About this title: This work 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 they live and work and to build communities that are once again worthy of their affection.
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Edition: Later printing
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Free Press
Date Published: 7/26/1994
ISBN-13:9780671888251ISBN:0671888250
Description: Fine. 0671888250 NEW/UNREAD! ! ! Text is Clean and Unmarked! --Be Sure to Compare Seller Feedback and Ratings before Purchasing--Has a small black line on bottom/exterior edge of pages. May have light shelf wear to cover from storage, if any. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Free Press
Date Published: 1994-07-26
ISBN-13:9780671888251ISBN:0671888250
Description: Good. A nice copy. Text in clean/unmarked condition. Cover has minor wear with bumped corners. Binding is tight. Your Satisfaction Guaranteed. We ship daily. Expedited shipping available. read more
Description: Good. 1994 Touchstone Press Reprint Softcover(Trade PB) Edition. Some wear to cover/tanning to page edges due to age, text clean with strong binding. Ships Fast! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Free Pr
Date Published: 1994-07-01
ISBN-13:9780671888251ISBN:0671888250
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780671888251. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Free Press
Date Published: 1994
ISBN-13:9780671888251ISBN:0671888250
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: Later printing
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Touchstone (Simon & Schuster), New York
Date Published: 1993
ISBN-13:9780671888251ISBN:0671888250
Description: NEW. The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. 303pp. 21.5 cm. Multicolored wrappers. New. The Geography of Nowhere traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where every place is like no place particular, where the cities are dead zoines and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots...[in it] he tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. read more
"Although the author makes some good points in his yearning to return cities to proper functionality, that is with people as the focus of life, he fails to see the importance of private productive property and the role of family in accomplishing his goals. The author instead blames many of America's woes on the car. Throughout the book he proclaims how the car has ruined America and how the American city or town will never be "home" until the car is removed from the equation. Add this to the sniping at religion and Ronald Reagan and the author's main point of the ugliness of the modern city is lost. The ideas of recovering the small, local, and intimate are ideas worth sharing, and are worth further incorporation into the distribuist worldview."
"The history of the poor design of American cities (from planning to architecture), its ties to the car, and where we go from here. An important, engagingly-written book. A book that will definitely elicit reactions, it was an excellent read but also has its problems.
Kunstler kept asserting his own aesthetic as non-arbitrary and the same one that all Americans have somewhere deep inside of them. Of course, you CAN say categorically that certain designs are more practical or bring about certain effects, but to simply the appearance of one thing is superior to that of another is unhelpful.
On a related not, he ignores the affection and nostalgia that some of us brought up in this landscape have for it. I genuinely like the feeling of driving a clunker along a highway to a Waffle House; or drinking in an overgrown, underused parking lot; or walking along a road that is definitely not meant for pedestrians. I'll admit that these tastes have little to do with how cities should be planned, but he acts like everyone hates (or would hate if they weren't unobservant, brainwashed imbeciles) the current American landscape and yearns only for the dense, quaint towns of the Old World.
All that said, I'm almost 100% on board with this manifesto, but maybe less so with its delivery."
'Born in 1948, I have lived my entire life in America's high imperial moment. During this epoch of stupendous wealth and power, we have managed to ruin our greatest cities, throw away our small towns, and impose over the countryside a joyless junk habitat which we can no longer afford to support. Indulging in a fetish of commercialized individualism, we did away with the public realm, and with nothing left but our private life in our private homes and private cars, we wonder what happened to the spirit of community. We created a landscape of scary places and became a nation of scary people.'
Try to read this book and have any love for this country! Though I now have a deeper love for livable pockets like the IC."
"Overall Kunstler does a pretty good job reviewing the history of some of the more unsightly features of the built environment such as the rise of the automobile and housing developments and so on and so forth. However, Kunstler does not offer any definition of "landscape" and the manner in which he refers to landscape implies that it is not the definition employed by human geographers, that is the cultural landscape. Instead it seems as if Kunstler views landscape from the more traditional (and based upon the book's subject misguided) and eurocentric definition that views landscape as the natural, bucolic scenery that defines traditional landscape art as opposed to a cultural landscape composed of symbolic and embodied places lived within and shaped by human beings. It seems that much of Kunstler's often annoying bias and inability to express even the faintest degree of cultural relativism stems from his misunderstanding of landscape studies. This point is clear in his complete misrepresentation of the work of J.B. Jackson and apparent misunderstanding of landscape studies in general. As a student of cultural geography this book failed to live up to my expectations regarding the title on the jacket of "The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape".
That being said, despite my occasional frustration with Kunstler's bias I found the majority of the book to be an entertaining and witty account of the history of automobiles, housing, and highways in America. It is easy to agree with some of Kunstler's more salient arguments however the pervading pessimism can drive you mad at times. In his critique of America Kunstler sometimes comes across as throwing the baby out with the bathwater."
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