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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 in particular, where the cities are dead zones and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots.

In elegant and often hilarious prose, Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. The Geography of Nowhere 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 we live and work, to build communities that are once again worthy of our affection. Kunstler proposes that by reviving civic art and civic life, we will rediscover public virtue and a new vision of the common good. "The future will require us to build better places," Kunstler says, "or the future will belong to other people in other societies."

Average Customer Rating:

A must read for urban planners.

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This is the first in James Howard Kuntsler's magnificent series of discussions about the community-killing errors we have made in the past while expanding and modernizing our existing urban environments. Huge parking lots now separate the merchant from what used to be the Main Street of town, and monolithic big box stores present dead, windowless, and undecorated walls on three sides of the building. What was once an interesting downtown area where people lived, shopped and mingled is now just a series of dull, unimaginative warehouses which destroy the previously established identity of a town or neighborhood, and transform the area into just another example of Nowhere, USA, where no one wants to live. Mr. Kuntsler believes that we need to bring our citizens back into a serviceable downtown that serves their need of a pleasant, walkable area where they can live, dine, work, and shop--without the need of freeways. He makes this argument for a better future with wit and reason; he is as entertaining as he is enlightening.

Launches a thought provoking salvo against sprawl

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Kunstler is the Kerouac of the anti-sprawl set - the writer of this wonderful book that thoroughly indicts those non-places we all deal with every day. As every traveler can attest, sometimes you wake up in your Hampton Inn across from the Chili's, in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart/Target/Perkins, and wonder, "Just what city am I in today, anyway, and more importantly, do I care?" This book is more about the unbearable sameness of everything and how it doesn't create places people want to live, but places they're forced to live. The book is light on data, heavy on rhetoric, but hammers its point home through anecdotes, allegory, and turns of phrase that make the read analyze what, exactly, they see in these suburban (and some urban) same places. While he doesn't add to the field from a research perspective, he's the muse that should inspire others to add to the existing literature.

Angry, left wing slant to this book.....

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I've only read a few chapters of this book but I can already get a sense of the author's left wing political leanings. He seems to think that cars are the root of all evil. (Just like author Jared Diamond seems to blame everything on deforestation--see his books). Kunstler's book is also filled with bits of meaningless prose which seem to reflect some sort of personal ax to grind. Here's an example from page 219: "Even after he became a showbiz mogul, Walt Disney's world view remained that of a provincial midwesterner, whether it was his idea of the jungle (ooga booga), or of space travel (gee whiz), or of U.S. history (I pledge allegiance...)." I don't understand Kunstler's point here. There's a vaguely critical tone towards people from the midwest in this sentence but what is his point? What purpose does the gibberish "ooga booga" serve in this sentence? What does "gee whiz" mean? Is Kunstler trying to mock people who are impressed by the achievement of space travel as somehow being provincial? That's just silly. Being in awe of space travel is obviously not restricted to people born in midwest. What exactly is Kunstler's point? What is the purpose of putting "I pledge allegiance" in brackets in this sentence? Is this some sort of criticism of the pledge of allegiance as somehow being "provincial"?. I find this sort of meaningless prose annoying. I'll probably skim read the rest of the book just for the interesting tidbits.

An Excellent Overview of America's Growth Culture

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JHK puts together an excellent overview of the forces and personalities that defined today's American lifestyle and culture. It condenses four centuries of history, architecture, and science to create a sort of family tree of who we are as a nation and draws the map of how we got here. Not everything is perfect -- IMO he disparages Walt Disney unfairly -- but overall it is a good read that puts many of today's events in perspective.

Superb Diagnosis of the dysfunctional American land use situation

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Fantastic book about modern American society. One of the best. Specifically addresses what's wrong with our living spaces, and how our ideas of Americanism lead to the zoning codes that define housing development. Well told in Kunstler's sharp and descriptive style of American prose. This is the diagnosis and the companion book, Home From Nowhere, is the cure. People who want to take positive social action to improve their neighborhoods must read these books. One of the few flaws in this book, however, is the short shrift that Kunstler gives to urban crime as a motivation for the masses fleeing to the suburbs. The matter is touched upon, but inadequately so. To some extent this is a problem of the whole movement known as "the New Urbanism--" a certain reluctance to speak frankly about the reality of crime and widely held perceptions about racial conflict in society. However perhaps this flaw is understandable in light of the thought-controlling fashions of "political correctness" and, at a deeper level, how the voices of developers, architects, lawyers, and other social commentators have been chilled by the overzealous enforcement of the 1965 Fair Housing Act. Besides that one weakness, this is the strongest book on the topic I know of for the general public. It surpassed my expectations and I've picked it up again and again. I thank the author for this work.