James Howard Kunstler

James H. Kunstler

The other evening my local city council member held one of his regularly scheduled movie nights, this evening featuring the movie "Radiant City", which IMDB.com tersely describes as "An examination of the nature of modern suburbia".  Featured in the movie was the prolific author and chief American critic of post World War II city planning and architecture, James Howard Kunstler.

After the movie the audience was able to ask questions about the themes of the movie; sprawl, placemaking, and community. This was a very timely event given that the city just adopted their 2040 General Plan after many committee meetings, workshops, and public outreach. Along with my council member the cities Planning Director, Assistant Planning Director and Director of Economic Development were on hand to answer any of the audiences questions.

What stood out most vividly was the the cities planning director had not even heard of the author James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler is the author of two highly acclaimed books, "The Geography of Nowhere" and "Home from Nowhere". He has spoken at the annual TED.org meeting (see video below), a homegrown Silicon Valley geek fest of which San Jose is the capitol. Actually I seem to recall during the 2040 General Plan process writings by Kunstler were even given to the participants to read as additional background material. In addition to his books he also keeps a website where one of his most popular posts are "The Eyesore of the Month", where he chronicles urban design failures. (Check out November's eyesore;  a blast on a street crossing in Reading, Pennsylvania.)

Any urban planning student today has read, studied, reread, and dog-eared the pages of Jane Jacob's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere", or William H. Whyte's "City: Rediscovering the Center". Looks like we have some educating to do.

This is just one aspect of a bifurcation of dreams, visions, thoughts, use of technology, transportation choices, and the definition, if any of that often used term of - placemaking. It seems as though gap between these ideas and experiences (James Kunstler is just one of many) that I have experienced in working with both older and younger citizens just keeps getting bigger. I plan to write on this more in the future since it is a trend that I see becoming more prevalent every day.

Here in the capitol of the Silicon Valley, in an advisory committee meeting last month we were trying to find ways to get the city's bike plan in the hand of citizens. One not so young member interjected, "How about advertising in the phone book", on which I replied, "What's a phonebook?"

 Any comments?