Kunstler's style is entertaining and his analysis pulls no punches. How cars and suburbs have undermined civic life in USA.

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Product Description

In his landmark book The Geography of Nowhere James Howard Kunstler visited the "tragic sprawlscape of cartoon architecture, junked cities, and ravaged countryside" America had become and declared that the deteriorating environment was not merely a symptom of a troubled culture, but one of the primary causes of our discontent.

In Home from Nowhere Kunstler not only shows that the original American Dream -- the desire for peaceful, pleasant places in which to work and live -- still has a strong hold on our imaginations, but also offers innovative, eminently practical ways to make that dream a reality. Citing examples from around the country, he calls for the restoration of traditional architecture, the introduction of enduring design principles in urban planning, and the development of public spaces that acknowledge our need to interact comfortable with one another.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70133 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-26
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com
Through magazine articles and through his previous book, The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler has become one of the foremost decriers of the blighted urban landscape of the United States. Now, in this new sequel to the earlier book, Kunstler moves from description to prescription. The villains, Kunstler says, are zoning laws, real estate taxes, modernist architecture, and, particularly, the automobile. The solutions include multi-use zoning districts, car-free urban cores, revised tax laws, Beaux-Arts design principles, and, in particular, the neo-traditionalist school of architecture and city planning known as "new urbanism." It's possible to disagree with some of Kunstler's conclusions--the hope that large numbers of commuters will give up their single-passenger vehicles for public transit downtown has been discredited in city after city--without abandoning his larger goal: a return to a saner urban geography and, with it, to a saner way of life.

From Publishers Weekly
In a slashing, fervent, practical, brilliant critique of the philosophy?or lack thereof?underpinning today's dismal American cities and isolating suburbs, Kunstler argues that our streets, malls, parks, civic buildings and houses frustrate innate psychological needs, violate human scale and thwart our desire to participate in the larger world. An architectural design critic (The Geography of Nowhere) and a novelist, he champions "new urbanism," an architectural reform movement dedicated to producing cohesive, mixed-use neighborhoods for people of widely different incomes, neighborhoods resembling U.S. towns prior to WWII. Using photos and line drawings throughout, he highlights numerous new urbanism-inspired projects around the country, from Seaside, a resort town on the Florida panhandle, to redevelopment schemes in Providence, Memphis, Columbus and Corning, N.Y. He also lashes what he considers the major obstacles to new urbanism-banks that make loans only to projects creating more suburban sprawl; stifling zoning laws; and a property-tax system that punishes builders of quality and "rewards those who let existing buildings go to hell." First serial to the Atlantic.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Kunstler hits the ground running in this sequel to his highly acclaimed Geography of Nowhere (LJ 5/1/93), which assailed in no uncertain terms the consumer wasteland that Americans now habitate. As in his previous work, Kunstler takes as his point of departure the insidious rise of the automobile as the first blow to the disintegration of our communities and moves toward proposals for restoring the civic dimension to our lives. He writes eloquently of the bitter legacy of slavery in forging today's urban black underclass and takes on the thorny, unsexy issues of zoning and property taxes. Kunstler has embraced the progressive philosophy of the "new urbanism," characterized by its sensitivity to building to human scale and demonstrated most effectively in the experiment of Seaside, Florida, designed by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Adres Duany. His text offers numerous analyses of urban form via diagrams, graphs, and charts, e.g., how a street should be designed. His book is a jolly rant of fiercely held personal convictions that is intended to provoke his readers to action. An essential purchase.?Thomas P.R. Nugent, New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Customer Reviews

It gives your anxiety a label, and a language for expressing it.
You drive past an ugly strip-mall and think, "Man, *another* one of these things?"

You see the old farmland being stripped away and carted off, landscaped and dissected into half-acre plots for homes you can't afford and wonder, "Who thinks this is a good idea?"

You can't remember the last time you went shopping without your car, even for a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. Or let your kids play in the neighborhood without arranging a minor migration with the minivan. Or walked to the park and met your friends for lunch.

Your anxiety is real. There's an explanation for it, and the book "Home From Nowhere" brings it to fore, warts and all, and dares you to reflect upon it. Mr. Kunstler might not be politically correct or use gender-neutral examples -- which shouldn't matter to you and sorry if it does -- but he's right. He's opening eyes to what's going on, explaining why your anxiety exists and what exactly is going on in America. And once you know, you can never go back. You either find yourself compelled to help fix the problem, staunch its flow, or preserve your local solutions; or you live with a new anxiety, one born of knowing the problem is real and refusing to deal with it.

It would be difficult to overestimate the value in organizing the topics and discussion so eloquently, as Mr. Kunstler does here. The strip malls, the poor planning, the misuse of the finite land resources we have, the lack of humanity in our design and construction, all conspire to disassociate us from what could be a positive experience: living among your neighbors, all of your neighbors, in an uplifting and positive community. It just isn't possible with suburban pods and the reliance of cars to get anywhere, see or do anything. The arguments all hang together, and the solutions are accessible and adaptable.

You might not be inspired to join your local zoning board, but you may be inspired to act locally in another way. I hope you do. Because, knowing what I know now, I'd hate to lose the small town I currently have. And I'd like for everyone to get a fair chance at it as well.

-C

Rant against sprawl, complete with cussing
Home From Nowhere describes sprawl and car culture as evil and proposes an alternative to these. The discussion of sprawl and the irrationality of cars rings true and will tend to resonate with many US residents (unless the racial stereotyping and put downs of women get to you). The discussion of alternatives contains good jumping off points, however the alternative that Kunstler wants is a return to a 50's city with a cute two story downtown and some apartments over stores.

A big flaw is the excessive profanity, especially given that this is a nonfiction book that is trying to be serious. There is probably a cuss word about every 3 pages. Just use amazon's "look inside" feature to explore various cuss words. When he isn't cussing, Kunstler refers to people he disagrees with as "boneheads" or other derogatory terms. This makes the book read a bit like talk radio, where people call in and they and the host just call one another names. Facts come up, but when they fail, name calling and profanity are the tools used to illustrate the point.

The subject of this book is a good one, and I agree with Kunstler's conclusions on sprawl. However, the author's terrible personality and use of profanity to defend his points seriously undercut what he is trying to say.

Great insight - but style a bit over the top
I just finished reading "Home from Nowhere" for the first time -- I'm commenting here just before reading it again. Wow - my head is spinning from insights like:

1. Neighborhoods made up of houses massed at the sidewalk like are much more attractive to walk around than set-back houses -- and in general, the more set-back, the less attractive the neighborhood is to walk around.
[I see this in my native city of Providence, Rhode Island, where the area around Benefit Street is clearly the most pleasant area to walk around in in the entire city -- and virtually all the houses front on the sidewalk.]

2. Americans have two ideals in mind when they think of houses: the 'little cabin in the woods' and 'the manor house in the park'. I didn't even realize I had those ideals, but, by God, I do (and I'm not happy that I now realize that I do).

3. The standard American approach to property taxes is not to tax land values, but rather to tax the value of the buildings on the land. [so the owner of a parking lot can afford to wait for the windfall of a large land acquisition to build a skyscraper while anyone who simply improves his building gets penalized by an increased tax -- who would have thought that Henry George was right?]

Kunstler is a bit intemperate in his language (I liked that) and a bit diffuse in his arguments, but these are very minor quibbles about a mind-expanding and eye-opening book.