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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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James Howard Kunstler
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 19
Author
Environmentalist
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Lucky
Codes
Building
Enforced
Single
Mandate
Mandates
Affordable
Ignored
Code
Increment
Development
Redundancy

More quotes by James Howard Kunstler

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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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We have to grow our food differently because industrial farming will soon end. That means growing more food locally on smaller farms with more human attention.
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.
James Howard Kunstler
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The cities of the future will be much smaller than they are today.
James Howard Kunstler
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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
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The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible.
James Howard Kunstler
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I don't like talking about 'solutions.' I prefer talking about intelligent responses.
James Howard Kunstler
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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
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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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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
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The living arrangements American now think of as normal are bankrupting us economically, socially, ecologically and spiritually.
James Howard Kunstler
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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
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I think we'll see a leveling off and then a contraction of population, not a continued upward trend.
James Howard Kunstler
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Ridicule is the unfortunate destiny of the ridiculous.
James Howard Kunstler
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I believe most of suburbia is unreformable and will not be fixed.
James Howard Kunstler
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The Long Emergency will be chiefly characterized as a time out from technology. It could plunge us into a dark age of superstition. My guess is that we will lose a lot of knowledge and skill. But I also believe the human race desperately needs this time out.
James Howard Kunstler
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People don't like railroad tracks near them? We'll see how they feel when the percentage of U.S. citizens who can afford to drive a car goes way down, as it will.
James Howard Kunstler
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America does not want change, except from the cash register at Wal-Mart.
James Howard Kunstler
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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
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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.
James Howard Kunstler