James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstleris an American author, social critic, public speaker, and blogger. He is best known for his books The Geography of Nowhere, a history of American suburbia and urban development, The Long Emergency, and most recently, Too Much Magic. In The Long Emergency, he argues that declining oil production is likely to result in the end of industrialized society as we know it and force Americans to live in smaller-scale, localized, agrariancommunities. Starting with World Made by Hand in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth19 October 1948
CountryUnited States of America
The twentieth century was about getting around. The twenty-first century will be about staying in a place worth staying in.
Americans are suffering so much from being in unrewarding environments that it has made us very cynical. I think that American suburbia has become a powerful generator of anxiety and depression.
Despite the obvious damage now visible in the entropic desolation of every American home town, Wal-Mart managed to install itself in the pantheon of American Dream icons, along with apple pie, motherhood, and Coca Cola.
If the Internet exists at all in the future, it will be on a much-reduced scale from what we enjoy today, and all the activities of everyday life are not going to reside on it.
My beef with the alt-fuel people is not the renewable or alt-fuel ideas themselves. Sooner or later, there's no question we're going to have to rely on them. For me, it's an issue of scale.
I don't like talking about 'solutions.' I prefer talking about intelligent responses.
Ridicule is the unfortunate destiny of the ridiculous.
Anything goes and nothing matters.
I’m serenely convinced that we are heading into what will amount to a time out from technological progress as we know it,
A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.
The two elements of the suburban pattern that cause the greatest problems are the extreme separation of uses and the vast distances between things
On top of the insult of destroying the geographic places we call home, the chain stores also destroyed people's place in the order of daily life, including the duties, responsibilities, obligations, and ceremonies that prompt citizens to care for each other.
Parallel parking is desirable for two reasons: parked cars create a physical barrier and psychological buffer that protects pedestrians on the sidewalk from moving vehicles; and a rich supply of parallel parking can eliminate the need for parking lots, which are extremely destructive of the civic fabric.
Generations will soon come into their power feeling differently about themselves than we do now, and in their re-enchanted world, they will wonder about us and what we did to their world, and what we thought we were doing.