The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler

Pacific Electric had lots of stops, but as auto traffic increased, and crossed the tracks, collisions between trolleys and cars increased. It will be super for anyone living within walking distance of a station.

Today, LA has 150 miles either planned or built at a cost of roughly $10 billion. Did sensible private electric trolley lines get any government help? NO!Ĭase in point: Pacific Electric Railroad had 1,600 miles of track linking all of Los Angeles’ suburbs until the late 1920s. How did they commute? By GM buses, the company that destroyed just about all independent trolley lines, on roads and new superhighways subsidized by the government. The value of city property increased too much for economic housing.

Tall office buildings could keep hundreds of drone workers occupied while their owner manufacturers made extra money earning rental income from the upper floors. The Depression stopped the building craze for a while, then after WWII, it picked up its pace as architects further eroded city building under the rubric of Modernism. Human scale architecture started going downhill after elevators and structural steel came along in the 1890s.

Local governments cannot improve transit problems or the quality of life by revising land use laws that favor suburban sprawl, megamalls, high rise expensive housing, auto manufacturers, oil companies, tire manufacturers, and highway builders, while destroying the possibilities of a return to sensible electric rail transit (most of which has already occurred), plowing up farmland in floodplains, building industrial parks (that require auto commutes), and planning new center sites devoid of economic single home housing. Developing nations cannot be turned into replicas of the US, or for that matter, many other places in the world. The difference: growth is untamed expansion (a form of cancer) development is taking what exists and improving upon its appearance and utility without destroying its basic idea (the thoughtful and rational use of resources to manage sustainable growth without destroying the planet for future generations). Two words should come to mind while reading just about ever chapter in this book: growth and development. The book tallies from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs we now pay for our car-crazed addicted lifestyles. The Geography of Nowhere, The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, James Howard Kunstler, 1993.

The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler