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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

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James Howard Kunstler
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 19
Author
Environmentalist
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Means
Street
Chain
Mean
Soon
Commerce
Streets
Locals
System
Differently
Economy
Local
Rebuilding
Economic
Chains
Retail
Dies
Boxes
Economies
Bigs
Main
Networks

More quotes by James Howard Kunstler

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I'm serenely convinced that we are heading into what will amount to a time out from technological progress as we know it.
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Once energy problems gain traction, there will be a large new class of economic losers, and consequently a lot of social turbulence.
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Of course, the toxic bullshit of incessant advertising and show biz for nearly a century has stripped us of cognitive abilities for dealing with reality that used to be part of the normal equipment of adulthood - for instance, knowing the difference between wishing for stuff and making stuff happen. We bamboozled ourselves with too much magic.
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The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible.
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Our building practices for the past century have been plain stupid - especially the glorification of the single-family house in a subdivision, at the expense of all other typologies and arrangements.
James Howard Kunstler
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The salient fact about the decades ahead is that we are entering a permanent global energy crisis and it will change everything about how we live.
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Motion is a great tranquilizer.
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Suburbia is the insidious cartoon of the country house in a cartoon of the country.
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The industrial age is over. What follows will be life lived on a much smaller and finer scale.
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I think we'll see a leveling off and then a contraction of population, not a continued upward trend.
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The living arrangements American now think of as normal are bankrupting us economically, socially, ecologically and spiritually.
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Painting allows me to use other portions of my brain pleasurably. Irony plays no part in what or how I paint. I paint the particular subject matter not to make polemical points but because I am interested in the human imprint on the landscape. I paint the landscape of my time and place with the stuff in it.
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When a society is stressed, when it comes up against things that are hard to understand, you get a lot of delusional thinking.
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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
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I don't like talking about 'solutions.' I prefer talking about intelligent responses.
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The suburban cycle which began a hundred years ago is nearly over. We are in for a period of contraction and economic hardship.
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Under the current high energy / high entropy regime, sustainable development is a joke.
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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
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Consider how badly-built suburbia is. Many business buildings are not designed to outlast their tax depreciation periods, and the McHouses are made of particle board, vinyl siding, and stapled-on trim. A lot of suburbia will simply become the slums of the future. Most of the rest will be salvage or ruins.
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Despite the obvious damage now visible in the entropic desolation of every American home town, Wal-Mart managed to install itself in the pantheon of American Dream icons, along with apple pie, motherhood, and Coca Cola.
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