Quote

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

James Howard Kunstler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Howard Kunstler
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 19
Author
Environmentalist
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Country
Suburbia
Insidious
Cartoon
House

More quotes by James Howard Kunstler

Image
It is worth remembering that our cities occupy important sites, and therefore some kind of settlement is liable to be there.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
In my view, suburbia in general has very poor prospects. I think it will only become devalued and probably more dangerous. It's chief characteristic was that it represented a living arrangement with no future - and that future is now here.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
I have a new theory of history, which is certain things happen because they seem like a good idea at the time. And suburbia seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was a special time and place in history, with special dynamics. And now, we're going to have to live with the consequences of that. And the consequences will be tragic.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
The cities of the future will be much smaller than they are today.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
I was not a hard-liner against nuclear, because I viewed that as perhaps the only way we might keep the lights on another 25 years. But lately I am on board with Nicole Foss's argument that we will not have the capital or even the social cohesion to build anymore nuke plants.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Under the current high energy / high entropy regime, sustainable development is a joke.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Two decades from now, I doubt that the home building industry, so called, will even exist as we have known it.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
The living arrangements American now think of as normal are bankrupting us economically, socially, ecologically and spiritually.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
The increment of new development will be the single building lot, if we are lucky, and most of the codes that are now enforced will be ignored because the redundancies they mandate will not be affordable.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
I think we'll see a leveling off and then a contraction of population, not a continued upward trend.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
We will have to make new arrangements, or revive bygone ones. We may, for another example, see the return of the boarding house.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
When a society is stressed, when it comes up against things that are hard to understand, you get a lot of delusional thinking.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
We have to do commerce differently because the WalMart system of big box chain retail will soon die. This means rebuilding local main street economies (networks of local economic interdependency).
James Howard Kunstler
Image
The suburban cycle which began a hundred years ago is nearly over. We are in for a period of contraction and economic hardship.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
I'm serenely convinced that we are heading into what will amount to a time out from technological progress as we know it.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
The economy of the 21st century will come to center on agriculture. Life will be intensely and profoundly local in ways that we can't conceive of today. Economic growth, as we have known it in a cheap energy industrial paradigm, will cease.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Detroit right now is virtually abandoned at its core to the degree that a lot of what had been slums thirty years ago are now wildflower meadows. The rebuilding of Detroit will occur a much smaller scale. It remains to be seen what will become of Detroit's vast suburbs.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
The ideas of [ Le Corbusier ] that actually found their way into practice were deeply destructive - for instance, the tower-in-a-park, which mutated into the vertical slums of the late 20th century.
James Howard Kunstler