Thread: My struggle. The ghastly tragedy of North American civic life

James Howard Kunstler traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where every place is like no place in particular, where the cities are dead zones and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots.

Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. In The Geography of Nowhere, he tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. It is also a wake-up call for citizens to reinvent the places where we live and work, to build communities that are once again worthy of our affection. Kunstler proposes that by reviving civic art and civic life, we will rediscover public virtue and a new vision of the common good. At 5:07 of the presentation, he gives a depiction of a place worth its while. Those are the kinds of streets you see all over SE Asia. "people just go because its pleasurable to be there" Yes. Like Kohsan road. Its just plain pleasurable to be there.

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Whatever suburban civic life in N. America is, the busy and colorful streets in the major centers of SE Asia are the opposite. The heightened role of the motorcycle increases this effect. There is something spiritually uplifting about being in a real human ecosystem. And there is something crushing about living in a glorified Walmart parking lot. But hey im just here for the mongering right ? No. It is far deeper and more complicated than that.

Everything James Howard Kunstler says is 100% spot on.