In fact, many high-speed rail network that would of them were pretty darn new. If we be an additional layer of tracks over can get back to that level of service, what we’ve got already — because we would benefit hugely. true high-speed rail can’t run on the DC: The speed issue seems to domi- kind of tracks we now have. I think nate the discussion. But it’s probably we need to demonstrate that we can more important to keep the trains do this on the Bulgarian level first on time at whatever speed they’re before we get that techno-grandiose. running at. But what they were talking about JHK: One of the reasons that nobody was fixing up the existing rail net- wants to take a train from New York works and then running trains over City to Chicago instead of flying is 100 mph. That’s not really high-speed because it’s uniformly seven hours to people in the world today. So in a late. People just won’t tolerate that. way, they’re being a little grandiose. But if what they’re really looking to Light Rail do is to rebuild the railroad network DC: We’re still pouring money into we have, then we have to applaud that fixing the highways right now with effort because it’s exactly what we the stimulus package. It seems like need to do. there’s plenty of room within those We had a regular railroad system highway corridors to include light rail.

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JHK: Sure. We do have the median transit system apart from the heavy strips, and, indeed, we do have the rail passenger system that was also extra lanes. the envy of the world at the turn DC: Would you support the effort to of the previous century. In the real rebuild the nation’s highways if we heyday of the streetcar era, which cut down on some of the lanes and was about 1890 to about 1925 or so, converted those lanes into light rail we had a fantastic parallel system of for short-distance, intercity travel? light rails that went all over the place. JHK: I’m not even convinced that The interurban trolley lines would you’d have to cut down on the lanes. get you from Boston to Wisconsin Probably the best thing we could do with only one twenty-mile inter- right away would be to start a couple ruption, which was located in New of experimental lines in places like York State, oddly enough. Back in the our region, running from Albany 1920s, that’s how comprehensive the to Schenectady, Troy and through system was. And we were a poorer the corridor heading into the North society then than we are now, even Country. with our financial meltdown and DC: These are all small cities rela- banking calamity. So the idea that tively close to each other of not even we can’t build something like this 100,000 people living in the core. So is really preposterous. the ridership may not be that large. The bottom line is, we do have JHK: No, but these places were these corridors that are now being magnificently connected by light devoted to cars. It seems to me that rail once. The US had an interurban we could try at least a few experi-

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Reinvesting in Rail 193 mental light rail lines. Whether it’s JHK: As bike trails, they are rather in our region, or going from Atlanta rewarding places. But you can’t do to Chattanooga, or from Dayton to it without having a nagging feeling Columbus, Ohio, there are plenty of that the whole thing was a fiasco — opportunities to do this all over the that, yeah, it is nice to ride on a ded- country. And it would be heartwarm- icated bike trail, but we have taken ing to see us do something other the railroad system in America and than just fix bridges and tunnels. thrown it away. On the other hand, Dallas, Texas, built a light rail line you could think of these rails-to- about nine years ago and they had trails projects as a form of land bank- very low expectations for it. But the ing. Because you could refurbish the ridership has really been quite high. rights-of-way — they’re still there. In Portland, Oregon, is another place fact, it’s a good thing that they still that made some really large invest- exist as corridors. It is not that dif- ments in light rail and I think those ficult to rebuild a track bed and a have proved to work out really well. railbed and to put the tracks on top Everywhere that we’ve seen it, light of it. I imagine in the future we will. rail is paying off. By the way, there’s no reason why you can’t have a bike trail running Rails to Trails parallel to a rail trail. Of course it DC: What’s your take on these rails- means you will be disturbed by a to-trails initiatives, when they take train going by periodically, but it an old, abandoned railbed, and they won’t be like being on an interstate turn it into a bike trail? highway.

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Duncan Crary: Jim, you’re anticipat- inland waterways are going to be the ing a big revival of water transit in place where the action is, because the years ahead. What do you see the for a while I think that the American role of water transportation being in economy is going to be much more the US in the next fifty, sixty years? inwardly focused on continental James Howard Kunstler: A lot activity. It doesn’t mean that we won’t of projections of the future are have trade with other countries, but predicated on the idea that all the I don’t think that globalism is going conditions of the present are going to continue in nearly the exuberant to continue. That we’re going to way that we’ve known it. continue to have air freight and that Cities in the future are going to the commercial aviation industry be organized around their waterways is going to function the same way. in ways that they’re not now. One That we’re going to continue to have thing that means is that we’re not go- container shipping. That globalism ing to build a lot of glittering condo as we know it will remain the same. towers on the waterfront. We’ve got And that we’ll continue to have the to put the infrastructure back on trucking system. I don’t think that the riverfronts for ships and boats — any of these things are true. everything from the dry docks where My version of the future is that they fix the boats, to the warehouses it’s going to be about transporting where they store the goods, to the things by boat and on water. The counting houses where you have the

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Water Transit 195 back offices for the shippers. All that rail system, because the canals to stuff is going to have to go back. some extent were put out of busi- I don’t know what’s going to hap- ness in the 1850s by the growth and pen to our canal system. We have this development of the railroad. fabulous inland waterway system in There’s still a lot of freight America. Much of it is still there and moving on rail in this country. We a lot of it is in pretty good shape. The have a few lines in America now New York State Canal System has that are carrying a lot of freight, and been kept in immaculate condition. in particular a lot of coal to electric I went to a canal outside of Chicago, power plants. But what we had before in a place called Lockport, Illinois, 1950 was a much richer network of and I was impressed with that.3 It rails that went to every little town connects Chicago at Lake Michigan in America. Those are the lines that to the Mississippi–Ohio–Missouri don’t exist any more and those are river system. It’s still in excellent the ones we would have to put back. condition. I don’t know if there will be some I think in the future, when we’re combination of railroads, canals, strapped for oil and mechanical rivers and navigable waterways. One energy and it becomes harder to run thing I am confident about, though, big earth-moving machines, then the is that we’re not going to have the canals may become very important kind of trucking industry that we’ve again. A lot of it depends on whether enjoyed for the last eighty years. And we’re going to be able to rebuild the we’re probably not going to have the

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 196 The Kunstlercast: Getting There same kind of private car ownership vices, prostitution, gambling, cheap system that we’ve gotten used to. housing. So we got this idea over the But emergently we are going to have years in American cities that water- to find new ways to move stuff and fronts are disagreeable places. That’s people around. one of the reasons we sanitized them DC: What do you see happening to and made such an effort to remove all the old communities that were all the infrastructure that was there built along our inland waterway? and replace it with sparkling parks Right now a lot of them aren’t doing and bikeways and rock ’n’ roll band- so well. shells and condominiums. We basi- JHK: We do have great inland water- cally went in there and disinfected way cities like St. Louis, Cincinnati the waterfronts. and Kansas City that have really We’re going to have to rebuild withered in many ways. Those are the facilities for the infrastructure the places I think are going to come for doing this activity again. That back. They’re not going to come back means we’re going to have to make as skyscraper condo cities though. room again for the warehouses and The waterfronts of these places may the piers and the sleazy accom- actually be pretty disorderly. modations for the sailors. We’re People who work on waterfronts, not even thinking about it now. longshoreman and sailors — they’re It’s so far off the radar screen. But not necessarily the most appealing the current situation in America is people in the working world, and just laughable. Manhattan Island, they bring certain things with them: which is probably the most amazing

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Water Transit 197 protected deep-water harbor in the to Elizabeth, New Jersey, because of United States if not the world — I the nature of container shipping and don’t think it has a single activated the fact that you need a certain kind pier or facility on the whole island of infrastructure for the cranes that anymore. have to unload these giant steel boxes DC: They have restaurants on the and then stack them up in these vast few remaining piers now and things parking lots for the steel boxes. So like that. you need a lot of space of a type that JHK: Yeah, or tennis clubs. The island wasn’t available on the west side piers of Manhattan used to bristle with of Manhattan. It doesn’t mean that docks all the way from the Upper New York isn’t a seaport anymore, it West Side clear around to the Battery just means that we suburbanized the to the East Side. It was bristling with shipping activity. But I think that’s piers and activity. That’s all gone. But gonna change. it’s only moved about five miles west

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The Green Metropolis?

Duncan Crary: There’s a lot of talk our tendency to just use public rela- about “green” buildings these days, tions to make everything all right. and the idea that living in skyscrapers Unfortunately, “green” also has the is supposedly a “green” way of life. subconscious effect of making peo- You’re not too keen on skyscrapers ple think that if you only ruralize to begin with but you’re also not the city, it’ll be better because it’ll be thrilled with the “green” building “greener” — there will be more plants movement right now, are you? there. I don’t know if that’s the correct James Howard Kunstler: I’m not way to think about this at all. I would comfortable with the term “green” prefer to frame the whole issue in as applied to these issues, because terms of whether our cities and our it’s become a meaningless buzzword living places have a future or not. that’s supposed to stand for a sense of DC: There’s also a lot of greenwash- having a future. It’s consistent with ing out there, labeling things to be

199 ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 200 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind environmentally friendly when called green thinking that I see. A lot they’re not really. of it is being applied to skyscrapers — JHK: I have a very dear friend — a which I happen to think is a building hippie carpenter who morphed into type that will be associated with the a developer — and he did a so-called fossil fuel age and probably should green development, full of buildings not be built anymore for reasons that that were impeccably built without go beyond that. I think they generally any kind of artificial off-gassing overburden and distort the urban insulation. It was pristine. The fabric by putting too many people on trouble is that it’s built in a cul-de- one footprint. sac subdivision, which is going to DC: You went to New York to take require mandatory driving and is part in a panel discussion about not connected to any other kind of this idea that Manhattan, with all its civic activity or infrastructure. skyscrapers, is “the greenest place in So I’m not impressed with the so- America.” What happened there?

Green Yammer There’s so much yammer about greening this and being green. Every- body wants to be green. I think we’re blowing a lot of green smoke up our ass. — James Howard Kunstler, May 8, 2008 KunstlerCast #13: “Green Buildings”

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“Green Skyscrapers” time to refine and rethink his basic JHK: The National Arts Club orga- idea. He seems to have backed away nized a panel discussion with David somewhat from the stacking people Owen about his new book Green up in apartments as being this sole Metropolis, which is somewhat con- animating purpose for his position, troversial, I suppose, among the ar- and he’s taken, more or less, the New chitectural community down there. Urbanist position that you have Although for us peak oilsters and col- to create walkable neighborhoods lapsenicks it’s not terribly big news. that are dense. I think we both agree David Owen is a New Yorker that what’s missing from most of staff writer. About six years ago, he the dialogue is the notion that the published an article that was very walkable neighborhood has to be a influential.1 What he said was that very big part of the answer to this Manhattan was the greenest living calamity we face. arrangement in America. And that There are a couple of points of if you could just stack people up in argument that I have with David apartment buildings, then that would Owen and with a couple of the other be the greatest way for people to live guys who were there. There were two and it would solve all our problems. other architects at the panel from I’m really simplifying this. Robert A.M. Stern’s office in New Then he turned the magazine York, which does big projects all over article into a full-fledged book,Green the world in places like New York Metropolis. I think he’s had some and Melbourne, Australia.2 They’re

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 202 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind off on a green building jag now, but in decades ahead, we were preoccu- unfortunately their green buildings pied with the energy issues. There are green megastructures — green was a lot of concern about what the skyscrapers and green landscrapers. electrical and natural gas equation I have a real beef with that. is going to be for big cities, because Part of the issue is: are we going to it’s imperative to have natural gas if have a serious debate about skyscrap- you’re going to run fifty-story apart- ers, and towers, and megastructures? ment buildings. It’s another one of Because we really have to stop going those things that calls into question that way — we have to stop designing, whether we can run all these mega- planning and building megastruc- structures the way that we’re expect- tures. We have to start thinking about ing to. But something else has entered rebuilding our cities at a much finer the picture now — the question of grain, probably at a lower height — whether these tower buildings will they can still be very dense, though. ever be renovated, or whether they Nobody goes to Barcelona or central are renovate-able. Paris and complains about a lack of cosmopolitan verve in these places. The Great Tragedy DC: What is your position against of the Skyscraper City skyscrapers? JHK: A monumental amount of JHK: Those of us who have been talk- money was rolled into the infra- ing about these things for a while, structure of Manhattan during this when we talked about the scale of the explosion of Wall Street activity over city and how it was going to turn out the last twenty years, and a lot of it

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Green Metropolis 203 was applied to fixing real estate and scraper that looks kinda weird — this fixing the public realm of New York big glass flying wing that they’ve pro- City. But I think New York has gone posed for Battery Park City, for some through its last major renovation empty parcel there. It’s this elegant, at that scale and it’s not going to sweeping-glass, wing-like structure — happen again. they’re proposing to build it now and Now we have this new generation I’m thinking, “You know, that build- of buildings that went up in the last ing will never be fixed after its de- boom and they’re very high-tech. A sign life wears off. It will be a one- lot of them are glass buildings, with generation building.” glass curtain walls, and they’re made That will prove to be the great of pretty exotic fabricated modular tragedy of the skyscraper city — that materials. I don’t think we’re going they ended up being throwaway to have the money to repair them. buildings that could not be subject The financial crisis that we’re going to adaptive reuse. It’s true in terms through now is not over and what it of the materials they’re made out of will represent in the long run will be and their size and scale. So how do a very long and comprehensive loss we get from that way of building to of capital to do the things that we a mentality where we can properly would like to do. perceive the fabric of the city as a So it’s really weird to see the ar- living organism that can renew itself chitects, like the two architects at the periodically? I don’t know how we’re National Arts Club, give a presenta- going to get there because this stuff tion about building a brand new sky- has hubris written all over it.

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The Fate of Condos their jobs? What happens when JHK: There’s another big question those buildings start to lose owners about the experiment of condo- and you have a tower with forty-three ization. And I emphasize “experi- units in foreclosure, not paying their ment” because we’ve gotta remember homeowners’ association fee? this has really never been done be- This is an experiment that we fore in history, where you have these haven’t seen the end of and I think it massive eighty-story skyscrapers — will end in a lot of tears. The bottom like the one that Frank Gehry just line will be a lot of buildings that designed for downtown New York — no one knows how to take care of broken up into separate property because the revenue flows for the ownerships and then all organized governance will not be there and in a homeowner association gov- things will not get fixed. ernance. You need to do that with a I read somewhere that when em- megastructure in order to operate pires are about to dissolve, they often and maintain it. But we’ve never build their biggest and most outland- been in a situation where that kind ish monuments. And I’m looking at of organized ownership has gotten the skyline of New York and all these into trouble. We’ve only seen it on new starchitect buildings that are go- the upswing where we were able to ing up, thinking, “Yeah, that’s exactly get it going. What happens when what’s going on. We’re building these your economy starts wobbling and great monuments in the twilight of twenty thousand hedgefunders lose being a wealthy and powerful empire.”

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The Effects of Gigantism on Human Neurology So much of what we have constructed in our lifetimes doesn’t even exist at a scale that’s congenial to human neurology. Gigantism is every where. Even in the most common commercial buildings that we go into, the Wal-Marts and the Target stores, these things exist at fantastic scales. I find them overwhelming. I almost never go into a Wal-Mart if I can possibly help it. The last time I was in there I was astounded and overwhelmed by the size and scale. I found it immediately depressing and discouraging. It all kind of looked like that warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie, where they show the place that the Ark of the Covenant has been stored by the government, in some warehouse that’s like a seven-mile-long corridor with stacks that are seventy feet high. That’s a very common experience for people who go into a Home Depot or a Wal-Mart, and you’re dwarfed by everything in there. But there’s also the common experience of having to traverse a parking lot. It’s such a demoralizing thing that you feel like you’re in some kind of a death march every time you do it. — James Howard Kunstler, May 6, 2010 KunstlerCast #110: “Human Scale”

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Is NYC Greener ticed lately, which is that in America, than Small Cities? we seem to have this idea that just DC: Do you think New York City is because we can measure things, we “greener” than, say, where I live here can control them, too. Generally, I’m in a little city — Troy, New York? I not quite sure that we can. get into this discussion from time DC: What makes Manhattan efficient to time, and people are constantly today is not necessarily going to be telling me that everything is so much true in the future? more efficient in Manhattan — that JHK: Exactly. The equation is going there are more people using less to change pretty drastically, I think. space in New York, that New York has As that occurs, then all these econo- more public transportation options, metric arguments that we’re bring- that the goods from overseas don’t ing to it are going to be irrelevant. have to travel as far from where DC: But as far as how things operate they’re unloaded to where they’re today, you feel that New York is more consumed. efficient than a small city like mine, JHK: There’s no question that it’s a hundred and fifty miles upriver? true statistically that New Yorkers, JHK: Sure. But what troubles me or Manhattanites, use less electricity is that all of our assumptions are per person than people in other based on the idea that exactly what’s parts of the country. But of course, happening now is going to continue econometrics are not the only way of indefinitely. All of the arrangements, understanding things, and that leads down to things like the trucks to a peculiar little area that I’ve no- delivering the pork chops to the

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Green Metropolis 207 supermarkets — that must be terrifi- I’d rather be in a city full of seven- cally expensive. Resupplying this story buildings than in the middle island of enormous needs every day, of Manhattan. Although there’s no every hour of the day — it’s just a huge question that Manhattan is very enterprise, and I’m not sure it’s going exciting and full of vitality. to be able to continue at that scale. I think guys like Nikos Salingaros DC: OK. This is a silly hypothetical, and maybe Christopher Alexander — but I want to get down to your phi- and to some extent Leon Krier — losophy here. Suppose the Martians have demonstrated that piling and landed tomorrow with this limit- stacking up so many people on one less, magic fuel that burns cleanly, tiny building footprint does have a etc., and there are no more peak oil tendency to badly distort the civic concerns, there are no more global fabric in ways that are not that obvi- warming concerns, no more finan- ous to us but that end up producing cial woes. Then what would you say a pernicious outcome. My own in- about building places like Manhat- tuition is that we would probably be tan for their efficiency? Would you better off — and we would have better support that, or would you still be cities — if we eschewed the skyscraper. opposed to the scale and the way it When all is said and done I feel functions? that skyscrapers will prove to be JHK: I myself am much more com- anomalous building types that came fortable in a lower city. I think the along during a very special point in typical European cities are a scale human history when we did have that, for me, is more comfortable. this cheap energy fiesta. Since it’s

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Skyscraper Terrarium Farming We have to cut through the fantasies people are indulging in now, like the idea that we’re going to have these vertical skyscraper gardens that are like terrariums. I find that to be just a completely idiotic notion, because the cost of constructing a ten-story terrarium for growing arugula and basil is just totally out of the realm of reality. We can’t afford to build these things now. The planet is going broke as far as money is concerned and we’re going to have to be very careful about figuring out what is really possible. Just as there are traditional urban methods and models for building places where we live, there are also traditional methods of doing gardening locally. They all require a certain amount of skill and knowledge, some of which has been lost, but it also depends on re allocating things and changing laws in some cases — like if people are going to keep chickens in urban neighborhoods. That’s something you can do, and it was probably pretty normal before the First World War. But now of course it’s been outlawed all over America. So we have to go get under the hood of the regulations and the laws again, and these are some of the things we have to change. — James Howard Kunstler, June 3, 2010 KunstlerCast #114: “Agrarian Urbanism”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION The Green Metropolis 209 been going on now for four or five Wall Street, it’s this monotonous, generations, it’s normal to us. But mechanistic, relentless grid that I don’t think we get a sense of how marches north till it ends up at the abnormal it really is in the course of Harlem River. And it contains almost history, and that the equations of the none of the devices of urban design future simply aren’t going to support that allow people to create places of that kind of behavior. We’re going to beauty in other cities. We have very have to get back to a scale of things few terminating vistas, very few that is different and more consistent meaningful small plazas or squares, with living in a non-fossil-fuel-fiesta or places where streets meet in a type world. meaningful way — and even where they do, they don’t really define Manhattan is Not a space well. Well-Designed City Times Square is a freakish JHK: There’s something else about publish place. It’s just an odd inter Manhattan in particular that prob- section of a couple of very large ably needs to be said. That for all of boulevards. Herald Square ten blocks its great vitality and the tremendous south is the same thing. They’re not amount of action, energy and hap- really deliberately created public pening stuff that goes on there, it’s places — certainly not anything as not a very well-designed city per se — good as a plaza in a lesser city like even just in terms of the street and Barcelona, where you have a big block plan. Once you get above the square where the buildings define old Dutch part of the city, beyond it like an outdoor room.

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You can count on one hand the And there’s Bryant Park, which is deliberately created public places in just a half a block of greenery behind Manhattan that have any artistry to the 42nd Street library. But there just them. Gramercy Park is a lovely part isn’t a lot there. The only thing you of Manhattan, the little two-acre park get in New York City is this massive there allows the buildings around Central Park of a thousand acres at it to be very grand and raises their the very center of it all, but you don’t real estate value. The thing is that it’s get much at all in the way of mean- a private park. When all’s said and ingful public space artfully designed done, you need a key to get in there. anywhere else.

Contracting Cities

Duncan Crary: Jim, you don’t think James Howard Kunstler: I do think the skyscraper districts of our big that all cities in North America — all cities are going to be successful in major metroplexes, whether they’re the future — they may not even be eastern ones or in the Sunbelt — I “successful” now in some ways. But think they’re all going to contract. you do believe American cities are This will be a global phenomenon — going to have to contract in the fu- it won’t just be in the US. We’re see- ture — the people and the businesses ing it first here because we pumped and the activities are going to return up the first industrial economy, after to more dense, traditional, walkable England, and we’re the first to really city centers. flame out and tank. So the places

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Frederick Law Olmsted Olmsted is a very interesting character in American urban history. He is the great park maker. But he created a lot of mischief because Ameri- cans now only know one kind of park, and that’s the big landscape simulation of the rural countryside that has been vanquished by the colossal new industrial city — that is what Central Park is. The Olmsted Park is our main model for how to do parks in this country and consequently, our cities tend to have big parks and very few small ones that are distributed equally around the fabric of the city so that the city can really breathe. There’s also a problem with the conflict between romanticism and formalism, because the parks of Olmsted are based on this idea of trying to recapitulate the arbitrary way that nature does things. But you need more overt formality to make small parks work. Formal parks don’t contain much of an understory — the trees are there and the trunks of the trees are there, but mostly you can see between them. You can see the benches and things between them. You can see to the other side, generally, to the buildings and there is no place for dangerous people to hide. That is one of the things that they do so well in Paris where they never abandon the idea of formality and geometry. We do these small parks in America and we fill them up with arbitrary plantings of shrubs and hedges and things and then we are surprised that people regard them as dangerous. — James Howard Kunstler, July 31, 2008 KunstlerCast #25: “Frederick Law Olmsted” ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 212 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind where that occurred — Detroit, Cleve- and the leaders are trying to redirect land, Dayton, Toledo, Akron — these people and businesses back into are the places that are really contract- a more compact, manageable area ing very badly. again. The question is how this contrac- JHK: What you can say about Flint tion is going to occur and how we is true of so many cities across the respond to it. We’ve got a tremendous nation, particularly in the old rust job ahead of us in downscaling our belts in the Upper Midwest and here cities and reforming them and de- in the Mohawk and Hudson valleys. automobilizing them. The amount The condition is pretty similar, of work that’s going to involve is whether you’re in Grand Rapids or enormous. In fact, I hope it doesn’t Kalamazoo or Rock Island, Illinois, overwhelm us, and I hope we’re able or Indianapolis — these are towns to do it. that are increasingly cored. There’s DC: I’ve been reading about how less activity in the very first rings Youngstown, Ohio, and Flint, Michi- around the centers. And they’re gan, are proactively making plans to contracting. The city governments shrink their cities.3 These were cities in Flint and Youngstown have come that became pretty large during up with a kind of outright policy manufacturing boom periods. But for managing the contraction. This now that the industries have moved involves taking over buildings and away, there are a lot of abandoned houses and knocking them down so and underactive parts of town. that there’s no longer any squatting Things are pretty spread out now and public safety issues.

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The contraction process is very DC: The contraction is a little differ- painful and highly visible, and it ent in Detroit, because it’s so much creates a lot of anxiety in us as we bigger than Youngstown and Flint — witness it occurring. We see all this it’s geographically larger than Man- property vanishing and disintegrat- hattan, Boston and San Francisco ing in the city centers. There’s often combined. And it may contract into a huge wish to rescue it, which is in- multiple urban villages. consistent with what the economy JHK: The city officials of Detroit can provide or afford right now and are going into whole urban areas it doesn’t happen. So if a place like and demolishing the residue of Flint, Michigan, is trying to manage the ruined buildings because they its own contraction, that’s something want to deactivate the infrastruc- that we should probably applaud. It’s ture — especially the water and sewer a worthy effort to try to manage it. stuff that they don’t want to pay to I hope they choose the things they maintain now. They’re sort of trying really can manage and stay away to preserve it in amber for what it is, from the things that are probably but it’ll probably rot out anyway. just going to get them in trouble. We don’t really know what the Obviously Detroit is the mother destiny of those neighborhoods is ship of all the disintegrating Rust going to be. The whole region around Belt cities, although it’s not that Detroit may end up becoming a re- much worse off than Cleveland. So gion of smaller urban organisms this disease is pretty far gone and separated by stretches of some kind pronounced. of agricultural land.

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I remember going to Detroit in So much of it depends on emer- the late eighties and early nineties gent, self-organizing behavior that to do the legwork for a chapter in even under the best of circumstances The Geography of Nowhere. Back then, you may not be able to plan. And I the buildings were still there in what would advise against thinking it’s were then the slums around the old normal for an urban area to be rela- nineteenth-century neighborhoods. beled as a farm — because that’s prob- Seven years later they were wild- ably a typological mix-up. From my flower meadows. point of view, we need to remain DC: That’s like the Talking Heads aware that even as farming becomes song “(Nothing But) Flowers.”4 a more local thing — and industrial JHK: Now they’re going through an- agriculture winds down — the places other iteration — they’re becoming that will be successful will be the gardens. People are growing vege places that have some agriculture tables. There will probably be many near and around them. Under the other layers and cycles of this as we best conditions that’s going to hap- sort it out. We’ll probably go from pen on the fringe of town, in the the situation where people are caus- place beyond the urban part. ally gardening a lot of empty vacant I think we also have to remember space to the point where people are that most cities are where they are building houses and cottages in and because they occupy important sites. amongst these spaces. Sooner or later So something will probably be in the centers of these towns will start most of these places, especially the to re-densify. cities in the Upper Midwest and the

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Rust Belt, because most of them are there. But they’re not going to be the located on waterways or important industrial-scaled, industrial-strength rail lines. The waterways aren’t going settlements that we’ve been used to away even if everything else does. in our lifetime. So there’ll be towns and settlements

City by City

DC: One of the complaints I hear suburban sprawl instead. We spent from older folks is the idea that a lot of money making our own “America saved Europe during the country look like we lost a war here. war, then we ‘rebuilt’ their bombed- JHK: In Europe, they made a totally out cities.” And somehow that’s why different set of choices. They decided European cities are OK now and US that they weren’t going to throw their cities are in such bad shape. cities away — in fact, they were going JHK: It’s one of those ironies of to rebuild the ones that were badly history, which seems to be a great damaged, even if they had to do it at prankster. It is ironic that we won the the microscopic level. Warsaw and war and our cities look like we lost some of those Middle European the war. They lost the war and their cities and German cities that were cities are now graceful, fully active, just bombed to smithereens — they lively, wonderful, pleasant places. went back and they replaced the old DC: We could have rebuilt our cities buildings that were there before, after World War II, too. But we built brick by brick in many cases. There

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 216 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind are whole neighborhoods where towns whose names we all know they replicated the fabric that had from popular song and Broadway existed there. musicals — Rock City and all these It wasn’t just an exercise in nos- old places — and there’s nothing left. talgia — it was an exercise in recaptur- They’ve destroyed their town centers ing their own culture and their own and many of their historic buildings history. We have not been terribly in- and driven freeways through them. terested in that. It’s only really been One of the things I notice when since 1963, when we made the terri- I go down South is how little regard ble blunder of knocking down Penn they have for their own history, and Station, that some people in America how they’ve allowed their towns and began to turn around and say, “Wow, cities to commit suicide, and how we cannot destroy all of our history.” destructive they are. It’s comparable After that, the historic preservation to the military mentality, which is movement was born, and some peo- a big thing down there, because the ple became sensitive to what was military has been such a big part of being lost. But it’s still a terrible the local economy in many places struggle. Every day there are still im- there. So the destructive impulses portant, wonderful structures that that go along with militarism have could be reused and that are beauti- gone along with the way that they ful and that were designed with skills develop the landscape. They heed- that we don’t even have anymore. lessly destroy things. They heedlessly I’m always amazed when I go destroy even the good stuff they have to the Midwest and I see these in the few cities that are historic.

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I had a gig up in Peterborough, they have a wonderful cosmopolitan Ontario, Canada, and I decided to atmosphere within about a twenty- drive up there. My god, what a wild block area. ride through the backwaters of You feel like you’re in an ap- farthest upstate New York, a place pealing, satisfying, rewarding place that’s so battered and shuttered and where you can have a life. Young shattered. Watertown, New York, Americans can imagine that the just blew my mind. Our country is place would give something back to beginning to look like a third world them. I imagine a lot of young Amer- nation in comparison to Canada, our icans have grown up in suburbs and neighbor to the north. had their fill of it and don’t want to go back to that sterile boredom of Favorite American Cities those empty streets and generic, stu- DC: What are your favorite cities in pid chain store restaurant things. America? There are some schlocky town- JHK: Well, there aren’t a whole lot of house things from the seventies them that are really wonderful. In and eighties that were not well fact, it’s a very short list: conceived when they first started their experiments in densifying the Portland, Oregon city. But on the whole the newer stuff Portland is really adorable by Ameri- gets better, which is not the usual can standards. It’s a real city. The scale case in America. is wonderful. They have very few In Portland the physical accom- buildings over ten stories, and yet, plishments of progressivism in the

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 218 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind civic setting are so visible in the century brick and Charleston is excellence of the city compared to mostly eighteenth-century wooden, other American cities, and in the the best historic parts of it. good choices they’ve made, that it’s Both of these are historic cities hard to assail them. that are very fully alive even though A lot of land was lost, even inside they’re made of, more or less, antique the urban growth boundary, to worth- city fabric. less futureless suburban crap. How- ever, they really did manage to defend Boston, Massachusetts the good farmland outside of town, I’ve always liked Boston a lot. It’s a and it will continue to be there. fully activated city. There are a lot of people still living at the center. It’s re- Savannah, Georgia, and ally alive. It, too, is way overwhelmed Charleston, South Carolina with automobile infrastructure and I’m very partial to Savannah, Georgia. traffic and everything that goes with It may be my favorite city in Amer- it. They’re going to have to retreat ica, except for the weather. Living from that, and they probably will. there is like living in a dog’s mouth about five months out of the year. New York City Charleston, which is only about I remain very fond of my hometown, a hundred miles away, has a very New York City, although I’m not different kind of building typology, very bullish on its prospects. I think equally wonderful and beautiful. it’s reached the point now where Savannah’s mostly nineteenth- it is so severely overwhelmed with

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION City Flybys 219 skyscrapers that I just don’t see how magazine. My first job afterRolling it’s going to make it in a post-fossil- Stone was mopping floors in the fuel era. National Portrait Gallery, and I did that for about three weeks and then Washington, D.C. I got a job driving a cab. I’ve always kind of liked Washington, One of the great things about D.C., although it too is a very, very Washington is that it has a very car-oriented place. I drove a cab harsh height restriction for its there in 1975 after I quitRolling Stone buildings.

City Flybys

James Howard Kunstler: The places houses and foreclosure estates, and that really fascinate me are the places a tremendous suburban sprawl where there’s a collision between clusterfuck of all the worst kind of something closer to my sensibility crap that I’ve ever imagined. They’ve and something that’s that alien, built a town that’s about 93 percent Middle American, conservative, suburban crapola, yet at the very NASCAR, suburban mentality. core of this town are yuppie Boomer progressives. Boulder, Colorado I see it most vividly in a place like Phoenix, Arizona Boulder, Colorado — where they’re Phoenix is an unspeakable UFO surrounded by these seas of tract landing strip that’s totally out of

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 220 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind control, beyond belief and probably more manageable but it still shares beyond help. It has no future. the characteristics of most Western places in so far as there’s very little Flagstaff, Arizona pre-automobile fabric there. Most of By American standards today, espe- the stuff there comes in the form of cially Western standards, Flagstaff the strip mall or the pod or some- is a fairly pleasant place...because thing like it. Unfortunately, most it’s not Phoenix. Flagstaff is much of Flagstaff, Arizona, looks like the

When JHK Comes to Town Inviting provocative New Urbanism proponent James Howard Kun- stler to your city is well-known to be an exercise in self-flagellation.... The reason he stirs so much passion is perhaps even more obvious when he’s doing his KunstlerCasts...than when he’s on the lecture circuit. Listening to these arch commentaries — even if you agree with him about bad sprawl and ugly skyscrapers — it’s hard not to feel the curdling resentment of indigenous people under observation by pith-helmeted anthropologists. — Journalist Fern Shen, April 11, 2010 “Kunstler touts some Baltimore neighborhoods, but trashes... Formstone?”Baltimore Brew

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION City Flybys 221 service road that surrounds Newark show The Wire, which portrays the airport. whole city as a hopeless total ghetto. Arizona was one of the epicenters But that’s just not the way it is. of the housing bubble implosion so It’s half dead and half wonderful. I would say they’re probably nearing In many ways it’s a very damaged the end of building out farther into city. It’s not in the same league with the mountains there. They’re going Detroit and it’s better off than Cleve- to have to face the consequences of land. But there are some parts of it that housing bubble, which is going that are very interesting and fun and to be pretty severe even in Flagstaff. heartening. There are wonderful neighborhoods in working order. New Orleans, Louisiana And there is a downtown business It’s a lovely, charming, wonderful, district. memorable, rewarding, fabulous There are a lot of wonderful place. I think it’s going to be a smaller neighborhoods within a mile of city than it was in the late twentieth the absolute center of the inner century. And it’s not necessary for harbor — like Federal Hill, Fells Point it to be that enormous anymore. It and Canton, etc. But you get beyond can be a fine, wonderful place at a that three-quarter mile radius and smaller scale. then everything is toast. I sometimes think of Baltimore Baltimore, Maryland as being the poster child for how When people think of Baltimore, cities are going to contract in this they mostly think about that TV country. Baltimore was a great

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 222 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind industrial town as well as being a skyway walkways all over the network harbor city and it too has undergone of the downtown, so nobody’s on the this pretty massive contraction. street. Everybody’s up elevated on the But one way or another Baltimore second floor. is going to have to reinvent a local Sure it’s cold there, but people economy. If it’s lucky it will. It does also walk around the streets of Stock- have the benefit and amenity of this holm and Oslo and Moscow. You fantastic harbor. don’t have to have skyways. That’s a choice that people make. Minneapolis, Minnesota The social scene is fine. The cul- The physical design in Minneapolis tural scene is rich. But the downtown is pathetic compared to what they is a shitty downtown. I’ve been to the were able to accomplish in Portland other neighborhoods that have their during the same period of time. centers and their strips and they’re There’s definitely a lot about OK. They have places that are sophis- Minneapolis–St. Paul that’s cool. But ticated — they’re not physically beau- the downtown of Minneapolis is tiful, but they have a lot of great pro- not cool. They’ve done one stupid gramming. There are smart people thing after another and they persist there. There are industries that rein allowing these bad conditions to quire people to think. continue. The streets are typically There’s a lot to be said from Min- six-laners with no on-street parking, neapolis aside from its physical de- so each one behaves like an express- sign. But they’ve got to do better. way. They put up these gerbil-run Minneapolis is a city that’s just not

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION City Flybys 223 worthy of the programming and the The cars generally go too fast. They people who are there. could do a lot more to discipline the automobile than they’ve done. Seattle, Washington Also, they made a big mistake in There are a lot of things about it not keeping the cable car normal. By that are appealing, but the scale is turning them into this tourist attrac- overwhelming. tion, they’ve made it impossible for normal people to use them normally. San Francisco They’ve got these little nineteenth- I’ve made a couple of trips out to century cars that go “clang, clang” San Francisco over the last three and everybody thinks, “Oh, it’s so years. One of the things I’ve been cute.” Meanwhile, all the normal impressed with is what a heroic people who actually have to get up job of overlaying automobile infra- Nob Hill are stuck walking. structure they’ve done over this city You could put another car on a that’s crammed into a rather limited parallel street and paint it battleship peninsula sticking out into the ocean grey so the tourists don’t think it’s a there on the west coast. cute conveyance and do it that way. San Francisco’s got a pretty severe automobile overlay. There are Los Angeles and Greater LA features of it like Geary Boulevard, Los Angeles in many ways is more which is a freeway-like thing that urban and more dense than a lot of cuts across the center of the city. people realize. I would say Atlanta, The streets are generally too wide. Minneapolis and Dallas may be

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 224 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind more purely suburban than Los that could just go up in a vapor at any Angeles. moment. But no mater what kind of buildings you’re in — in what kind West Hollywood of neighborhood you’re in — the car The quality of the streets is surpris- is still a part of the picture in Los ingly charming there. But a stone’s Angeles. It’s still a prosthetic exten- throw from the very urban blocks of sion of yourself and you have to lug West Hollywood you just go up the it with you at all times and stash it Hollywood hill and you’re in one of wherever you are. The car culture in those canyons and everything turns Los Angeles defines the experience into a jungly suburb. Everything is of Los Angeles. It’s such a composi- just so discombobulated out there tion of motoring infrastructure. it’s a wonder anyone can stay sane. That’s what it’s all about. Everything else seems incidental. San Fernando Valley LA does have its virtues, but It’s supposedly the porn capital of the they’re not that easy to get to. Even country. The hedonism out there in in the better districts you feel like LA is palpable. You feel the hedonism everything is subordinated to cars pretty vividly. There’s no question being able to move around. If there that there are so many perks and side were any fuel scarcity issues at all, benefits of being in show biz that are that city would unravel and implode. on the hedonistic side of the ledger So you get the feeling of this really that those too become pretty normal. provisional civilization out there And just being around people who

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION City Flybys 225 are fit and beautiful day in and day who love Santa Monica for its civic out — and on the make — gives you a qualities and its tightness and the somewhat warped view of the world. fact that it has some sense of being There’s definitely something sordid an urban place. I’m not that crazy about it. But the people who are out about it. there on the make are surprisingly hardworking. Cities of the New South: Atlanta, Georgia Downtown LA The South did not have cities of con- It’s its own place. I think the truth of sequence before air-conditioning. the matter is that if you actually work You’re constantly aware of that when in the film industry and you were you go out of a building — that you’ve mostly based in Hollywood, you’d been in a denatured environment never have any reason to go down inside. And you’ve only been com- there and you wouldn’t — maybe for fortable because you’ve been in an years at a time. air-conditioned place. They’re just such separate worlds. Downtown Atlanta — there ain’t The different worlds of LA are so nothing going on there except for a very different. It’s like a solar system few huge monolithic buildings from made of different planets. the 1960s and ’70s. There are interesting things Santa Monica, California going on there in other parts of the It’s pretty tight. It’s got a lot of social city. But downtown is a horror. It’s cohesion. There are a lot of people full of buildings that have blank

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 226 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind walls facing the street and all sorts You have to drive a car there to of weird concrete planters. You get get anywhere. So all these apartment these weird transitions of materials, buildings have massive structured because there’s so much surface parking behind them. It’s like every parking that you go from chain-link building has to have its parking fence and razor wire to privet hedge twin. to stucco and it’s all blank.

Small Cities and Towns

Troy, New York I can get out into the country fairly Duncan Crary: One of the reasons I easily; without driving, either. moved to Troy, New York is that I saw I catch a fair amount of ribbing it as a nice, manageable small city for not only living in Troy but for where I can have the benefits of liv- loving it. The suburbanites around ing in an urban neighborhood, but here call it “the Troylet.” And my

To Troy N.Y. Mayor Harry J. Tutunjian, On the Street: This could be one of the great comeback cities in America if you play your cards right. — James Howard Kunstler, December 18, 2008 KunstlerCast #43: “Missing Teeth in the Urban Fabric”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Small Cities and Towns 227 friends from New York City think 75,000 people. Now there are only I’m living in a backwater. But you’re about 45,000 residents, so we have a pretty sure that places like Troy are lot of deactivated buildings. What’s going to be where it’s at in the future. left is pretty tight, right on the Hud- James Howard Kunstler: Troy is an son River. Believe it or not, there’s interesting case, because it was so one commercial shipping company neglected for so long that it actually headquartered here that still moves retained a tremendous amount goods along the Erie and Champlain of very valuable, pre-automobile- canals and down the Hudson River. dependent fabric — great neighbor- We have some sprawl on the edge hoods composed of really sturdy, of town, but the transition from brownstone row houses. urban to rural is still rather abrupt. DC: They left about maybe 65 I imagine there are plenty of other percent of the old city standing. small cities around the country in a Which is actually a lot compared to similar situation. other places like it? JHK: You’d be surprised how dif- JHK: You bet. Troy has a tremendous ferent their circumstances are. amount of great buildings. In fact, Troy is an especially interesting part of the old downtown was so case because its economy died so wonderful that Martin Scorsese completely after about 1960, and so a went up there in the 1990s and used lot of that suburban stuff just didn’t it as a set for his movie The Age of happen on the outskirts. Innocence.5 There are some things that are DC: It’s a small city, built for about fairly uniform. I get letters from

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people in towns all over America, that’s right. It’s interesting that we their towns have been hit very hard begin to hear those regrets and long- economically, ever since the early ings articulated in Generation X. seventies. And they’re in terrible They must feel that very strongly trouble, and they look bad, and because it’s been the background of they’re failing economically. But the their lives so vividly. So it’s colored people who write to me live in these the lives of people who’ve come from places, they love these places, and that part of America. they care about them deeply. They These places are coming back, have a deep interest in the revival though. One of the reasons that they of their life there. Even people like will is that in the future we’re going Chrissie Hynde, the lead singer of to need human urban habitats that the Pretenders, came from Akron, have a meaningful relationship with Ohio — and went on this journey productive farmland outside of the of celebrity and rock music, and city that’s not three thousand miles moved to London and became a away. We’re going to need to grow big star — she’s now gone back to a certain amount of our own food Akron, and she’s got property there, closer to home. In short, what had and she opened a vegan restaurant either already become suburbs or there recently... was slated to become more suburbs, DC: She sings that great song that that whole relationship is going to goes, “I went back to Ohio and my come to an end. city was gone.”6 That’s the other problem with the JHK: “My city was gone...” Yeah, big metroplexes like Dallas, Atlanta,

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New York City, Boston, Washington, pretty gnarly in the big metroplexes etc. — they’ve so overgrown their of America. agricultural hinterlands that their Personally I think the small prospects for even feeding them- cities and the small towns are going selves are greatly reduced. People to tend to be the more successful right now probably think that it’s areas. And young people ought to outlandish that I’m even suggesting be very careful about choosing the this. But we’re going to have a lot of places that they go. Part of that whole trouble feeding the American popu- decision will be a regional decision. lation, and it’s going to lead to very Do I move to Phoenix, Arizona, or significant changes in the way the do I move to the Northeast or to the population occupies the landscape. Upper Midwest? DC: Do you recommend that young Places that are around water, that people start to look to relocate to have good agricultural land — places small cities like Troy? that have small cities that exist at JHK: I have a very different view of a scale that can be rebuilt — are all what’s going to be happening to the going to have advantages. The Up- big cities than many other commen- per Midwest now is a basket case, tators. I think that the big cities are but it’s also the center of the Great going to be contracting substantially, Lakes, which is the greatest fresh and probably in a pretty disorderly water inland sea in the world, and way. They’re going to enter insol- has tremendous possibilities at least vency, bankruptcy and difficulties in for maritime trade on a regional maintaining services. It’s going to be basis. These are things that we’re not

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thinking about at all yet, but they’re the big cities. We’re going to see a going to come to play a much larger reversal of that because our big cities role in our society. are simply not scaled to the energy diet of the future. We’re going to Reinvesting in small cities have to downscale substantially. It’s DC: Do you have any thoughts on going to be a very difficult, messy how small cities will be able to ab- process, and the people are going to sorb increasing population influxes? go somewhere. JHK: I’ve been thinking about this I think we’re going to see a great for quite a while because the area demographic movement back to dif- of the country that I’ve been in, ferent living arrangements. We’ll see for a long time, has been economi- people go back to the rural, agricul- cally moribund for at least thirty tural landscape — occupying and in- years. Many of the cities here are habiting it in a different way than small cities that have been de- we’ve been used to. Instead of just industrialized and depopulated. one guy and a whole bunch of ma- But they’re waiting to be reinhab- chines on twenty acres, we’re going ited and reactivated. to need more people to work in the I do think that we’re going to agricultural landscape. But the small see a very emphatic reversal of that towns and small cities are going to two-hundred-year trend of people be reactivated, too, simply because leaving the small cities and small they’re much better scaled to the towns for the big cities, and leaving kind of energy situation that we’re the country places and the farms for going to be in.

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DC: Do you think there’s any reason will not necessarily just be desperate for the people who already live in poor people. They may be desperate, these small, under-utilized cities to but they may be desperate people feel alarmed by the prospect of more who are educated, who really need to people arriving in the future? rearrange their lives in some way or JHK: There already is cause for alarm another. because we’ve already had an interim I’m actually very optimistic about population movement that people the kind of small cities that we have have been very disturbed by. We’ve been talking about. seen a lot of what people call “wel- DC: What kind of planning is in- fare people” moving from New York volved to get ready for this? City, Philadelphia and Boston into JHK: It’s certainly not just about the smaller cities — they’ve become infrastructure — it’s not just about like Section 8 housing magnets for laying pipe or sewers, or more high- the poor.7 So when people think speed cable line, or any of that stuff. about increasing the population now A lot of it has to do with changing in these cities, all they think about is what’s in the regulations. For the getting more poor people in there. most part, the norms and standards It’s a disturbing picture because for any kind of redevelopment right we need more than just poor people now in most of America are still fun- inhabiting our cities. We need people damentally suburban in the sense with a basic competency who can that even in the center city, there is take care of themselves and do useful far too much catering to the automo- things. I do think that future waves bile and making provisions for the

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 232 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind car — both in the street widths and what you see in Atlanta — where they the car storage issues. did make a heroic and sustained Many cities in America, even effort to urbanize midtown on the small ones, are hung up on Peachtree Street. But they made the structured parking. They will not huge mistake of requiring parking allow apartment buildings unless garages to accompany the midsized there is a certain square footage of apartment buildings that were built. parking accompanying the building, The parking garages are the same or a structured parking building size as the apartment buildings. So that is going to be allotted to the it’s a loony outcome, and only one cars — for their cars to live in — and that could have happened in the that’s just crazy. That, by the way, is car-crazy Sunbelt.

City Murals We put these murals on the blank walls of buildings, when, in fact, what we should do is enforce rules against blank walls, or infill the empty lots where the blank walls are exposed. Instead of encouraging that, we hire or engage amateurs, like schoolchildren, to paint these murals. And it’s ridiculous. I’ve got a beef against murals, unless they’re done with the greatest professional expertise. — James Howard Kunstler, December 11, 2008 KunstlerCast #44: “Victorian Stroll”

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We’re also going to have to return building lot, with a 25-foot frontage to a much smaller increment of de- in the center of the city. That has velopment. Right now, the increment ceased to be normal in our day-to- of development is like a half a block, day habits and practices, and we’re or several blocks. We’re going to have going to have to reinstitute that kind to go back to the idea of the normal of traditional fabric.

Concentrating Poverty

Gentrification grown trees to shade us from that Duncan Crary: I’m going to read you brutal D.C. July sun. an email from one of our listeners My question is about some- and then I want to talk to you about thing that has been on a lot of the issue she raises in it: our minds here in our nation’s capital: gentrification. As middle- I listened to the latest podcast and class people like me move into I liked what you had to say about neighborhoods like Capitol walkable cities. I just moved to Hill — that are wonderful in part Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., because they were overlooked and I love being able to walk to by developers — what happens to work, to the grocery store, and the poor people that are being downtown. My neighborhood has pushed out? If they move out to wonderful sidewalks and fully- the suburbs, where it’s become

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cheaper to live, they have the extra most part the cities, at their centers, burden of needing a car because are inhabited by the people who are there is no mass transit out there. doing OK and the poorer people live — Kara, in Washington, D.C. in the periphery. DC: Like in Paris. James Howard Kunstler: It’s a very JHK: Like in Paris. That’s been the complicated issue. I think we could norm. Cities are not just for poor start by making the point that it people. Cities have to be the respon- was never the norm in city life for sibility of people of all classes but cities to be inhabited mostly by particularly the well-off, because if poor people. That’s a distortion and rich people can’t take care of their a perversity that has only occurred towns, who can? We really find our- because of what we did in America, selves in a bind, where in order to get because all of the people who were back to the original form of an urban doing well had the option of living habitat we have allow people of all in suburbia. The cities were left by incomes to live in proximity to one default to everybody else, which were another. the people who weren’t doing well in If you start creating rules and one way or another. regulations against improving It’s an abnormality in the first neighborhoods and against well-off place that our cities are inhabited by people inhabiting the cities then you so many poor people at the center. have to ask yourself: where do they If you go to other cities in other go? And the answer is: they go to the lands, what you discover is for the suburbs. If it’s morally not cool for

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Concentrating Poverty 235 them to fix up the neighborhoods in ily productive for themselves. That’s the center of the city, then they either a whole other social issue that is have to go to the edge of the city or maybe beyond the scope of what you outside the city. It leaves us back in and I are talking about. It’s unfortu- that predicament again. nate that we have large populations I guess the question really is: that are poor and not doing well what are the scale and quality and and seem to be stuck where they are. shape and character of our cities go- Those are social issues and social ing to be like from here on? I would questions that may not be able to be maintain that we have really gotten addressed sheerly by physical form. past the age of the industrial city, as Physical form can only do so much. we knew it. That is a story that’s now But there are things you can do. coming to an end. I think the cities One thing is that, as neighborhoods are going to be smaller, they are go- are getting better in the cities, you ing to contract, they are going to can typologically make provision densify at their centers. The people for people of different income levels who are doing OK, if there are any in to inhabit the same blocks or the our society, will come to inhabit a lot same neighborhoods. You can do of those places. that by activating the dwellings in I don’t know where the poor the alleyways and allowing them in people are going to go. I don’t know the first place, allowing accessory what the poor people are going to do. apartments. Right now, the poor people are doing In many neighborhoods in Amer- a lot of things that are not necessar- ica they have outlawed accessory

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 236 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind apartments, meaning that families JHK: Yes. A lot of it has to do with the living in very large houses cannot as- failure of the social justice move- sign part of the house to being rental ment in the late twentieth century, space for someone who’s not in the and our embarrassment over the fact market for a single-family home — that we still have these large popula- a single person, or an older person. tions of one racial group that seem to That’s the norm in other cities. We be chronically unsuccessful and can’t don’t do that. We zone people out change their circumstances and get typologically. out of this predicament. DC: We hear a lot about gentrifica- It’s very hard to account for, and tion battles in Washington, D.C., it embarrasses us and makes us tre- which has a substantial black popu- mendously uncomfortable. So we lation. Another city where we hear a can’t talk about it in those terms. But lot of concerns about gentrification when you really get down to it, peo- is New Orleans, where the majority ple are people. And it’s a question of: of the population is also black. A lot What are you, Mr. Individual Person, of the concerns you hear about “gen- going to do to take care of your life? trification” are really about racial is- If you’re poor, if your family’s poor — sues. What are the underlying moral/ even if your family’s been poor for racial issues that are occurring when three generations — are you going to people talk about their fear of gen- make a decision to try to do every- trification? Do you think there are thing possible to not be poor? Or are underlying racial guilt issues with you just going to submit to where you gentrification? are because somebody has convinced

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Concentrating Poverty 237 you that structural racism will pre- become the acceptable euphemism, vent you from ever succeeding? for now. At some point it won’t be, I’m not really sure where struc- because it suggests that the center tural racism, so-called, leaves off and of the city is the only place that’s personal behavior issues begin. It’s suitable for black people, and that very important for us to have that black people should be urban. The discussion. And it’s reassuring that whole thing is crazy, especially when Barack Obama started to touch on you consider the fact that many of the edges of that discussion while the black people who ended up in running for president. the cities were former sharecrop- DC: When we talk about gentrifica- pers — country people — who moved tion, should we make it a moral issue to these cities to get jobs in the 1950s about race relations? and ’60s. JHK: I would certainly say that we DC: It seems trivial to complain have to think about it in all of its about the urban-means-black mis- dimensions. nomer. But I can’t help thinking that even this little sleight of language is “Urban” as a part of what makes the whole issue Euphemism for Black of gentrification so touchy, and why DC: It’s a strange thing, but there is it’s hard to have an honest discussion this unhealthy evolution of language about it. in our culture, where “urban” is JHK: Somehow we do have to talk code-speak for “black.” about these things. And when we do, JHK: It’s peculiar. But I think it’s the best thing we can do is just try to

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 238 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind remember to be kind to each other as the Seine in Paris and replace it with much as possible. something that looks like Co-op City with a bunch of sixty-story mega Le Corbusier, Radiant structures — all identical, all deployed City and the Projects in geometrical, absolutely regular DC: What can you tell me about lines with freeways servicing it and housing project towers? That’s one separated supposedly by park land.8 type of building typology that we This is in the middle of the city. associate with urban poverty, the Corbu’s plan was never carried vertical housing projects. out in Paris, although they did do JHK: They’re all about concentrat- some disastrous things right outside ing poverty, which is never a good the city center. Once you get toward idea, and it was something we just the edges you do start to get towers, didn’t know at the time. They’re in and the slums of Paris are kind of the spirit of Le Corbusier, or “Corbu” done in that mold. But he was never as he is sometimes called, the great allowed to knock down the center of troublemaker of the twentieth cen- the city, thank God. tury. Charles-Édouard Jeanneret Unfortunately, his influence was his original name. He came out persisted and he conjured up what of Switzerland, moved to Paris and ended up being the model for the started to innovate the whole idea housing projects of the United States. of the “Radiant City.” He was the Right after the Second World War, we guy who wanted to knock down the got busy doing the “Radiant City” all Marais District on the right bank of over the USA, and it took the form

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Concentrating Poverty 239 of housing for the poor. It ended up around the 1970s we started to have being the single, most influential second thoughts. That was when one pattern in urban design in the twen- of the great iconic demolitions oc- tieth century. And wherever it landed curred, of the Pruitt-Igoe projects in it was a fiasco. Wherever we did the St. Louis. They were sixteen years old “Tower in the Park,” it destroyed when they were blown up. But they cities and city life. had so quickly fallen into a terrible social disorder that the people in Experimentation Upon the Poor St. Louis felt like they had to get rid JHK: Interestingly, what you get is of them. experimentation on the poor. We’re What it came down to was this taking these new untested forms of whole problem of concentrating pov- urbanism and trying them out on erty. It’s one thing if you’re going to poor people. Rich people have the have poverty in your society. It’s an- resources, so that if they don’t like other thing if you’re going to ghetto their habitation, they can just pick ize it and concentrate it all in one up and leave and buy something very small area. When you do that better or different. But when you’re you tend to get really bad behavior. experimenting with the poor and I was very impressed when I you stick them in these experimental went to Charleston, South Carolina, urbanist structures, they can’t get out. a few years ago to research a chapter So it ends up being rather cruel. for one of my earlier city books. We stuck our poor in these places Joseph Riley has been the mayor from the 1950s on, and beginning for a long time there. He had a very

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 240 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind aggressive police chief too, and they the government. So you get another got together. They understood that round of having to find some way you can’t concentrate poverty. They to subsidize housing for them. That made a rule down there that you becomes a vicious circle. But my couldn’t have more than eight units guess is that once you empty out the of subsidized housing in any given vertical slum, and the people who spot in the city. It ended up being a were there before disperse to other very good decision. places, they won’t really come back. So it would be a mistake for us The Cycle of Poverty to think that cities are only for poor JHK: But that was not the decision people, and that urban only means that was made in most other Amer- a certain ethnic group, and that our ican cities, where we just concen- cities will never be something else. trated the poverty. One of the conse- I think that they will be something quences was that you got a lot of teen else. I think that they’ll be smaller, pregnancies and a lot of children but they’ll be finer, and that all the who went on to become dysfunc- classes of people will be inhabiting tional adults and to reproduce more. the cities. There will also be people So it even promoted the replication who are doing OK living in the cities. of more criminal people and more And if we’re lucky, the people who and more dysfunctional people. are doing OK will feel responsible When the city is only composed for the people who are not doing OK of poor and struggling people, they and maybe do a little bit more for become the only constituents for them, a little bit better.

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Handicap Access There are an awful lot of things we do now that are contrary even to our wish to be inclusive. We create a lot of obstacles even beyond the obvious ones that make it difficult for people of different abilities to use the environment of everyday life. If you look at a traditional “Main Street” business district, the businesses and the shop fronts are all on grade with the sidewalk. There was never any question that if you were in a wheelchair or on crutches you could get into the store. And everything you needed in your life was within a quarter mile. Now, 98 percent of the new commercial stuff that was built after 1960 was built in malls, and strip malls, and power centers, and places that you need a car to travel to. I don’t imagine that makes life a whole lot easier for people who have difficulty getting around or require wheelchairs. — James Howard Kunstler, July 10, 2008 KunstlerCast #22: “Handicap Access”

Anti-Urban Bias

Duncan Crary: I’ve noticed some- City of Albany, for example, is put- thing strange going on in the “inner ting up are practically suburban con- city,” in the ghetto neighborhoods. dos. They don’t look or act like urban The public housing projects that the buildings. It’s the suburbs plunked

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 242 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind in the middle of an urban neighbor housing to take on a more and more hood that has no amenities left. These suburban character and then to be people are essentially trapped in sub- joined by the other suburban ac- urbia ...in the middle of the city. cessories — the one-story strip mall. James Howard Kunstler: I’ve seen That’s a real missed opportunity to that around the country. It’s is a very build the kind of affordable housing retrograde kind of behavior. In many that is found everywhere else in the cases, the only mental picture that world except the United States: the the community development people apartment over the store. have of a prosperous part of America By the way, people live like that in that works is the suburban part. So Paris and London and they don’t feel what they are doing is they’re taking like they are being punished. Very typologically suburban buildings wealthy people live in apartments and they’re plopping them in the on the third floor, over a delicatessen urban setting where they really are or a pork store or a bakery. And it inappropriate. does not diminish the quality of I saw a lot of this in Cleveland in their lives. In some cases the quality the nineties when I was going back of their lives improves because they and forth there — they were very can go right downstairs and buy a aggressively planting ranch houses fresh croissant and take it up to their where there used to be three- and apartment. But in America, we had four-story row houses from the 1870s the chance to do it that way and we that had become slums. There is an just blew it. unfortunate tendency for public DC: I live in an apartment above

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Anti-Urban Bias 243 a business in a wonderful little of these neighborhoods are probably urban business district. Some of the deficient. The urban neighborhoods suburban people I know think I’m are not good enough and the subur- living in a ghetto, though. Sometimes ban neighborhoods have structural I think they have such an anti-urban deficiencies of their own that that are bias programmed into them that self-evident. There are many ways of they just assume that if the build- understanding the deficiencies of ings are connected and have some the suburbs. But the cities themselves sort of mixed use, then it must be in the USA have very few examples “the ghetto.” of true city life that are appealing. JHK: In the American version, both There are little pockets here and

Car Cops I’ve got to think that in the police departments — given the kinds of people who become police and how police departments are run — there must be huge resistance to getting out of the car. Just like any suburban situation where once the car becomes normal you can’t drag people out of it. So what you get is law enforcement only taking place on the highway scale, or the road scale, not on the sidewalk scale. But when all is said and done, they’re probably much more effective on the beat. — James Howard Kunstler, April 16, 2009 KunstlerCast #60: “Bad Behavior”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 244 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind there, like parts of Charleston and ting in America and we’ll continue parts of Savannah — every city in to for quite a while, even when the America has at least one pretty good automobile age gets into big trouble. neighborhood left. Columbus, Ohio, And it’s going to take a long time to has a couple of good neighborhoods. hash it out. My favorite is called German Village, DC: I find myself constantly trying to which is a neighborhood of gable- bite my tongue around suburbanites. ended houses. It dates from about the They seem to have no problem tell- 1850s, I think. Pretty wonderful. ing me I live in a ghetto. But they’re But there’s not enough of this extremely defensive about their around America that’s in good shape — cul-de-sac or development. so the people can feel that what is JHK: The way we live in America good is anything but an elite ghetto now is so perverse at every end of for rich people in the city. There cer- the spectrum that neither side is tainly aren’t enough normal, middle- going to appreciate the other side’s class neighborhoods that have the argument. Frankly, I can understand same kind of amenities. We’re doing why some people would make the such a poor job with the urban set- suburban choice.

Missing Teeth in the Urban Fabric

Duncan Crary: There’s a novelist who he grew up in Albany as looking like went by the pen name “Trevanian” “An old gentlewoman with her front who described the row house where teeth knocked out in a bar brawl.”9

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I get that same feeling looking aren’t any vacant lots or missing at the entire block where I live in teeth, I feel good about the progress Troy. The neighborhood at-large is I’m making with each block. It’s a fairly intact, with buildings lining psychological thing. both sides of most streets. But on my JHK: Absolutely. The urban design- particular block, we have a parking ers that I know and respect are very lot right across from my apartment keenly aware of it. And they call it the and another parking lot directly missing tooth problem. There have behind. So I look at this streetscape been guys out there, like William and it looks like a Victorian lady got “Holly” Whyte, who was a writer on her teeth knocked out in a bar brawl. urban behavior back in the sixties There are a few “missing teeth” in the and seventies and ran a graduate urban fabric. program at Columbia University. James Howard Kunstler: That’s Whyte and people like him — Fred exactly what we call them, “missing Kent — have studied this and they teeth.” know that missing teeth on streets DC: I guess it’s convenient for people repel people. People will cross the going to the concert hall on the next street rather than continue walking street over, but that parking lot kills on the side where the empty space is. my block. It makes the whole street look uninviting and it discourages Parking Militants you from walking down it. When I’m DC: The thing about these missing walking on a city street where all the teeth is that many of our city lead- buildings are connected and there ers, whether they’re politicians or

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business owners — they always want It had the strange consequence more parking, which just creates in my little town, Saratoga Springs, more missing teeth. of turning a small American town JHK: It’s amazing how that evolved that had some dimension to its cen- over the years. Obviously, it goes ter into little more than a main hand in hand with unbelievably ex- street corridor. The business dis- treme car dependency. You could put trict, which had once covered mul- half of Sienna, Italy, in some of these tiple blocks, had been reduced to just so-called urban renewal districts. this one corridor with these waste- But an interesting thing happened. lands of parking on either side. It’s These districts never underwent ur- been getting infilled, but there’s still ban renewal, at least not for a very quite a bit of the parking left. That’s long time, because what happened really what the big battle is over — after the destruction of the neighbor- should we continue to infill it or hoods and the blocks is that the citi- should we keep the parking? For the zens in town discovered that they ac- moment, the parking is prevailing. tually valued the property more for Even progressive politicians have car storage than for urban activi- taken a stand against further down- ties — like buildings and businesses town renovation and infill. Why? and apartments and things to do and Because they feel that, once again, places to live and theatres or any- parking is a higher and greater use thing else you might have in a city. than buildings. The competition and All of that was valued less than your tension and conflict between those ability to stash a car somewhere. two things is enormous. Even among

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Missing Teeth in the Urban Fabric 247 the supposedly politically progres- take up to an elevated butte where sive people, parking wins. the town really exists. Or in Sienna, DC: There are community leaders in Italy, you can take the car in — I once my city who adamantly believe that did it. But getting around in a car people aren’t coming to Troy because and then having to stash it is just there isn’t enough parking. But the madness. And you never want to see thing is, no one goes to any down- the fucking thing again while you’re town for the parking lots — whether there. it’s Saratoga, or Burlington, or Co- lumbus. They go for the attractions, The Jevons Paradox of Parking the buildings. If there’s something DC: The other thing about providing downtown that they want to get to, lots and lots of free parking in cities they will get there. If there’s noth- is that you just end up creating more ing to attract them down there, they demand for more parking. It may be won’t go. an example of the Jevons paradox.10 JHK: The New Urbanists themselves Because when all your buildings have, for years, made the point that are surrounded by parking, they the best places in the world are the become too far apart to comfortably places that are the hardest to drive walk between. People end up driv- around. You go to Perugia in Italy, ing from parking lot to parking lot a wonderful town, and you actually to get to their next destination. So have to park outside of the town and you don’t just need the parking to either walk in or they have a very accommodate all the cars in your city strange escalator system that you can at one time, you need the parking for

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 248 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind four, five, eight times the number of not all that rational. You’re just cars because each car needs access programmed to try to get as close to to eight parking spots throughout your destination as possible. the day. JHK: Yes, and you’re describing How Real Estate Taxes a self-reinforcing feedback loop, Prevent Good Urbanism which starts with a problem and then DC: Why is it so hard to convince ends up generating more of its own people of the value of urban infill — problem as it goes along. of erecting buildings with stores and DC: Another thing I don’t get is that cafés and apartments in the spaces suburbanites who drive to the mall that are now just parking lots and often have to walk three times the missing teeth? distance from their parking spot JHK: Partly, it has to do with our real in the parking lot in front of the estate laws. I wrote a chapter in my mall than they would in a normal 1996 book Home From Nowhere called downtown shopping district. But “A Mercifully Brief Chapter On A they complain endlessly about the Frightening, Tedious, But Important parking in any urban area. They Subject,” which was real estate taxes. I demand that they be able to park had been consorting with a group of directly in front of the store if it’s in people who followed the philosophy an urban setting. You can’t even do of Henry George, a nineteenth- that at the mall. century political reformer who JHK: I suppose it’s some kind of a focused a lot of his activity on tax lizard brain homing instinct that’s reform. What he wanted to do was

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Missing Teeth in the Urban Fabric 249 change the real estate taxing system magnificent five-story palazzo, or an so that we would levy taxes on the even more magnificent building like site value of the property rather than the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. the improvements or buildings that They would all be taxed the same. So you put on it. you would have a huge incentive to I know this sounds very abstruse, put up a magnificent building. but the way we tax things in our DC: That Henry George taxing system today, you are actually penal- system doesn’t work when you have ized for putting up a good building. cars and gasoline though, right? I There’s a tremendous incentive to imagine it might start to work again put up the worst kind of building if the cost of everything keeps going possible with the fewest uses — the up again. least ability to generate rents or JHK: Right. So, you start with this value out of it — because the better real estate tax problem and then you the building is, the higher your real add on top of that the problem that estate taxes. we value surface parking so highly Under the Henry George system, in our very unbalanced social scale you would be taxed on the basis of of values that it makes it almost im- how close your property was to the possible to infill our cities. This city center of things — the center of town, where you live — Troy, New York — the center of the business district — has been so fortunate in as much as how valuable the site was itself. It it has had so few demolitions. But wouldn’t matter whether you put up you go to a normal American city a crappy one-story packing crate or a like Dayton, Ohio, or Kansas City, or

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Des Moines, Iowa ...these places are that it’s better to stack the cars up like people with just one tooth in in a five-story building. But I would their head! There ain’t nothin’ left in maintain that continuing to build the center but surface parking. Co- parking decks is just an enormous lumbus, Ohio, which I’ve been to at waste of whatever dwindling re- least half a dozen times in the last sources we have. decade — it’s like 70 percent surface DC: But when you are building a parking! They’ve done a magnificent parking garage, how do you build job of destroying most of the fabric one that has the most benefit to the of the town with surface parking. city with the least disruption? Now one way you can think about JHK: These are bad investments surface parking is that it’s a form because the future’s not going to be of land banking — at least there’s about parking. But let’s say hypo- nothing on it. The cars can be rolled thetically during the period where it off at some point and you can build seemed like a good thing to do — like something there. maybe the early 1990s — you would want to at least line the ground To Build a Better floor with some retail so it has a Parking Garage relationship with the street that is DC: So what’s your take on parking more or less like a normal building, structures versus surface parking so it provides some destinations for lots? Which are more useful for people who are walking around town, cities now? gives people something to look at as JHK: You could make the argument they’re traversing the block.

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DC: One of the things I’ve heard are more toward the center of the you point out is that it’s difficult to structure. retrofit a parking garage, the way DC: You couldn’t even use these they’re normally built, because the things for warehouses. The ceilings ceilings are too low to ever turn them aren’t even tall enough. into decent offices or apartments. JHK: Well, it would be a warehouse JHK: When you’re building some- with very short floors. thing other than a parking deck, you DC: Have you ever actually seen need some room overhead to run the a parking garage that was lined ductwork and the plumbing and the with retail and had taller ceilings service lines and all that stuff. So you and ...? have to have more than a seven-foot JHK: Not taller ceilings. But the city ceiling. The trouble with these park- of Charleston had a very successful ing decks is that they have fairly low program in the eighties and nine- ceilings that don’t lend themselves to ties under their wonderful mayor be retrofitted. Joe Riley, who’s been mayor for like Also, there’s the problem of need- thirty-five years there and is among ing a central light well. In a structure the few elected officials in America that large, if you were going to turn who actually has a firm grounding in it into offices or apartments, you’d the particulars of design. They built have to have a core in the center that a bunch of parking decks in down- would be a light well that would allow town Charleston, but they took pains you to get light in from the outside to make provision for retail on the to the apartments or offices that first floor. I believe I saw something

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 252 The Kunstlercast: The City in Mind like that in Savannah, too. They’re self-evident that we shouldn’t fill around the country. our cities with surface parking or structures for parking, because it’ll Ridicule, Oppose, Accept be self-evident that the future is DC: But at this point you feel like not about motoring. People will get even those better parking garages it, and they’ll get it very suddenly. are a bad investment in the future. And they won’t even notice that We shouldn’t worry too much about nine months earlier they thought luring suburbanites in their cars to that motoring was going to be the spend money in our cities. determining factor in how we did JHK: I do believe we will soon everything. emerge to the point where it’s One day they’ll wake up with a

Diagonal Parking In the early part of the Automobile Age, we had diagonal parking on the street. You can actually get a lot more cars parked that way. The trouble is, it cuts down on the travel lanes. It may actually be a much better strategy to net down the street and have the cars go slower. All in all, I think diagonal parking would probably be a better thing. But since we’re sort of at the end of the Automobile Age, I kinda don’t give a shit anymore. — James Howard Kunstler, July 17, 2008 KunstlerCast #23: “One City Block”

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION A Drugstore on Every Corner 253 different idea because it’ll be obvi- spread with the force of a powerful ous, and there will be something subconscious meme. And everybody about the hive mind — the collective will realize, “Oh, yeah, that’s right, termite consciousness of mankind we don’t need that parking anymore and its North American version — because we’re doing things differ- where they’ll get it. This idea will ently now.”

A Drugstore on Every Corner

Duncan Crary: The national chains hurting the mom and pop stores. and the fast food franchises tend And the opponents will try to block to be very destructive in most the chain store from coming to town, American cities because they insist which is usually a losing battle. You on doing business in a suburban approach the situation differently. manner — with one-story buildings, James Howard Kunstler: There are parking lots, drive-thru windows. two different issues here, which peo- The drugstore companies in par- ple are very confused about. One is ticular seem hell-bent on knocking the “programming,” which is the down perfectly good urban build- business. The other is the “con- ings to make room for their own tainer” that the programming is in. little box. But something happens You can go to plenty of other places when people try to stop this kind of in the world where they have won- behavior — they end up making it a derful buildings that contain this fight about how the chain stores are programming. It doesn’t bother

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anybody. Nobody complains when building just to get exactly the right the programming goes in the con- amount of space. tainer, or building — before there was DC: So instead of making it a fight a drugstore in that building, there about the chain store coming to town, was something else. how should we approach the issue? Now, because we live in a throw- JHK: A few years ago we were getting away culture in America, it’s more a lot of substantial new downtown convenient for these big chains to infill buildings in Saratoga Springs just tear down whatever is there and and lot of people were complaining put up their own special purpose- that the new tenants were the Gap or built box with all of the things in the Eddie Bauer. What I told them about right place so that the building is sort that was, “Don’t worry about the proof a pre-programmed machine for gramming on the first floor. What dispensing goods. you got to worry about is the quality DC: These companies don’t want to of the building.” Because time will go rehab old buildings because they by, the decades will go by, and those can’t put their aisle of candy bars ex- chain stores will leave — they won’t be actly where they want, to maximize there anymore. Then something else our psychology to buy this crap. will be there, possibly even a locally JHK: Yeah, if there’s a wonderful his- owned store, because our economy toric building that has 9,000 square will be changing. feet of space and the drugstore needs The national chains themselves 9,402 square feet of space, they’d are going to start running into very rather knock down the historic serious trouble with their business

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION A Drugstore on Every Corner 255 equations — with their huge conti- So the whole system of doing this is nental supply lines and getting all going to change. By necessity, we’ll their merchandise from twelve thou- have to construct these more local sand miles away, and the just-in-time and regional networks of commerce, inventory system that depends on and things won’t be coming from so the incessant circulation of tractor- far away. trailer trucks all around the country.

Last-Ditch Adaptive Reuse Adaptive reuse is a wonderful thing. It’s one of the reasons that the great European cities are so rewarding to be in, because you see these old buildings given new life repeatedly, and then they’re wonderful to be around and among. In our country and our culture, sometimes it’s all we can do to just save the facade. But that may be a good save because that’s the public face of the building and that’s its interface with the street and with the public realm, and I think it’s important to do that. I’m actually glad they’re saving these facades. I think of it as last-ditch adaptive reuse. — James Howard Kunstler, June 11, 2009 KunstlerCast #68: “Historic Preservation”

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Jane Jacobs

Duncan Crary: How do you feel sionally in her heyday, when she about being compared to Jane Jacobs, published her opus magnum, The and what kind of influence did she Death and Life of Great American Cities, have on your writing and thinking? because there were very few people James Howard Kunstler: We obvi- in the USA who were thinking coher- ously have a lot in common. Mostly, ently about these things in 1961. She I think what that’s about is we were didn’t have very many allies, whereas both polemical writers — writers who I came along with The Geography of were intent on making a persuasive Nowhere in 1993 as the New Urbanist case for something and advocating people were getting together. In fact, for something relatively similar: the there was kind of a synchronicity case for better urban life. about it because they formed their I think where we depart is that organization, the Congress for the she was a very lonely figure profes- New Urbanism, in the same year that

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The Public Realm The whole issue of satisfaction in our living places has to do with this thing called the public realm: the part of our world that belongs to everybody, that everybody ought to have access to most of the time. In America it comes mostly in the form of the street — ’cause there’s no residue of the Renaissance. We don’t have medieval market squares. We don’t have cathedral squares. We don’t have that stuff. In America we have some New England greens and courthouse squares in the Midwest and the South. But for the most part in the USA, public space comes in the form of the street and if you screw it up — if you dishonor it, if you fail to embellish it in a way that honors people’s existence — then you’ve got a real problem. Having turned all our streets into automobile slums, we no longer have any sense that it is a public space and that it does belong to us. Certainly not that it honors us. We’re going to have to rediscover that. And by the way, it’s not abstract. There’s a direct relationship between people’s satisfaction in a public place and the successful definition of space...using the walls of the buildings to function like the walls of an outdoor public room. You would no more put up a bad building or decorate it badly, or fail to embellish it, than you would have a bad wall in your own house that was full of graffiti or junk or careless nothing. — James Howard Kunstler, April 28, 2011 KunstlerCast #154: “Q&A with JHK” at The Sanctuary for Independent Media

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I published The Geography of Nowhere. she was a wonderful writer.2 It was a So there was a ready-made cohort, a pleasure to read, as well as being very club of people to hang out with, and illuminating. there were scores of them — good people who were good thinkers. So Jane Jacobs I got a lot of support right away for versus Robert Moses what I was saying, whereas with Jane JHK: Jane Jacobs started introducing Jacobs, I think it was a continual ideas that people weren’t thinking uphill battle for her. about much, that didn’t have to do with design per se. One of her biggies Jane Jacobs and Barack Obama was “Eyes on the Street.” That idea DC: It was interesting that during his is that when people are present — presidential campaign, then Senator either on the sidewalks themselves Barack Obama mentioned reading or on the stoops of the row houses, The Death and Life of Great American or coming and going, or looking out Cities and what an influential book the windows, or occupying the store- it is. I don’t know how many other fronts — when people are present then presidents have ever mentioned the city fabric is self-policing, and Jane Jacobs.1 bad behavior tends to be suppressed. JHK: I’d be surprised if any of them She also engaged in a great battle, besides Barack read her. I reread that an epic struggle with the great dia- book a few years ago before I went bolical figure of urban destruction, to interview her in Toronto and one Robert Moses. She was his chief an- of the things I rediscovered was that tagonist. Moses had done many

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 260 The Kunstlercast: Urban Polemicists things over the previous thirty-odd Moses. It was the point where people years that created a lot of mischief realized, “Oh, this guy isn’t the omni in New York City — with building the potent Devil-like figure that we’ve Cross Bronx Expressway and a lot of been battling all these years. He can other roads. He was aiming to run a actually be disciplined.” It wasn’t too four-lane expressway across Green- long after that that his power started wich Village, right through Washing to really wane. ton Square Park. The whole thing So she began to give this rapidly would have been an obvious catas- suburbanizing nation, this nation trophe. Jane Jacobs marshaled the that was no longer investing in cities community spirit in lower Manhat- and had lost interest in cities — she tan to oppose this plan. Robert Moses started to revive the interest in them was not used to being opposed, and and to give people some hope that he had never really been successfully they could actually be OK. American opposed for any of the projects that cities were very un-OK by the early he did. She started this battle with 1960s. Not only had they been ne- him, and she won. So it made her a glected during the Great Depression great hero. (and then not really taken care of very DC: How did she win this battle? well during the Second World War JHK: Through the public process either), but as soon as we emerged and through whatever the planning from the war, all of the resources in board approval and permission the USA were going into building process was in New York City. It was suburbs. So the cities, which had kind of the turning point for Robert never been really that great to begin

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Jane Jacobs 261 with in America, just didn’t get atten- after all, the quintessential Green- tion, didn’t get resources. Everything wich Village New York Bohemian that was done in them tended to be gal — although she originally came utilitarian and not very beautiful. from Scranton, Pennsylvania, where When we built a structure it was her daddy was a doctor. as cheap as possible, strictly to do She got married, had kids, and the job that it had to do. Whatever it by the sixties her kids were starting was — a skating rink or a municipal to grow up and become of the age of building — they all looked terrible. getting drafted into the army dur- The cities were losing population ing the Vietnam War. So she and her and losing resources, and they were husband packed up and took their not very nice places to live. Jane kids out of New York and moved to Jacobs started this battle, which was Toronto to be out of the reach of the still going to be a losing battle for a draft. She became quite an activist long time to come. It’s a battle that figure in the Toronto urban politics still hasn’t been won, although we’ve scene after that. I think it took her a come back quite a ways from there. few years to get some traction as being someone who was committed to Jacobs and Toronto being there for a long period of time. DC: Tell me a little bit about meeting But Toronto was also growing her up in Toronto. What was that hugely. They had a huge immigration experience like? in Canada in those years, and the city JHK: First, I should tell the story of was moving from being a fairly small why she landed in Toronto. She was, place by US standards to becoming a

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 262 The Kunstlercast: Urban Polemicists major global city. So she was involved who rent apartments are not at a disin all the controversies that were advantage, and consequently, more coming out of Toronto’s growth. It people live in the center of the Cana- was growing quickly, and in ways dian cities. They still have their sub- that weren’t all that promising. The urbs and they’re still huge, but it’s usual kind of suburban things were not quite as big a problem. going on, although there are differ- DC: How different is Toronto from ent ground rules in Canada. One of New York City? the important ones is that there’s no JHK: I don’t think that it is that much income tax deduction for mortgage different in character or from the interest in Canada. That’s important, feel of it. The main difference is that because it puts renters and home- there are a lot more middle-class owners on the same footing in terms neighborhoods near the center. You of taxes. get the feeling that city life there is In the USA, people who are home- not just for wealthy people and never owners enjoy quite a tax advantage was just for wealthy people. They from being able to deduct their mort- never went through that traumatic gage interest, and most of people’s change. There was always something payments nowadays are the interest. So normal about having normal people if you’re paying a thousand bucks a living near the center. month in a mortgage payment, most of it’s interest and only a little of it is Meeting Jane Jacobs principal, and it’s all tax deductible. DC: What kind of a place was she In Canada that’s not the case. People living in when you met up with her?

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JHK: She lived in a single-family JHK: I had a lot of trouble with her house in a very tight neighborhood actually answering the questions where the houses were large and that I had prepared. A lot of it had generous. They weren’t grand, but to do with Long Emergency issues, they were decent size. They were and how the cities were going to re- pretty close together, and not far spond to the global energy problems from the center of town. As I recall, that were developing, and the im- she was living just off Yonge Street, plications for how we inhabited the which is one of the main drags there landscape. She sort of didn’t want to off of the downtown. It was a brick talk about that stuff. Really, what she house on a tree-shaded street. Her wanted to do was drink beer and to kids were all grown up. Her husband just kind of banter. had died — she was a widow living It was easier to get her to talk there alone. about her past. By this time she was The furnishings of her house over eighty years old. She was rat- were interesting because there were tling around this fairly big house a lot of the, shall we say, incunabula like a BB in a packing crate all by of Bohemianism from the 1950s and herself. She took me up to her writ- ’60s — all these kinds of primitive ing room, which was a very modest art and folk sculpture and stuff that little spare room. She was writing on I recognized from New York of the a typewriter, if I remember. Mostly beatnik days. It was greatly nostalgic she wanted to drink beer that day — for me to see it. not in the sense she was hooking DC: What was it like meeting her? down one after another, but she was

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enjoying them and she wanted me to depressed her or something. But do that with her. I’m not much of a she sort of nailed it herself and she beer drinker, so I couldn’t really keep could see it coming from a million up with her. miles away. DC: Jane Jacobs drank you under the DC: Maybe she didn’t want you to table, Jim, is that what you’re saying? scoop her. JHK: No, not really, we weren’t under JHK: Maybe. I wasn’t writing The Long the table. But I couldn’t really keep Emergency yet, but I was thinking up with her. The funny thing was I about those things. I think at the time was asking her all these Long Emer- I was writing The City in Mind. I would gency questions about energy, and still have a novel ahead of me before technology, and what we were going I did The Long Emergency. to do, and how things were not look- She did have her wits totally about ing too great for advanced civiliza- her. She knew what was going on. She tion and everything. And I didn’t wasn’t the least bit senile, although, realize it at the time — because she obviously, most of her life was be- didn’t tell me what she was work- hind her and her family was gone, ing on — but she was writing a book dispersed to the four winds or passed published under the title Dark Age away. So she was putting in her time Ahead. She was pretty much con- in her last years in a worthwhile way. cerned with a lot of the same things At the same time, she had become that I was, only she didn’t want to talk a great lady of Toronto and was still about them. I don’t know, maybe they very involved in all the civic issues.

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Duncan Crary: You said Jane Jacobs and television and all the things that was lonely figure in her time, with made suburbia possible. He under- few intellectual allies. There was one stood — as few did along the way — its figure during that era who was at diminishing returns, its disadvan- least challenging some of the tenets tages, the unintended consequences. of suburbia: Lewis Mumford. He wrote about this at great James Howard Kunstler: Mumford length during a period when people was another polemical writer, like didn’t care much about it, because, Jane Jacobs. He produced such great for the most part, during the twenti- prose, and he combined that with a eth century most people just enjoyed very deep understanding of his sub- that stuff and were unaware of the ject matter, which was not justcities blowback. He understood the import but the whole issue of technology gen of the General Motors Futurama erally, which he was obsessed with. exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair.3 He He was born at the very begin- understood how economic oppor- ning of the twentieth century and tunists would want to take that idea lived through most of the whole and turn it into fortunes for them- thing. He lived to a very ripe old selves, at the same time that they age, into his nineties, and he saw the destroyed American cities. Mumford whole cavalcade of technology and was all over that, and he understood the whole rise of all the things we’re it, and he articulated it in a way that familiar with like cars and planes was savvy.

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So you get to 1961 and by a ness” in front of the boob screen.4 weird coincidence he publishes He really got it, vividly, about where his great magnum opus, The City in we were heading with the burbs. History, in the same year that Jane DC: He had some other funny Jacobs produced The Death and Life phrases too, like, “Our national of Great American Cities. In The City, flower is the concrete cloverleaf.” Mumford writes long chapters JHK: Yeah, the on-ramps and the about suburbia and the dangers of off-ramps. That was a great line. it and the huge liability that it’s go- DC: And he knew Jane Jacobs per ing to be for American society in sonally? the years ahead — this is when we’re JHK: He and Jane Jacobs were friends all getting shoehorned comfortably for a while. But then they had a big in the split levels, and the express- falling-out. I think that had to do ways were new, and “It’s All Good” for with Mumford’s body of ideas, where suburbia. I have a feeling that he was he really couldn’t shake off the no- regarded as a bit of a crank for this, tion that the traditional city was a or at least, let’s say, never really suf- bad thing in some way. ficientlyacknowledg ed or rewarded Mumford grew up in Manhat- for saying what he did. But he said it tan, and was really a creature of New beautifully. York City through the whole twen- He’s got this one line that I quoted tieth century. So he saw some of the in The Geography of Nowhere, where worst of city life, including the great he’s talking about suburbanites at tenements of the day on the Lower night sitting “in the cabin of dark- East Side. But I think his arguments

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Lewis Mumford 267 were corrupted by some of the fash- A lot of these guys were so ions du jour — the utopian Garden traumatized by the tribulation of City experiments, which had many these two world wars, that what was elements of the Bauhaus to it. The still very much on their mind was idea was that American cities were purging all of the awful claptrap of so dark and dingy and lightless and history out of society. They didn’t unsanitary, that the first priority was want it anymore because they felt providing people with fresh air and that it had been responsible for all of light and plumbing, and a little bit of the trauma of the twentieth century, grass around them. But the trouble which was like nothing that had ever is, when you carry decongestion too been seen before, and they wanted to far, you end up deurbanizing a place purify the world. It wasn’t just Walter and you don’t get the density or the Gropius and Corbu and the other mixed use that you need for a city real modernist architects. It was a to function. meme that ran through the culture.

Robert Moses He was sort of a hostage of his time. However good or bad or evil or whatever we think about him, he was really following the dictates of the circumstances that he was born into. He came up with the Age of the Automobile, and he served it loyally. — James Howard Kunstler, October 8, 2009 KunstlerCast #83: “Jane Jacobs”

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Packin’ for France

Duncan Crary: Do you think it’s nonsense — the question of whether time to leave America, to get out of the US is headed for trouble is not the US? necessarily identical to the question James Howard Kunstler: If I were a of, “Should I go somewhere else?” twenty-five-year-old with a lot of my Or, at least, let’s say there’s a lot that life ahead of me, I would give some you could talk about just on one side serious thought to maybe going of the issue: what is going on in the somewhere else. I think apropos US? Where are we headed? What’s the of all the town meeting uproars timeframe for all that? that have been going on over the The question whether one can health care debate and the really successfully be transplanted, that’s a surprising ugliness that is emanat- whole other thing. Back in the days ing from those things — including a when I was writing books about lot of really vulgar, hyper-patriotic the New Urbanism and the fiasco

269 ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 270 The Kunstlercast: Parting Words of suburbia, my motto for a few Spanish in high school and college, years was, “There’s always France.” and I can just communicate enough Because I’d go to Europe, and I’d see to be a tourist in Mexico. But I can’t at least how the physical disposition speak French, other than asking, of things and cities and towns was “What’s on the menu?” or, “Please so far superior to the US, for the give me the bill.” most part — granted there are some And when I did end up going suburbs in these places, but on the to France, where I’ve been many whole it was superior. You land back times since then, I always sort of in this slum airport of New York, floundered around there with the and you want to cut your throat after language. In fact, I got into the habit returning from Europe. of just speaking English to them in DC: Why didn’t you just hightail it to a French accent, which seemed to Europe right then? Why did you stay work. They seemed to understand in this country? what I was saying. I never took that JHK: There are a couple of reasons any further. for that. When I first started pursu- DC: If I just speak English slower and ing these issues in The Geography of louder... Nowhere, I’d never been to Europe. JHK: Right. So I was daunted by the I was still pretty much a starving language thing. Also in some ways I Bohemian. I didn’t have two nickels identify myself as kind of a true-blue to rub together. So it never occurred American, but not in a dumb way. to me. Another thing was, I’m not I don’t know. In a way that I feel very good at foreign languages. I took saturated with American history and

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Packin’ for France 271 culture, and this is really the only I don’t just pack it up and go to place that I can function OK. Europe, because I complain about a But that said, I have been hav- lot of the aspects of American life. ing a thought just this week — and it I thought I was going to end up in may be because I got an email from Scotland at one point. I went there a guy asking this same question. So I for a few months and kicked around was thinking about it in my off hours and really took a good look at the during the week, about exactly what place. I had a great time and saw a lot kind of allegiance do you owe to your of things. But I did realize then that country? That may be a big question it just isn’t my country. It’s not my for some people. I’m not sure that you culture and I don’t belong to it. really do owe it a lot if your country JHK: That’s an interesting point, is making a foolish spectacle of itself. because I have spent some time DC: I heard Garrison Keillor say in Great Britain, and Ireland too, something on the radio once about where they speak English. I felt very how emigration is the highest form dissociated from the culture there, of protest that you can give to your that despite the fact that we could government, or your nation. understand each other we were not JHK: Yeah, and there are a lot of alike at all. things that are going on in the USA DC: Yeah, different values, different that are pretty deplorable and are a collective cultural experiences have pretty good reason to consider going become a part of who I am. But someplace else. your point about one’s allegiance DC: People ask me sometimes why to a country is interesting. I’m very

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 272 The Kunstlercast: Parting Words attached to upstate New York and its People would always ask him, “If you history, because it’s where I’m from think this county is so ridiculous, and where my people have been why don’t you just go somewhere for a long time. What’s interesting else?” His answer was, “This is the about this part of New York State is greatest show on earth, and I’ve got a that it’s been controlled by a handful front row seat as a journalist and as a of different nations in a relatively commentator. I wouldn’t miss it for short period of history. I don’t feel as the world.”1 strong of an allegiance to the nation- To some extent that’s how I feel ality, of being an American, as I do to about this clusterfuck that we’re this part of this... all witnessing and that some of us JHK: The land. are actively commenting on. I feel DC: Yeah, this land, and this ongoing in a way I am like the Bob Costas story of the land and the people of the clusterfuck, giving blow-by- who inhabit it. My people have been blow commentary on what’s going kicking around this corner of the on. So for me it is kind of amusing. Earth for three hundred and fifty Although I must say I’m a little bit years. We fucked this place up in a lot daunted by the potential for trouble of ways, and I feel obligated to stick it and danger. I’m not very paranoid, through. Does that sound crazy? but I start seeing these nuts coming JHK: No. It’s not unrelated to how I out at the health care town meetings, feel about it. There’s one other ele- and the Sarah Palinites and the Mike ment though, which was the one that Huckabees and the sort of corn-pone H. L. Mencken spoke of in the 1920s. Nazis, and I’m not kidding about

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Cassandra 273 that. It is a joke in a way, but it’s a seri- the recovery that’s supposedly going ous joke. I think that there’s tremen- on is a mirage, and that we’re going dous potential in this country for po- to see a lot more mischief in banking litical despotism and total looniness. and finance and the economy in gen- It really makes me quake in my eral, and job loss and foreclosure and boots to imagine those people getting all the things that we’re now familiar their hands on the levers of power. with. These are trends that you can’t It’s not that wild to imagine that it really see the horizon on. could happen if the people in this So if I were a twenty-five year old country go through enough hardship who spoke French and had some and distress, which they seem to be gold overseas and had some ambi- heading into. It does seem to me that tions to maybe buy some land and do the US economy is still unraveling some farming in Europe, that might as much as it was in early 2009, that not be such a bad idea.

Cassandra

Duncan Crary: You’re sometimes DC: But Cassandra from Greek called a Cassandra. mythology, she knew the future. The James Howard Kunstler: And that’s problem was that nobody would a negative term, because it refers to listen to her. somebody who’s issuing warnings JHK: That’s true. that nobody takes seriously and DC: At least you get credited for being nobody wants to listen to. right, even if no one listens to you.

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JHK: I guess. George M. Cohan: “I’d decisions or go down tragic path- rather be right than be president.” So ways. Suburbia was ours. there you go. DC: Of course we won’t know if you Peering Into were a Cassandra or — Yesterday’s Tomorrow JHK: Just a pure fake, a mountebank, JHK: Somebody sent me one of those a charlatan. wonderful illustrations that I collect DC: — or not, until the future arrives. of “The City of the Future,” drawn in Sometimes I fantasize about traveling 1925. It was explicitly New York. It back to 1946 America to warn of the was a cross section of Park Avenue dangers to come from suburbanizing going underground about four levels, this country, and to persuade the coun- where they had rationally put all of try against it ... Even in my dreams I the service infrastructure under- can’t stop it from happening! ground, including the automobile JHK: I’m not sure that it’s really corridors. possible to persuade people who get The thing that amazed me about into a certain groove at a certain time it was how wonderfully rational it in history. Their behavior is much all was. The streets were quite nice. more controlled by whatever things There were no cars up on Park are easily at hand, and whatever Avenue, as there are now. This was materials and ideas are current at the city of the future. In fact they the time. That’s pretty much what were quite precise about the date, governs people’s lives. Sometimes which was 1925 doing a picture of whole societies make unfortunate 1950. You had the subway. So you

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Cassandra 275 had public transit on level three. You dodgy and imperfect and impromptu. had the cars in these underground It’s interrupted by all kinds of fias- boulevards on level two. You had coes and blunders and disasters that some other stuff on the first base- sometimes can go on for decades or ment level. And ultimately way down centuries, and an awful lot of stuff below, you had the water mains and doesn’t work out. Because life is re- the electric lines and all that stuff. ally emergent and self-organizing DC: And the Morlocks below that. and fractal and chaotic. It just doesn’t JHK: Yeah, well, they didn’t go above move that way. As soon as you believe that. But what amazed me was the ra- you’ve solved one problem, the solu- tionality of it all. Human beings are tion itself becomes a problem. wonderfully intelligent and rational So now in our time, it’s really a animals. If you put somebody down question of what’s going to be hap- at a drawing board and a computer pening next. I’m serenely convinced and you ask them to visually describe that what we’re going to see from the perfect urban organism, they’re now on is going to be largely an smart enough to come up with these impromptu thing. People are going wonderful systems and these won- to be making stuff up as they go derful ways of doing things. But the along. Because we’re mostly going to trouble is, even though we can do the be using leftover materials, leftover schematic, diagrammatic plans, we buildings, leftover salvaged stuff that can’t necessarily make them come we’re going to put things together out that way. with. I’m quite sure we’ll do good Human life is very sketchy and work with it, just as the people in the

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Middle Ages did with what Rome to be for their adulthood. I think it left over. isn’t going to be with an experience Maybe the people after them will in the suburban utopia of our time. do better. It does present tremendous But it’s going to be impromptu, opportunities for young people, who and it’s going to be emergent, and it’s may not know it because their whole going to be not quite exactly what we experience has been suburban so all expect. And I’m kind of excited far. But a lot of their lives are actu- about it, because this whole moder- ally going to be taking place very nity has been extremely tiresome for differently. They’re coming out of me. I don’t even like the costumes college with maybe no idea of what we wear anymore. I want to wear a the shape and texture of life is going sword.

Legacy

DC: Have you ever thought about I’ve accomplished in my life — I can the legacy that you’re going to leave look at a shelf of books and say, “Hey, behind? Do you ever think about how I wrote a shelf of books.” So I know you want to be remembered or what that I didn’t go through this world you want your contribution to be? uselessly for the time that I took up. JHK: I haven’t thought about it in I’m fairly comfortable with who those terms, exactly. The way I think I turned out to be as an adult human about anything remotely like that, being. I actually did learn how to take is that I’m comfortable with what care of myself after a pretty bad start

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Legacy 277 in adulthood, a floundering start of a white suit and goes to a beautifully not even being able to pay the light appointed office with like a Louis bill. I finally figured that out. Quatorze antique desk that probably My matrimonial record’s a bit costs $104,000 with all kinds of in- sketchy, and not something I’m laid marquetry. And he’s there in his really proud of — I apologize to all of white suit with a handkerchief in his my ex-wives and even some girl- white suit pocket and some kind of a friends. I didn’t have any children. beautiful Hermès tie, you know, and It just worked out that way despite he looks great. And then he rolls out the fact that I was married and did of his office and goes out to lunch perform the procreative act more at a place where people see him in than a few times. his white suit and they say, “Oh he’s Probably the only thing I’m really wearing a white suit. He looks very kind of sorry about is that I didn’t nice.” I’m kind of sorry that I don’t dress better. I work at home so I can do that — that I’m just wearing my old just put any old thing on and go to Polartec velour zip-up full of cat hair. my office. I kind of wish — I mean So I apologize to you, Duncan, I would want to go the Tom Wolfe because I could have put on better route. I have a fantasy about old Tom, clothes for you. Maybe next year my whom I only met once in my whole New Year’s resolution will be that life in an elevator. My fantasy about “I’m going to put on a tie when he Tom is that he’s living in some kind comes over to do the podcast or if I of an East Side townhouse, and he go down to his crib in Troy and do gets up every morning and puts on it there.”

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“It takes the silence of town like Troy to stir the mind.” — Richard Selzer, Down From Troy

Ten years ago I moved to Troy, passenger rail; and an abrupt transi- New York, a small American city tion to nearby farmlands, with few of exactly the type James Howard suburban intrusions. For the most Kunstler sees prospering in the new part, my life here even resembles energy future. There’s no denying the kind of scaled-down existence that the place is struggling now, that Jim envisions for people of the and has been for the better half of a future. century. But I am confident that its All of this has served as a great many underutilized features will be backdrop and Petri dish for our valued once again as events unfold. ongoing conversations about urban- These assets include a tight network ism and the Long Emergency. But I of walkable streets and blocks; a am not in Troy living the way I am major inland water route; access to out of any concerns or preparations 279 ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 280 The Kunstlercast for a post-peak oil world. I am here with friends, neighbors and clients because I want to be here — now — and along the way. Why buy groceries in because I find it deeply rewarding to bulk when I can walk to the co-op be in this place, in spite of its long- and chat with the clerks each morn- festering state. Life is charming for ing? Evenings I often spend bounc- me here, in and amongst the residue ing on foot from one pub to the next, of nineteenth-century industrial where I am always in the company of wealth. Even on my tight income, I good friends or gregarious strangers. never find myself locked out from No need to call or text first before any luxuries, although it helps that setting out — I know I’ll never be I’m easily amused and fairly modest alone, unless I chose to be. in my tastes. My neighborhood is my At the moment I still own a car, living room, office, playground and but rarely ever use it except to drive marketplace, and I seldom need or to Saratoga to talk with Jim about even desire to leave. suburban sprawl and fossil fuel My days are punctuated by design depletion. The irony of that does not with dozens of inefficient chores, elude me. I do take the occasional which wind me around the blocks road trip. More often I’ll ride the in and out of the stores and offices train to New York City or Burlington. far more times than logic demands. I enjoy being in nature as much as I make these trips on foot for the any other “outdoorsman.” But even simple pleasure of being immersed the places for those activities can be in a beautifully designed urban fab- reached without car. There are plenty ric, and for the inevitable encounters of swimming holes, canoe launches,

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Outro 281 campsites, bike paths and hiking can be described as bustling. There trails along the periphery of town. I are many more empty buildings visit them often. and vacant lots yet to be occupied by All of this might lead one to sur- businesses or residents. Our public mise that I am ignorant of or antago- image needs improving, too. The nistic toward the world at large. But suburbanites still hold wildly exag- I have seen and lived in other parts gerated notions about the crime, the of it. I imagine I will again. For now, bad schools and the lack of parking I find great satisfaction in the daily in our allegedly narrow streets. But rhythms of life within this small even they are starting to poke around sphere. And it’s exciting to see the more often, for our farmers’ markets, place gradually shake off its atrophy. our bar scene and our festivals. Our city leaders are incrementally At this point, they still need to be repairing and replacing the missing bribed with gimmicks and special teeth along our streets, correcting events in order to arrive in large mistakes from a less thoughtful era. numbers. It is funny, however, how There are fits and starts and temper the most popular of these festivals tantrums along the way. I’m sure are centered on walking, shopping there will be more. Overall, though, and dining in our quaint downtown. these efforts are progressing, and I’m After all, these late-night Fridays pleased to witness them from the and weekend fairs are really just front row. dressed-up versions of what people And I’m not deluded — we still normally do every weekend with a have a long way to go before the place healthy city: use it. It’s baffling that

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 282 The Kunstlercast people need a contrived invitation to out in the sun or lost in the woods. come visit, and the situation used to When I come across these visible frustrate me, until Kunstler helped reminders of abandoned enterprise, calm my impatience by describing I find it hard to imagine that I am de- these activities as “American society scended from the same people who rehearsing for the era to come,” created them. The people of my time, when we will once again walk, shop for the most part, have little affection and revel in the places where we live for our historic infrastructure and and work. That gives me a lot of hope. dwelling places, preferring to sprawl I really do find much to be op- out into the ChemLawn hinterlands timistic about in Jim’s forecast, in instead. They choose particleboard spite of his reputation for being a and plastic over brick and stone. “doomer.” I feel indebted to him for They prefer asphalt to Belgian that because it’s often difficult for me block. They favor parking lots and to stay positive about the direction driveways over walkable neighbor- we’re moving as a culture. Having hoods and public transit. They find lived in upstate New York since corporate-controlled transactions birth, I am constantly reminded by more convenient than independent our grand rotting cities that better commerce. And so on. days are behind us. Our landscape is Economically, the region has littered with crumbling edifices and been moribund for generations. weed-choked manufacturing centers. Many of our most talented young Our pre-automobile transit systems minds flee after school for employ- are buried under tarmac, or rusting ment in Manhattan, Boston or the

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Sun Belt. This has been the back- equivalent of seventy-eight days drop of my life. Yet I choose to stay around the clock with Kunstler’s because the place speaks to me and words beaming directly into my I am haunted by thoughts that these ears. And that’s just the time I have trends could be reversed — that these devoted to recording, editing and buildings and cities and elegant producing our weekly conversations. means of moving between them There were additional months spent could be resurrected. I often fanta- poring over his published books, size that I could have lived here in and the transcripts of our conversa- the earlier, car-free and lively days. tions that formed the basis of this But talking with Jim over the years publication. I sometimes relate the has given me reason to hope that experience to being an embedded I may see some form of that world reporter: Kunstler was my source and return in my lifetime. What else can beat for four whole years. When you I say other than I am so very grateful spend that much time with a source, to have been shown that glimpse of a you form a bond and perhaps even a more satisfying future? Grateful for friendship. In my case, I seem to have the hours he gave me to interact with developed intellectual Stockholm him personally, professionally and Syndrome, for which I have no plans consistently. to seek counseling. When we set out on this adven- During our time together, we ture in podcasting, I never imagined spoke at length about specific cit- we would still be at it four years later. ies and places around the world, as By my count, I have now spent the well as current events, rock ’n’ roll,

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 284 The Kunstlercast hunting, porn, space exploration. We I would probably be signing off examined the finer points of build- differently with these parting words. ing to the human scale, public art, But this project has always been urban thinkers — even paving mate- something more than reporting or rials. Our conversation overflowed interviewing. From the start, I ap- onto the streets of Saratoga Springs, proached it as an odd apprenticeship Troy and Rochester, New York. We of sorts. Our proximity, the timing talked in parks and on wild urban and this emerging media form outcrops and even in a suburban brought me together with Jim. It was shopping mall. When we couldn’t a lucky happenstance for me that I get there in person, we explored was able to spend a great deal of time Paris, Detroit and Baltimore virtually listening to and learning from one of with Google’s Street View program. the important minds of our era. I say More recently, we have invited other that knowing full well that Kunstler guests onto the show to contribute. is not a mainstream intellectual. He I recorded far more content than I is a voice from the margins, where could include in these pages. But for he chooses to thrive. But what he the time being, all of those conver- told me during our time together is sations are available for listening at no less relevant to the mainstream KunstlerCast.com, where you can today than it was eighteen years ago also find a list of important books when The Geography of Nowhere was and resources to learn more about first published. I believe that I have these topics. absorbed a fair amount of informa- If I were strictly a journalist, tion while bringing that voice to a

ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Outro 285 few new ears and eyes. That alone is now that the culture I have known compensation enough for the work. and battled with my whole life is fad- All apprenticeships must eventu- ing. As it dies off, new opportunities ally come to an end, though, and will present themselves. I do not fear this one is not exempt from the rule. these changes. I welcome them, with And while I don’t intend to ever stop serene confidence that the journey talking with JHK, there will come day from here to there will be rewarding. soon — it’s on the horizon — when we We certainly have our work cut will unplug our microphones and out for us in my neck of the woods. move on to other projects. I know But I think we’ll get where we need I still have a great deal left to learn. to go. I imagine that you and your But already I find I have much to say people will get to wherever you need on the destiny of my small corner to go as well, wherever that is. I look of civilization, and I now feel better forward to seeing you on the other equipped to contribute to that dis- side. cussion. I feel compelled to do so, in I’m your host, Duncan Crary. my own voice and way. It’s clear even Thanks for listening.

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Chapter 1: The Geography of Nowhere to Tammany Hall scored him a brief stint 1. James Howard Kunstler, The Geography in Congress, while his casino in Saratoga of Nowhere, (New York: Simon & Shuster, Springs, New York, earned him a fortune. 1993) 10. But after Morrissey returned to his home- 2. Kunstler said this in 2002, about the new- town a wealthy and powerful man, his at-the-time MVP Health Care headquar- hopes of building a mansion in Troy’s ters on State Street in Schenectady, New exclusive Washington Park neighborhood York. He was a featured speaker at the were dashed when the elitist property “Livable Cities’’ series, sponsored by the owners refused to sell him a plot. They just Schenectady Heritage Foundation, which wouldn’t stand for a man of such ill repute I happened to be covering as a reporter living amongst them in their wealthy, in- for a small weekly newspaper, The Journal. dustrialist enclave. So the old street tough See also Mike Fricano, “Critic Slams MVP got revenge for the snub by building a Building,” Albany Times Union, Monday, horrid-smelling soap factory just close April 8, 2002, B1. enough to his rivals’ homes to make life 3. This is a line of dialogue spoken by the rather unpleasant for their olfactories character Nell in Samuel Beckett’s one-act when the wind blew. See George Waller, play “Endgame,” which premiered in 1957. Saratoga: Saga of an Impious Era (New York: 4. TED2004, “James H Kunstler dissects sub- Bonanza Books, 1966), 119–141. urbia,” ted.com (accessed May 8, 2011). 6. Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere, 114. 5. John Morrissey was a street brawler from 7. Ibid. 113. Troy, New York, who became a prizefighter 8. See Section 2 of this book for a detailed nicknamed “Old Smoke.” His connections discussion of the New Urbanisim. 287 ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 288 The Kunstlercast

9. Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House by the prestigious architectural firm Mc- (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981): Kim, Mead & White. The house burned in “Every child goes to school in a building the 1940s. See Constance M. Grieff, Lost that looks like a duplicating-machine America: From the Atlantic to the Mississippi replacement-parts wholesale distribution (Princeton: Pyne Press, 1971) and mackay warehouse.... Every new $900,000 sum- history.com/HarborHill.html (accessed mer house in the north woods of Michi- May 8, 2011). gan or on the shore of Long Island has 11. Fritz Steiner and Talia McCray, “We Knew so many pipe railings, ramps, hob-tread It All Along,” Planning, July 2009. metal spiral stairways, sheets of industrial 12. Thomas E. Rinaldi and Robert J. Yasinsac, plate glass, banks of tungsten-halogen Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of lamps, and white cylindrical shapes, it an American Landscape (Hanover: Univer- looks like an insecticide refinery.” sity Press of New England, 2006), 1. Incidentally, the Maple Ave Middle 13. Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere, 40–41. School on Route 9 in Saratoga Springs 14. Crumb, 1995 documentary. Sony Pictures made international news when security Classic Directed by Terry Zwigoff, pro- confiscated the bike of a twelve-year-old duced by Lynn O’Donnell. boy because bicycling to school was not 15. Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski, The permitted. The principal cited safety con- R. Crumb Handbook (London: MQ Publica- cerns over traffic and lack of supervision, tions, 2005), 18. although the boy’s mother had cycled into 16. Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact His- school with him. She was instructed to tory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, return by car to pick up her child and his 2005). For Kunstler’s review of this book, bike. See Andrew J. Bernstein, “Student’s see Salmagundi (Fall 2006, No. 152). Bike Ride Earns Punishment,” The Sarato- 17. Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics (New gian, May 23, 2009. York: Norton, 1954). 10. The estate that belonged to Charles 18. For example, Randal O’Toole, the self- Mackay was called Harbor Hill. The ex- proclaimed “antiplanner,” is a senior fel- terior of the house mimicked a French low with the Cato Institute, a libertarian castle while the interior was decorated think tank founded by oil conglomerate

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Koch Industries leaders Edward H. Crane 25. Michael Kinsley, “The Least We Can Do, ” and Charles Koch. The Atlantic, October 2010. 19. Kunstler participated in a structured debate with O’Toole at Brown University in Chapter 2: The End of Suburbia April 2010. A video of the debate, titled 1. FDR’s Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of “Building America: Who should Control 1944 (a.k.a. the G. I. Bill of Rights) provided Urban Growth?”, appears online at You- low-interest, zero-down-payment home Tube (accessed May 8, 2011). loans for servicemen. 20. Joel Kotkin is a distinguished presiden- 2. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman tial fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman writer, architect and engineer in the first University in Orange, California, and an century BCE. He is best known as the au- adjunct fellow with the Legatum Institute, thor of the multi-volume work De Architec- a think tank based in London, UK. He is tura (“On Architecture”). the author of The New Geography: How the 3. Werner Hegemann and Elbert Peets, The Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the Ameri- American Vitruvius: An Architects’ Handbook can Landscape (New York: Random House, of Civic Art (New York: The Architectural 2002). Book Publishing Company, 1922). 21. David Brooks, “Relax, We’ll Be Fine,” The 4. Page 253 New York Times, April 5, 2010. 5. Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere, 253. 22. David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: The New 6. See: “Remarks by the President on Amer- Upper Class And How They Got There (New ica’s Energy Security,” Georgetown Uni- York: Simon & Shuster, 2000). versity, March 30, 2011, m.whitehouse. 23. “All truth passes through three stages. gov/the-press-office/2011/03/30/remarks First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently -president-americas-energy-security (ac- opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self- cessed May 8, 2011) and Larry Kudlow, evident,” —Arthur Schopenhauer, German “The Kudlow Report,” CNBC, March 23, philosopher (1788–1860). 2011. 24. James Howard Kunstler, “How To Mess Up 7. The Knickerbocker News was an evening a Town,” Planning Commissioners Journal, newspaper covering Albany, New York. issue 17 (Winter 1995). It was purchased in 1960 by the Hearst

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Corporation, which also owned the com- 3. See: James Howard Kunstler, “Eyesore of peting Albany Times Union newspaper. the Month,” August 2008 kunstler.com Hearst discontinued The Knickerbocker /eyesore_200808.html and “The Com- News in 1988, but continues to publish The ing Re-Becoming,” Clusterfuck Nation, Times Union today. Its headquarters, where July 28, 2008 kunstler.com/mags_diary24 Kunstler worked, are at the end of Wolf .html (accessed May 8, 2011). Road, a commercial shopping strip in the 4. The Third Place is a term for community suburban town of Colonie, New York. spaces where people interact and socialize, 8. Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere, 47. such as bars and cafés. The First Place is the Another example appears on page 114: home; the Second Place is the workspace. “Americans are doing almost nothing to prepare for the end of the romantic dream Chapter 4: Architecture that was the American automobile age.” 1. The Experimental Media & Performance 9. James Howard Kunstler, “My Y2K — A Per- Arts Center, or EMPAC, was designed by sonal Statement” (April 1999), kunstler Nicholas Grimshaw: www.empac.rpi.edu .com/mags_y2k.html (accessed May 8, 2011). /building (accessed May 8, 2011). Architec- 10. Others who are also lumped into the cat- tural critic William Morgan described it egory of “doomer” include Dmitry Orlov, as maybe the “most outrageous ...building Reinventing Collapse; John Michael Greer, to appear in upstate New York in decades.” The Long Descent; Jay Hanson, DieOff.com; See William Morgan “Beached Ocean Liner and James Lovelock, “The Gaia Theory.” in Troy,” The Providence Journal, May 4, 2009. 11. James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emer- 2. The State University of New York, Brockport. gency (New York: Grove/Atlantic, 2005), 18. 3. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) is also known to Berliners Chapter 3: American Culture as the Schwangere Auster (“The Pregnant 1. “This book seeks to indentify those fail- Oyster”). ures, and it necessarily contains a good 4. Barbara Bradley Hagerty, “Future Of measure of ridicule, which is the inescap- Brutalist-Designed Church Not Concrete,” able fate of the ridiculous,” Kunstler, Home NPR, August 21, 2008. See also: Sarah from Nowhere, 18. Abruzzese, “Church Sues Over Landmark 2. US Energy Information Administration. Status,” The New York Times, August 7, 2008.

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Chapter 5: Getting There 2. The panel discussion “Manhattan: the 1. According to a 2008 report on consumer Greenest Place in America” took place expenditures in 2006, the US Department at the National Arts Club on October 20, of Labor’s US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2009, and featured David Owen; James found that the average cost to own and Howard Kunstler; Gary Brewer, an ar- maintain a car in America is $8,003. The chitect with Robert A.M. Stern; and Paul breakdown includes $3,421 to purchase Stoller, a sustainability consultant who is the car, $2,227 for gas and oil, and $2,355 in director of environmental design consul- other related costs. AAA puts the average tants Atelier Ten. annual cost of owning a car at $9,641, and 3. See David Streitfeld, “An Effort to Save those calculations were based on an aver- Flint, Mich., by Shrinking It,” The New York age gas cost of $2.256 per gallon. See Lisa Times, April 21, 2009; and Belinda Lanks, Smith, “The True Cost Of Owning A Car,” “Creative Shrinkage,” The New York Times, Investopedia, July 11, 2008. December 10, 2006. 2. “Slugging” is the term for semiformal, 4. On the band’s final album, Naked, released anonymous carpooling in Washington, in 1988. D.C., and other cities with major traffic 5. This 1993 movie, starring Daniel Day-Lewis congestion and high-occupancy vehicle and Michelle Pfeiffer, was based on the lanes that incentivize driving with more historical novel by Edith Wharton from passengers. There are a few versions of 1920, set in New York City in the 1870s. where the name came from. 6. “My City Was Gone” by the Pretenders, re- 3. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is leased in 1982 as a b-side to the hit single the only commercial shipping link be- “Back On the Chain Gang.” tween the Great Lakes System and the 7. Section 8 is a federal housing voucher Mississippi River System. It replaced The program provided by the United States Illinois and Michigan Canal. Department of Housing and Urban Devel- opment (HUD) which subsidizes housing Chapter 6: The City in Mind costs for low-income families and indi- 1. David Owen “Green Manhattan: Every- viduals. where Should be More Like New York,” The 8. Co-op City, or “Cooperative City,” is located New Yorker, October 18, 2004. in the Bronx and dates back to the 1960s

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and early ’70s. It consists of more than 4. “On the fringe of mass suburbia, even the than thirty residential high-rise towers advantages of the primary neighborhood surrounded by “green spaces.” group disappear. The cost of this detach- 9. Trevanian, The Crazyladies of Pearl Street ment in space from other men is out of all (New York: Crown, 2005), 13. proportion to its supposed benefits. The 10. The Jevons paradox is an observation that end product is an encapsulated life, spent whenever technology makes it possible to more and more either in a motor car or use a resource more efficiently, it usually within the cabin of darkness before a leads to a greater consumption rate of television set.” Lewis Mumford, The City in that same resource. Kunstler usually talks History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and about the paradox in terms of fossil fuel Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace usage. and World, 1961), 512. Quoted in Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere, 10. Chapter 7: Urban Polemicists 1. During a campaign stop in Ohio on Au- Chapter 8: Parting Words gust 31, 2008, Barack Obama referred to 1. “All the while I have been forgetting the Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American third of my reasons for remaining so Cities as “a great book.” A video of this ex- faithful a citizen of the Federation, despite change posted to YouTube was widely cir- all the lascivious inducements from expa- culated by New Urbanists. See Bill Dawers, triates to follow them beyond the seas, and “City Talk: Back to basics with Jane Jacobs, ” all the surly suggestions from patriots that Savanah Morning News, January 6, 2009. I succumb. It is the reason which grows 2. James Howard Kunstler, “Godmother of out of my mediaeval but unashamed taste the American City,” Metropolis Magazine, for the bizarre and indelicate, my congeni- March 2001. tal weakness for comedy of the grosser 3. The 1939 World’s Fair was held in New varieties. The United States, to my eye, is York City and included an exhibit and ride incomparably the greatest show on earth.” called Futurama. Sponsored by General H.L. Mencken, “On Being an American,” Motors, it predicted what the world would from Prejudices, Third Series (New York: Al- be like twenty years later, with things like fred A. Knopf, 1922), 57–58. automated highways and endless suburbs.

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ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION About the Contributors

Duncan Crary is host and producer He lives in Troy, New York, where of The KunstlerCast, a talkshow he is self-employed as a publicist and podcast featuring author James How- new media consultant. He plans to ard Kunstler. He has also recorded launch a new podcast series based on face-to-face podcast interviews with life in a small American city in 2012. many notable personalities, includ- His website is DuncanCrary.com. ing Sir Salman Rushdie, E. O. Wilson and Christopher Hitchens. He has James Howard Kunstler is the worked as a reporter for newspapers author of The Geography of Nowhere, and magazines, and was a founding The City in Mind, Home from Nowhere editor of Salvage, a newsprint maga- and The Long Emergency, as well as zine of literature and art. eleven novels, including World Made 297 ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION 298 The Kunstlercast

By Hand and The Witch of Hebron. Ken Avidor is an artist in Minneapo- He is currently finishing his next lis, Minnesota. His anti-car comic nonfiction book, which examines strip “Roadkill Bill” was published the diminishing returns of technol- weekly in Pulse of the Twin Cities and ogy. His writing has also appeared reprinted in Carbusters, Auto-Free in The New York Times Magazine, The Times and other environmental and Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, anti-car publications. An excerpt Metropolis, Rolling Stone, Playboy and from his forthcoming graphic novel many other periodicals. Bicyclopolisappears in Cifiscape vol. Kunstler was born in New York I: The Twin Cities, published by Onyx City in 1948 and has lived in Sara- Neon. Avidor’s website is AvidorStu- toga Springs, New York, for more dios.com. than thirty years. His website, where he publishes his popular Clusterfuck Nation blog every Monday, is Kunstler.com.

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