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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.
Book 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.
Customer Reviews:
Great insight - but style a bit over the top.......2007-01-17
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.
Progressing back to a scale of living that will benefit humans in the future as well.......2006-03-09
If Ownership Society (G.W. Bush) instead of Great Society (L.B Johnson) sounds good to you, then US Suburbia is right for you.
"Home from Nowhere" by James Kunstler, however, predicts the demise of suburbia in the near future and lays out principles and detailed suggestions how future cities, towns, and settlements by humans living in today's borders of the USA should be outlined.
The book is rich in details and enables both US citizens and immigrants such as me (from Germany) to understand what went so wrong with suburbia and its emphasis of providing a life in solitude. The ideas of "New Urbanism" are covered extensively and quite illustratively.
"Home from Nowhere" describes how cities and towns can be built or rebuilt that enable its residents to live in a social density traditionally associated with urban life (and in my country, Germany, the term "urban" had and has a positive connotation, socially mixed, culturally mixed, accessible, walking distance, public transportation).
James Kunstler has offered his own view on why Suburbia is such a wrong way of life - and I recommend highly his previous book "Geography of Nowhere". "Nowhere" means "Suburbia". The title of this book "Home from Nowhere" hence means "Home from Suburbia", meaning home back in the urban life within a city - returning from the wrong life in the outer rings and returning to the city - once the US cities are walkable, enjoyable, livable again. How to make the cities livable again ? This is the topic of the book.
Here are my own thoughts about US Suburbia as an immigrant from Germany (who arrived here in 1998):
In the US, social interaction in Suburbia is mostly limited to church and schools (in case of parish schools, the two are practically identical). Church and school alone, however, do not substitute for "Community".
In Germany, I was raised in a single-family house with a fine lawn and access to a public bus (10min to downtwon) in a 250,000 city (Moenchengladbach, west of Cologne, 15 miles from the Dutch border). As a child, I effortlessly visited my friends, the school, the church, the theater, the cinema, etc. by bike or by bus.
Retail and affordable housing was mixed, residential villa areas (such as the one of my parents) were interspersed with rent complexes etc. Buses were used by teachers, academics, students, workers - and still are. Not just by the "help" (latina nannies and cleaners as in the US)
To understand better, why a focus on urban life is so important and why suburbia - home to half of Americans - is such a wasteful life (socially, resources-related, etc.) it is important to understand why so many Americans have chosen to life in barren, cloned, residential confinements: the unwillingness of US Public High Schools to differentiate by academic merit and merit alone.
This is, however, in my view the one crucial difference to the US which might explain why the mixing is still there in Germany and why suburbia is so pervasive in the US: It is possibly for the very same reason why American cities were mixed until 1954.
In Germany, schools are segmented by merit. After mandatory elementary school (Grade 1-4), each child in Germany is assessed on its academic potential at age 9 and then send to either "Main School" (to become a craftsman), "Real School" (to become most likely a very skilled worker) or to "Gymnasium" which is in essence a public (!) prep school with grade 5-13 whose graduates at age 19 then go to University.
In conservative states (Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg), 40-50% go to Main School, 20-25% to Real School and 20-30% to Gymnasium (before 1963 it was 5%).
In left-wing states (notoriously Bremen and Berlin), 60% go to Gymnasium which has, of course, caused a collapse in quality. (German parents take great care to live outside the city-state of Bremen to take residence in either near-by Lower Saxony or Schleswig-Holstein - a rare example of suburbia behavior similar to the US).
If you mix people in habitats, you need to separate students in schools based on their potential. Without that willingness, any attempt to resurrect urban life in the US will not take-off as an option endorsed wholeheartedly by Americans. German "Gymnasiums" are in essence "Advanced Placement Schools" where every subject is taught for every student for nine years on AP level. The beer kegging red-neck segment is relegated to the "Main School" (I know that in the US many children with affluent parents are beer-kegging as well - just another sign of the social deterioration so prevalent in suburbia). As a matter of fact, merit segmentation often reflects social segmentation and much has been written in Germany to rectify this.
In German gymnasiums with their emphasis on academics and much less emphasis on school team sports, mating follows a different pattern than in the US: The geeks and nerds attract the coveted girls, not the "jocks".
Perhaps even more important for the quality of the German work force and also for fulfilling your own potential: Geeks and nerds are spared the presence of the neanderthal bullies and primate beer keggers. Not only are they absent from the classroom, they are not even present in the building (remember, they attend a different school type and hence a different school building). As a result, geeks, nerds and every other boy that likes school flourishes already in school without having to wait for the Promised Land of College.
As the history of America shows: If you mix public schools - afer 1954 - adults refuse to mix any longer and settle in socially homogeneous habitats. At school, their children will then encounter neanderthals and primates, but how fortunate that their parents are in the same income percentile!
It is this move to social homogeneousness that gives Suburbia its fake ace: it is so easy to erect all those segregated zoning cages - the rich - the affluent - the true middle class - the delusional middle class - the upper trailer trash (who also are made believe they are middle class) - the zoning area you never entered. Teachers do not segment by academic potential: not a problem - then the parents do their job (but parents usually fail miserably at mixing their children socially - but again, this is what cities and towns are for).
Cities and towns, in turn, are very bad at segregating people (and after all: why should they do it ?) Yes, there are neighborhoods that tilt one way or the other, but usually they are too small to support a whole school: Therefore, students from different social backgrounds mix and therefore, teachers must do the separating by assessment based on merit.
If you allow public schools strictly segmented by merit, adults are ready to stay and accept and invite different people around them. Parents must be reassured that social mixing - in cities - does not lead to indiscriminate student mixing of bright and dumb students in the same public buildings. In Germany that means not mixing white dumb students with bright students with Turkish parents.
As the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said: "Differentiation means progress".
US public high schools do not differentiate by merit (enough). As a result, parents differentiate by income. Welcome to suburbia.
Yes, I am aware that in Germany the terms "selection" or segmentation are contaminated for a very valid reason. In your country, the term "segregation" is. Still, I offer this line of thought to you here, since I think it really matters and it helps both bright and not so bright students better to reach their potential when taught separately.
I remember how stunned I was during the first two years here (1998-2000). I could not believe the miles and miles of singe-family houses with no boardwalks, no cinema, no theater, no concert hall, no auditorium, no restaurant, no retail. Quiet confinements with adults sitting in front of flickering tv screens or computer screens (with or without children). Does this sound like a fulfilled life to you ?
It can be done better - in Germany, but also in this country which has a very rich tradition of mid-size and small-size towns that have resolved the task of building a humanly scaled habitat very well.
Back to the author of the book to review: James Kunstler offers his ideas and ideas from active architects of how compelling new ideas - and resurrecting old ones - can be implemented in a very detailed way. Make zoning your ally. Read: "Geography of Nowhere" as well. - The ICE (formerly INS) should give this book as a free hand-out to any immigrant arriving in the US and considering moving to Suburbia.
I have also read "The Long Emergency" in which Kunstler spells out the predicted events when cheap oil will cease to exist. The first casualty will be US Suburbia - and rightfully so in his view. "The Long Emergency" is laudable for its uncompromising bluntness (see such subtitles as "sunset for the sunbelt"). "Home from Nowhere" is valuable for its constructive advise how humans in the US can live instead.
There is a Society beyond the mere Ownership Society. We all can do better.
Breaks No new Ground .......2005-12-27
I read the author's earlier book "The Geography of Nowhere" and found this more recent book "Home From Nowhere" a continuation of that earlier work with in some places what seemed like a more detailed restatement of previous topics and arguments. The author broke fresh ground with his earlier work. However, the ideas in this book are more cogent with lots of examples and stories about real people and actual communities. While this book might be the better book of the two, having read "The Geography of Nowhere" extremely thoroughly and carefully at the time it was released, this book was a disappointment. For those approaching Kunstler fresh, try this book first.
Ideas: B+. Writing: C-........2004-10-30
I bought the book after reading the back cover copy, thinking it would be interesting because cities have always fascinated me. Well, it is hard to describe exactly how I felt reading the book. It was very incisive and eye-opening in explaining why suburban life creates the disconnectedness, the apathy, and the isolation so many people feel--and how the cities in their present state induce the rage and crime typical of those environments. In that respect it was interesting, but I didn't make it to the end of the book because:
(a)All of this was so depressing I wanted to curl up in a little ball and die; and
(b)Kunstler's writing is way off the charts--hyperbolic, strident, and slightly hysterical. I found this very off-putting. He could've said the same things in a normal, calm, in-control way and probably gained a wider audience and opened the subject up for more objective consideration. When people get freaked out, there's no room for actual discourse, so I think Kunstler did himself and his subject a disservice by writing like such a chihuahua.
To sum up, I would like to see other books about this subject written by cooler heads.
A Joy to Read, A Book to Treasure.......2004-08-14
This is a splendid sequel to "Geography of Nowhere". Kuntler's usual searing wit and no-nonsense style is evident throughout. It seemed to cover just about everything that ails urban & suburban planning since WW2. My only misgivings are that is does not adequately address a few issues that lie at the heart of the cancerous growth of America's hideous sprawlscape and the flight of the middle class from traditional city & town life: 1. Relentless population growth driven primarily by record levels of legal & illegal immigration, 2. The manipulation of US energy & transportation policy by parasitical corporate interests & their lobbyists, and, 3. The short term, 'throw away' mindset of the building materials industries and the residential McHome developers. The incentive to move to the suburbs is greatly enhanced by the artificially low cost of new homes due to idiotic short-sighted building codes, atrocious bldg materials with little durability, suppressed labor costs due to illegal immigrant labor, and subsidized infrastructure for single use auto use (road networks, vast prkg lots & artificially cheap gasoline).
Overall however, this is an excellent book!
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Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century. (book reviews): An article from: Planning
Harold Henderson
Manufacturer: American Planning Association
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ASIN: B00096OW40
Release Date: 2005-07-28 |
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This digital document is an article from Planning, published by American Planning Association on December 1, 1996. The length of the article is 657 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century. (book reviews)
Author: Harold Henderson
Publication:
Planning (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 1996
Publisher: American Planning Association
Volume: v62
Issue: n12
Page: p22(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
Best techniques of working with gold, platinum, copper, brass, steel, plaster, and more. “Surprisingly comprehensive.”—The New York Times. “A gem of a handbook.”—Whole Earth Catalog. “No metalsmith or jewelry maker is ‘complete’ without this easy-to-use resource.” —Lapidary Journal.
Customer Reviews:
Helped me a lot........2007-04-07
Book covers all the basics and more. I learned a lot from it and use it as a base for many different types of jewelry that I make. It's well written and can be used by beginners and the more experienced metalsmiths.
The total student guide.......2007-02-22
A tremendous book that covers all of the basics. If you are considering taking a class on metalsmithing, you should consider this book. It is an inexpensive foundation book that covers all of the basics and gives you good information on almost everything. Some of the more advanced details are not covered, but it has so much basic information that can be forgotten.
The Complete Metalsmith.......2007-01-24
I borrowed this book several times from our local library and finally decided to see if a copy was still avaviable to buy. Its full of very useful information that Ive seldom if ever seen elsewhere. A great book for a hobby metal worker OR professional. Tims explanations on how to carry out various operations and processes are consise and easy to follow. Im REALLY enjoying owning this reference work.
A must for amateur or professional metalworkers jewellers or anyone who likes to "potter " in the shed .
He's the Master.......2006-07-20
Tim McCreight writes a book that is useful for beginners as well as more advanced students of metalsmithing. The information is presented in a manner that is easy to understand. Once you have mastered the technique the book is a wonderful reference tool. This is a must have for your metalsmithing library.
The one book for any art metal/jewelry artist.......2006-03-29
This edition or any of the other versions of this book is a must have. I have seen this book in one edition or another sold in the most different locations with only one thing in common. That is METAL you can use it no matter what you are doing if its with metal you can use this book. I have a large number of books in my collection and find that I use this one to answer questions and get quick info. I would suggest that you get the pro edition at some point as it comes with a disk with some small programs for a PDA and books on the computer only. I own it in three different editions.
Book Description
Now back in stock: A collection of fabulous photographs by the foremost Surrealist artists.
Much has been written about Surrealist painting and sculpture, but most of the erotic, disorienting, and exquisite Surrealist photographs of Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Brassai, Salvador Dali, Andre Kertesz, and Hans Bellmer have remained all but unknown--until now. Traditional criticism has viewed Surrealist photography as a pale imitation of authentic Surrealist work. The assumption has been that photography, a "realistic" medium, is fundamentally incompatible with a cause devoted to the wildly subjective, the world of dreams, and the unconscious. As a consequence, Surrealist photography, a major body of twentieth-century art, has remained largely unexplored.
L' Amour fou is the first book to study the crucial role photography did in fact play in the Surrealist movement. It shows how photographers enlisted into the service of "subjective" Surrealism their medium's very claim to "objective" reality. Of greatest interest, of course, is the book's abundant reproductions of the fantastic and distorted photographic creations that must be acknowledged as an important part of the Surrealist oeuvre.
Other Details: 200 duotones, 24 full-color illustrations. 9 x 12" trim size. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C./Abbeville Press, New York, co-publishers. First published 1985.
Customer Reviews:
Just balancing the scales a bit.......2002-08-20
Just counteracting the last review for proper balance.
tiny reused comics.......2002-03-20
This book is less than seven inches tall and has comics that are in other books.
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Stepping Inside the Classroom Through Personal Narratives
Darren James Smith
Manufacturer: University Press of America
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0761814116 |
Book Description
Stepping Inside the Classroom Through Personal Narratives provides a heartfelt account of the life that exists within the American classroom. It achieves this by chronicling the experiences and perceptions of two high school students and their teacher over the course of a semester art history class. In the process, it celebrates the ideas and voices of students and teachers, enabling the reader to understand their very different lives. The personal stories presented here will promote an understanding of the social and psychological aspects of education today and ultimately has the potential to contribute to the development of higher caliber learning environments.
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The First Black Footballer: Arthur Wharton 1865-1930: An Absence of Memory (Cass Series--Sport in the Global Society, 11.)
Phil Vasili
Manufacturer: Frank Cass
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0714644595 |
Book Description
Arthur Wharton was the world's first black professional footballer. He was also the first 100 yards world record holder and twice amateur sprint champion of Britain. He came from a wealthy Gold Coast/Ghanaian family, enjoyed national celebrity in England as an all-round athlete, but died a pauper in a South Yorkshire pit village.
Recounted within the social, cultural and political context of Victorian England, Wharton's story not only remembers the turbulent personal and professional life of an eminent sportsman but offers fresh insight into the onset of professionalism in British sport, the class divide and the beginnings of institutionalized racism.
The author is collaborating with Irvine Welsh on a dramatization of Wharton's life which Channel 4 will broadcast next year.
Books:
- HOME RULES: TRANSFORM THE PLACE YOU LIVE INTO A PLACE YOU'LL LOVE
- In the Company of Stone: The Art of the Stone Wall
- Interior Construction & Detailing for Designers and Architects, Third Edition
- Interior Design Visual Presentation: A Guide to Graphics, Models & Presentation Techniques, Second Edition
- Land Development Calculations: Interactive Tools and Techniques for Site Planning, Analysis and Design
- Lofts 2: Good Ideas
- Lone Star Living: Texas Homes and Ranches
- Marker Magic: The Rendering Problem Solver for Designers
- Measure and Construction of the Japanese House
- Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings, 9th Edition
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