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."

Some chapters in the book focus on cities gone wrong, such as Detroit. Others discuss the ideal community, involving mixed-use neighborhoods (both purpose - commercial, residential, industrial - and class - working, professional, wealthy). Kunstler makes the case that prior to the development of suburbia and the reign of automobiles as our primary form of transportation, we had a kinder, cleaner, and happier world. Disney World's Main Street was used as an example of how car-free neighborhoods have become an American dream, and at the same time, few people understand why cars have had such a negative effect.

Geography of Nowhere has confirmed my choice to live in a city with public transportation, in a mixed-use neighborhood, within walking distance of most of my needs. It may be more expensive and it may be unconventional, but I now have the evidence to back up my convictions.

58 of 63 found the following review helpful:


highway to hell  Feb 01, 2006 By Dr. Eigenvalue
Last night in his State of the Union speech, G. W. Bush pointed out the obvious fact that America depends far too heavily on oil to support its lifestyle. Whoever programmed him to say that must have been reacting to the mounting unrest over the crises associated with big oil: war, pollution, corruption, and extreme flabbiness.

Most of the problems associated with oil are problems associated with cars, and cars are the focus of J. H. Kunstler's book. Published in the early 90s, The Geography of Nowhere describes the impact of automobiles on the development of the U.S. Apparently, things started to go south during the Depression, when people were driven out of cities by poverty and the diminishing quality of life in the tenements. Fueling the flight to the suburbs were New Deal programs to build roads and cheap houses. In the ensuing decades the American landscape was built to serve cars rather than people, and that is what Kunstler is angry about. His main criticisms are:

1) A lot of the architecture, both residential and commerical, is very ugly. Buildings are constructed quickly and cheaply, and without regard to their surroundings. After all, what's the point of worrying about your surroundings if people are just going to drive directly to their destination? On this point, Kunstler is angry and sarcastic, though often funny. However, his tone is unfortunate, because ugliness is ultimately a matter of opinion, and I would bet that most people would say they are quite happy living in their suburban boxes. Kunstler argues that people are happy this way because they don't know any better, and he's probably right, but as far as I know there is no good way to force people to appreciate beauty.

2) When you step back from the individual buildings, and look at the organization of towns and cities, things start to look really grim. Here Kunstler's got a good point. Throughout most of America, the landscape is zoned into residential and commercial districts, which are separated by long stretches of four-lane roads. The residential zones are further divided by income (and to a lesser extent, by race and ethnicity), impeding the development of anything like a genuine community. The result is a weird mix of intolerance and paranoia that pervades the culture of what has historically been a relatively progressive nation.

3) At an even larger scale, the impact of cars on the nation and on the world seems absolutely dire. The Geography of Nowhere was written before car companies had figured out how to trick yuppies into buying pick-up trucks, and by now there is a broad scientific consensus that the Earth's climate is getting warmer as a result of human activities. Yet people continue to buy bigger and bigger SUVs, and to drive them longer distances to get to work or to buy their microwaveable burritos. It's like a hideous inversion of the idea of public transportation, in which every individual drives his or her own bus to work. Here it's not merely a matter of personal preference -- it's only possible for an individual to drive an SUV if other people subsidize the cost of cheap oil and environmental degradation. In all likelihood these other people haven't been born yet.

Ultimately, someone has to make decisions about the development of towns and cities, and there's no reason in a democratic society why these decisions have to be based on short-term economic interests. Although most suburbanites are probably not miserable in their surroundings, I doubt if anyone would consider their dependence on cars to be ideal. The Geography of Nowhere is a good way to start thinking about kicking the habit.

32 of 33 found the following review helpful:


A Refreshing Book  Feb 10, 2000 By rex tugwell
No, this book isn't the most scholarly approach to urban planning. But is a much needed book. One of the problems with the myriad of books that have emerged lately on the topic of modern urban design is that they are written in academic speak, not readily understandable by the layman or laywoman who is attempting to make a difference while serving on town boards. Although no one has mentioned it in these reviews, it was gutsy of the author to propose that a building could be objectively ugly. This is important to those of us who are sick and tired of trying to tell developers that we don't want another McDonalds because the golden arches don't relate to the spacial relationships of our sidewalks. Damn it, we have the right to reject it because its plug ugly. His comments on Disney were wicked, accurate, and entirely true. Read this book.

20 of 20 found the following review helpful:


The Land of Denny's  Jan 21, 2005 By N. P. Stathoulopoulos "nick9155"
Kunstler is not too happy with how we've built our cities, our suburbs, and our society. And I can't blame him.

This is an important consideration of how the landscapes of America have changed, and not for the best. The decline of American cities, the rise of the never-ending suburban sprawls, the addiction to cars and to oil and highways, all contribute to the decay of social fabric.

It all sounds deep, but Kunstler is clearly onto something. Himself transplanted to the suburbs of Long Island, Kuntsler is angry at what he sees as an America that is less and less concerned with maintaining any lasting community, anywhere.

All you have to do in this country is go to a few different cities and look around. First off, you can hardly distinguish most big cities from each other in the US--you have a downtown (in some cases among the worst part of a particular city, and often deserted and bland) and you have the endless suburban sprawl. What you find is isolation, isolation, isolation. Pick a big city, and you see the problems still being faced decades after population shifts, demographic changes, cultural changes etc: Detroit, Atlanta, St Louis, Miami, etc, etc.

Architecture is in the dumps, as short-term profit is the motivating factor behind flat, faceless and featureless buildings. Suburbia has long been the answer for many: miles of designed streets with identical houses, cut off from undesirables by miles of highway, encouraging an inefficient life where everything is separated, the car has replaced the PERSON as the unit we build for, to say nothing of the cultural wasteland half of America becomes with the influx of 100 fast food chains, a Walmart, a mall, an 'entertainment complex', etc, destroying anything that once gave a place character.

The notion of public space is different in America than elsewhere. Here, we don't seem to think much of it. While it may enrage some folks to compare ourselves to Europe and its cities, Kunstler points out that European cities are built to last, so to speak. Public space is respected and cherished, cities are built around people and for people, and so what if you don't have a Chili's, an Outback Steakhouse, a Radioshack, a Best Buy, a Wal Mart, etc, etc everywhere.

Even in New York you see the chains have moved in to stay, the blandness extends to every facet of life. At least you can walk out the buildings here and walk on a street and see people, unless of course, you don't want to see anyone except those who are exactly like you.

Important stuff, and God-forbid, thought-provoking.

15 of 15 found the following review helpful:


Occassionally hilarious, generally good  May 11, 2003 By Gavin Farrell
Kunstler throws alot of punches in this book, many of which are on the mark.

The general idea is one thats as old as humanity: that things are going to hell. In this case, the built environment.

Modernists, Highways, the automobile, suburban sprawl- all these get a chapter of scathing criticism. As an architecture student, I thoroughly enjoyed his blasting architectural critiques, which were occasionally hilarious- of Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas, he says: "They were like stoned graduate students on a road trip, critical faculties up in smoke!" (saying that they should have been MUCH more critical of Vegas).

I read this book before I read Jacob's Death and Life of Great American Cities, and I found Jacobs to be a heck of a lot more restrained and academic (yet also very funny at some points). Also, Jacobs would probably condemn some things that Kunstler advocates- things like Seaside, Florida, which to me seem to be simply more exclusive and better-designed sprawl. Sprawl is still sprawl, pretty or not. The solution lies in bringing life back to cities, not more Seasides. Kunstler is from a small New York town, so perhaps he has a fondness for small towns (which certainly have their place), but re-invigorating cities or lessening automobile dependance isn't going to be achieved by a thousand Seasides.

Anyhow; pretty good book. Give her a read if you're concerned about the built environment. Jacobs says alot of the same things though, and she said them what, 30+ years before? Kunstler adds a sense of desperate, almost angry urgency to it. Understandably- all the perscriptions for curing cities laid out by Jacobs weren't followed at all- the only thing that will change the way Americans build will be massive economic changes.

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