Man in Nature, The Fiasco of Suburbia by James Howard Kunstler




“The fiasco of suburbia, so acute and so damaging to our culture in general, has otherwise intelligent and educated people adopting foolish positions on our national land-use crisis. The most common is the idea that nature is the antidote for problems of bad urbanism . . . . that human nature is something apart from the rest of nature . . . . that human nature and the rest of nature occupy separate and irreconcilable zones.”

“As a formal proposition, the human habitat is the town, the village, the neighborhood, and the city. As things stand now in America, these habitats are so degraded and horrible that anyone with the means to do so has fled, shrieking, to dwell instead in either a rural setting or the mock-rural setting represented by suburbia. This group, it is worth noting, includes a great many “environmentalists” who, due to the blandishments of cheap oil, are able to lead urban lives in distant hinterlands, connected to their needs by large automobiles.”

“The mentality that views man and nature apart and irreconcilable in terms of land-use is rooted in our culture from the shock of industrial urbanism in the 19th century. It shows in our lame attempts to decorate the revolting roadscapes of suburbia with installations of “landscaping” one views (with horror) everywhere: the little juniper shrubs in the universal bark-mulch bed deployed in front of a building . . . . I call these little landscape fantasias nature band-aids.”

“. . . having no faith in urbanism, and having no training in civic design, the environmentalists could imagine only nature as a solution: trees, grass, et cetera (forgetting for a moment that even parks are man-made artifacts).”

“The terms open space and green space are themselves very problematical for a number reasons. They are abstractions. They do not describe anything particular. A farm and a neighborhood square are both “open spaces,” both “green spaces,” but they differ hugely in function, character, and ownership relations with society.”

“At the bottom of these problems of terminology and self-defeating cultural positions is the need for those who call themselves environmentalists to become knowledgeable and skilled in the design of the human habitat — that is to become urbanists . . . . Quit wasting your time and money on nature band-aids. Stop yammering about open space and green space, and open your mind. Start helping with the task of making American towns and neighborhoods magnificent places to live and work, and move downtown yourself, even if you have to give up one of your mighty SUVs. The antidote to America’s terrible urbanism is, simply, good urbanism.”

Read the full article at Orion Magazine

 

Keywords : suburb, city, urban design, urbanism, permaculture, land-use, green space, cars, cheap oil, peak oil
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Published::
3.25.07 / 4am
Category:
Appropriate Science and Technology, Ecosocionomics, Life's Necessities, Means, Paths, Ends
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