Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century [Hardcover]

James Howard Kunstler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 9, 1996

The acclaimed author of The Geography of Nowhere turns his attention to the ongoing landscape debate and movements in America that attempt to restore the beauty of civilization's dwelling places. 25,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Through magazine articles and through his previous book, The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler has become one of the foremost decriers of the blighted urban landscape of the United States. Now, in this new sequel to the earlier book, Kunstler moves from description to prescription. The villains, Kunstler says, are zoning laws, real estate taxes, modernist architecture, and, particularly, the automobile. The solutions include multi-use zoning districts, car-free urban cores, revised tax laws, Beaux-Arts design principles, and, in particular, the neo-traditionalist school of architecture and city planning known as "new urbanism." It's possible to disagree with some of Kunstler's conclusions--the hope that large numbers of commuters will give up their single-passenger vehicles for public transit downtown has been discredited in city after city--without abandoning his larger goal: a return to a saner urban geography and, with it, to a saner way of life.

From Publishers Weekly

In a slashing, fervent, practical, brilliant critique of the philosophy?or lack thereof?underpinning today's dismal American cities and isolating suburbs, Kunstler argues that our streets, malls, parks, civic buildings and houses frustrate innate psychological needs, violate human scale and thwart our desire to participate in the larger world. An architectural design critic (The Geography of Nowhere) and a novelist, he champions "new urbanism," an architectural reform movement dedicated to producing cohesive, mixed-use neighborhoods for people of widely different incomes, neighborhoods resembling U.S. towns prior to WWII. Using photos and line drawings throughout, he highlights numerous new urbanism-inspired projects around the country, from Seaside, a resort town on the Florida panhandle, to redevelopment schemes in Providence, Memphis, Columbus and Corning, N.Y. He also lashes what he considers the major obstacles to new urbanism-banks that make loans only to projects creating more suburban sprawl; stifling zoning laws; and a property-tax system that punishes builders of quality and "rewards those who let existing buildings go to hell." First serial to the Atlantic.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (October 9, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684811960
• ISBN-13: 978-0684811963
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #599,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Howard Kunstler is probably best known as the author of "The Long Emergency" (The Atlantic Monthly Press 2005), and "The Geography of Nowhere" (Simon and Schuster, 1993). Two other non-fiction titles in that series are "Home From Nowhere" (Simon and Schuster, 1996), and "The City in Mind" (Simon and Schuster, 2002). He's also the author of many novels, including his tale of the post-oil American future, "World Made By Hand" (The Atlantic Monthly press, 2008). The sequel will be published in the fall of 2010. His shorter work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Metropolis, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and many other periodicals.

James Howard Kunstler was born in New York City in 1948. He attended New York's High School of Music and art and SUNY Brockport (BA, Theater, 1971). He was a reporter for the Boston Phoenix, the Albany Knickerbocker News, and later an editor with Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975 he dropped out of corporate journalism to write books, and settled in Saratoga Spring, New York, where he has lived ever since.

Kunstler's popular blog, Clusterf**k Nation, is published every Monday morning at www.kunstler.com and his weekly podcast, The KunstlerCast, is refreshed every Thursday.

Kunstler is also a serious professional painter. His work may be seen at www.kunstler.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remodeling Hell, October 3, 2002

By 

J.W.K (Nagano, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century (Paperback)

The author of this book is a novelist by trade, with eight completed works already under his belt. However, having had no formal architectural training, his understanding of the subject in general, and what we have done to the physical fabric of our country in specific, is profound, enlightening and deeply important. For despite what we might imagine, "buildings foster certain kinds of behavior in humans." And our rush to pave over the nation with strip malls, urban sprawl, industrial parks, and seven-lane freeways ("anti-places") all tend to suppress and distort our better natures. Reading this book is both humorous and disheartening at the one and same time. It is humorous and easy to read, because the author's writing style is mature, articulate, and witty - clearly one of the quirks of his being a novelist. Disheartening, because it plainly documents how American cities have devolved into bleak, relentless, noisy, squalid, smoky, smelly, explosively expanding, socially unstable, dehumanizing sinkholes of industrial foulness congested with ragtag hordes of racing automobiles. In response to the tragedy of our cities, we seek escape. After the war, most Americans jumped into the wagon and fled for the suburbs. However, even there we find no guarantee of spiritual or physical ease. Cut off from grocery stores, city-centers, cafes, and work, we end up spending half our life (not to mention half our income) "sitting inside a tin can on the freeway." We have become "a drive-in civilization," scuttling between non-descript office malls, "schools that look fertilizer factories," warehouse-like grocery stores, paved-over mega malls, and the congested cities we left behind in the first place - all because none of these places are within walking or biking distance after having fled to the suburbs. In fact, life in the suburbs is so unsatisfactory that we seek alternate escape routes, having no other place to flee. The majority of our free time is spent glued in front of the TV screen or at the theatre, where we catch glimpses of a better world. When we are not in either of those places, we "escape to nature" via a weekend camping trip (because nature knows how to design esthetically-pleasing places) or head to Disneyland. Ah, Disneyland.... "The public realm in America became so atrocious in the postwar decades that the Disney Corporation was able to create an artificial substitute for it and successfully sell it as a commodity." Americans love Disney world, as the author points out, because it is only social terrain left that has not been colonized by the car. Although we may not realize it on a conscious level, "The design quality of Disney World ... is about 1.5 notches better than the average American suburban shopping mall or housing subdivision - so Americans love it." Yet this fantasy land is "ultimately less satisfying than reality, and only deepens our hunger for the authentic."In essence, the book is one long screed against shoddy civic design, car-centered development, single-use zoning laws (a subject that enrages the author to the point of profanity), and loss of excellence and beauty in architectural design. In place of these, the author wishes to reinvigorate community connectivity, enliven the public sphere, enthrone commonsense zoning laws, and start designing beautiful, lasting structures - just like we used to. As the author reminds us, "In such a setting, we feel more completely human. This is not trival." The alternative? Continuing on the "garbage barge steaming off to Nowhere."

Biting critique of suburbia.

j.w.k.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars disappointing sequel, November 19, 2002

By 

"gabed" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century (Paperback)

I was enthralled by Kunstler's first book, _The Geography of Nowhere_, but extremely disappointed by _Home from Nowhere_. His strength in _The Geography of Nowhere_ was in pointing out the fatal flaws in post-war urban planning - that he is at once disgusted, cynical and passionate about city design made it a compelling read. But _Home from Nowhere_ falls flat as often happens when someone who is very good at finding problems decides to find solutions. Kunstler's proposals are often not helpful, and many (esp. in the area of property tax reform) have already been tried unsuccessfully in a few cities. Kunstler seems to have become a devotee of Andres Duany - but Duany's _Suburban Nation_ is a much more worthwhile read for those interested in eliminating suburban sprawl and poor urban planning.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Joy to Read, A Book to Treasure, August 13, 2004

By 

Chris Andrews (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century (Paperback)

This is a splendid sequel to "Geography of Nowhere". Kuntler's usual searing wit and no-nonsense style is evident throughout. It seemed to cover just about everything that ails urban & suburban planning since WW2. My only misgivings are that is does not adequately address a few issues that lie at the heart of the cancerous growth of America's hideous sprawlscape and the flight of the middle class from traditional city & town life: 1. Relentless population growth driven primarily by record levels of legal & illegal immigration, 2. The manipulation of US energy & transportation policy by parasitical corporate interests & their lobbyists, and, 3. The short term, 'throw away' mindset of the building materials industries and the residential McHome developers. The incentive to move to the suburbs is greatly enhanced by the artificially low cost of new homes due to idiotic short-sighted building codes, atrocious bldg materials with little durability, suppressed labor costs due to illegal immigrant labor, and subsidized infrastructure for single use auto use (road networks, vast prkg lots & artificially cheap gasoline).

Overall however, this is an excellent book!