Home From Nowhere By James Kunstler - 1361 Words

James Kunstler in his book Home from Nowhere, slams American urban design and goes into detail about its horrifying attributes. He calls the United States a theme park nation that needs superficial stimulation to hide unhappiness. These conditions exist, in part, due to our association of the city with the dirty industrial revolution rather than the more natural green environment that people prefer. He calls the public realm the connective tissue of our everyday world. It is parks, streets, squares, sidewalks, vistas and views and defined open space and seascapes, rural working landscapes and wilderness and porticos and entrances to the more often private spaces of buildings. A good public realm is important to foster interaction between†¦show more content†¦Kohn writes about how this affects our civil discourse, people congregating in suburban shopping malls creates an odd qusi-public / private space leading to questions of free speech. This privatization of the public real m would not occur in traditional society where people congregate at neighborhood parks or downtown plazas and public sidewalks. Perhaps some of the most intolerable consequences of poor urban design are discussed by Powell who writes that sprawl and the fragmentation of people along social and racial lines creates inequality. This is because historically only the middle and upper class were mobile enough to sprawl as discriminatory housing practices disenfranchised minorities and redlined their communities. The problem intensifies as concentrated poverty creates an environment void of opportunities and as Kunstler has stated our auto dependent society disadvantages the poor who lack mobility. Davis highlights these issues of the public realm, inequality, and concentrated poverty while writing about Los Angeles. A city where the wealthy cower behind guarded walls and downtown is filled with skyscrapers that turn inward away from the public. Davis also points out that this type of destruction of the public realm is subsidized by LA’s taxpayers who shelled out two billion dollars to lure banks and professional