The faltering of our suburban living arrangement is probably certain. The response of suburbanites is not. Will they elect maniacs who promise to make America just like it was in 1997? Will there be a desperate attempt to sustain the unsustainable by authoritarian measures? Will the institutions of order and justice fail in the process?

James Howard Kunstler

I like to call it 'the national automobile slum.' You can call it suburban sprawl. I think it's appropriate to call it the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.

James Howard Kunstler

motivation inspiration thinking

The twentieth century was about getting around. The twenty-first century will be about staying in a place worth staying in.

James Howard Kunstler

century twenties firsts

Community is not something you have, like pizza. Now is it something you can buy. It's a living organism based on a web of interdependencies- which is to say, a local economy. It expresses itself physically as connectedness, as buildings actively relating to each other, and to whatever public space exists, be it the street, or the courthouse or the village green.

James Howard Kunstler

village community space

The task we face is reorganizing the systems we depend on for daily life in a way that is consistent with the realities coming down at us.

James Howard Kunstler

tasks reality way

It pays to remember that societies get what they deserve, not what they expect.

James Howard Kunstler

deserve remember pay

Americans threw away their communities in order to save a few dollars on hair dryers and plastic food storage tubs, never stopping to reflect on what they were destroying.

James Howard Kunstler

community hair order

As the places where Americans dwell become evermore depressing and impossible, Disneyworld is where they escape to worship the nation in the abstract, a cartoon capital of a cartoon republic enshrining the falsehoods, half-truths, and delusions that prop up the squishy thing the national character has become--for instance, that we are a nation of families; that we care about our fellow citizens; that history matters; that there is a place called home.

James Howard Kunstler

depressing home character

I think water transport will see a revival. However, we're not going to replay the 20th century. The industrial city of that era will not be revived. Our cities are going to contract. Many of them will contract as a whole but densify at their core.

James Howard Kunstler

cities water thinking

The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible.

James Howard Kunstler

motivation inspiration america

The living arrangements American now think of as normal are bankrupting us economically, socially, ecologically and spiritually.

James Howard Kunstler

arrangements normal thinking

Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work. A land full of places that are not worth caring about will soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.

James Howard Kunstler

land caring believe

Cities like Detroit exist because they occupy important sites. In the case of Detroit, it sits on a river between two great lakes - very important and strategic.

James Howard Kunstler

cities lakes two

The two elements of the suburban pattern that cause the greatest problems are the extreme separation of uses and the vast distances between things

James Howard Kunstler

distance cities two

The public realm in America has two roles: it is the dwelling place of our civilization and our civic life, and it is the physical manifestation of the common good. When you degrade the public realm, you will automatically degrade the quality of your civic life and the character of all the enactments of your public life and communal life that take place there.

James Howard Kunstler

dwelling-place character civilization

On top of the insult of destroying the geographic places we call home, the chain stores also destroyed people's place in the order of daily life, including the duties, responsibilities, obligations, and ceremonies that prompt citizens to care for each other.

James Howard Kunstler

responsibility home order

I think a lot of things will be self-correcting, even in America. After all, human societies are essentially self-organizing emergent systems. The catch is, how much disorder will we have to endure while this re-self-organizing process occurs.

James Howard Kunstler

self america thinking

Suburbia is the insidious cartoon of the country house in a cartoon of the country.

James Howard Kunstler

cartoon house country

Americans are suffering so much from being in unrewarding environments that it has made us very cynical. I think that American suburbia has become a powerful generator of anxiety and depression.

James Howard Kunstler

cynical powerful thinking

I believe we are deluded about alternative energy. The key is, whatever we do, we're going to have to do on a very modest scale. It's all about scale. We're not going to build giant wind farms with Godzilla-sized turbines all over the place. That's a fantasy.

James Howard Kunstler

keys wind believe

I'm not against Kyoto. I just think it's a fantasy, especially considering China's energy predicament and their coal supplies.

James Howard Kunstler

kyoto energy thinking