James Howard Kunstler begins his work, “The Geography of Nowhere,” at a top speed and continues from there. He starts chapter one, Scary Place, by describing the story of Judge Doom from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, which is the fictional character that is supposedly responsible for Los Angeles becoming taken over by the freeways. He then continues quoting Lewis Mumford, who was basically the dean of American urban academics in the beginning of the 1900s. He gloomily predicted, would completely demoralize mankind and lead to the nuclear holocaust (p. 10). Only on his second page of the book, Kunstler presents his thesis in the extremely long speech of which he masters, it begins as: “Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has …show more content…
In September 1954, he moved out of Northwood in Long Island onto the Northern State Parkway to see his new house in the countryside. He specifically said that Long Island had been one of the most beautiful places in the United States, and his house was one small reason it would not remain that way much longer. His new house lacked in exterior grandeur, but it made up for comfort inside and costs in all together $25,000. Kunstler got his first glimpse of what real American towns were like when he was sent away to a boys’ camp in Lebanon, New Hampshire. He visited his hometown Northwood when he became a teenager and saw how it has entered into a coma with so little for one to do there. Northwood had no public gathering places, so teens were stuck in their little holes who smoked pot and imitated rock and roll. For the teenagers there, the waiting transforming moment was when one became a licensed driver, as I can say the same about my town. Kunstler went to a state college in a small town, Brockport in western New York State. The college was the only thing that kept the town alive with healthy conditions where it was scaled to people, not cars. He ends the chapter by pointing out that this book is an attempt to discover how and why landscape of scary places, the geography of nowhere, has simply ceased to be a credible human habitat happened and what we might do about
Several works we have read thus far have criticized the prosperity of American suburbia. Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, and an excerpt from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem "A Coney Island of the Mind" all pass judgement on the denizens of the middle-class and the materialism in which they surround themselves. However, each work does not make the same analysis, as the stories are told from different viewpoints.
Furthermore, he attempts to dispel the negative aspects of gentrification by pointing out how some of them are nonexistent. To accomplish this, Turman exemplifies how gentrification could positively impact neighborhoods like Third Ward (a ‘dangerous’ neighborhood in Houston, Texas). Throughout the article, Turman provides copious examples of how gentrification can positively change urban communities, expressing that “gentrification can produce desirable effects upon a community such as a reduced crime rate, investment in the infrastructure of an area and increased economic activity in neighborhoods which gentrify”. Furthermore, he opportunistically uses the Third Ward as an example, which he describes as “the 15th most dangerous neighborhood in the country” and “synonymous with crime”, as an example of an area that could “need the change that gentrification provides”.
Now, a normal sized town contains fast-food joints, supermarkets, malls, and superstores, but a small town lacks that appeal. The small-town could be the most beautiful landscape known to man, but lack the necessary luxuries in life that a typical American would benefit from. Carr and Kefalas make this statement that emphasizes the town’s lack of appeal, “Indeed the most conspicuous aspects of the towns landscape may be the very things that are missing; malls, subdivisions, traffic and young people” (26). The authors clearly state that they realize that towns, such as the Heartland, are hurting because of the towns’ lack of modernization. For all intents and purposes, the town’s lack of being visually pleasing is driving away probable citizens, not only the native youth, and possible future employee’s away from a possible internship with the town. The citizens with a practice or business hurt from the towns inability to grow up and change along with the rest of the world, yet the town doesn’t realize what bringing in other businesses could potentially do for their small town. Creating more businesses such as malls, superstores and supermarkets would not only drive business up the roof, but it’ll also bring in revenue and draw the
Harm de Blij and his “The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization’s Rough Landscape” truly describes how geography is displayed in the world today. In particular on of the major themes that he discusses is the idea of globalization. He actually calls these people the “globals.” In the very beginning of his book he describes two different types of peoples: Locals and Globals. The difference between these people is that Locals are the poorer people, not as mobile, and more susceptible to the concept of place. On the other hand the Globals are the fortunate population, and are a small group of people who have experienced globalization firsthand (5). This idea of globalization is a main theme that Blij refers to throughout the book, however he also indirectly references the five themes of cultural geography: culture regions, cultural diffusion, cultural interaction, cultural ecology, and cultural landscapes. Through Blij’s analysis these five themes are revealed in detail and help explain his overall idea of globalization in the world today.
Tate, Allen. “A Southern Mode of the Imagination.” In Essays of Four Decades. Chicago: Swallow Press, 1968; (Third Edition) Wilmington, De: ISI Press, 1999.
About half-way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes---a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars cr...
J B Harley, 1989, Deconstructing The Map, Ann Arbor, Michigan: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library.
As I drive along the roads of Flagstaff, a few things immediately dawn on the mind; it seems like a place that would be used as some sort of cinematic scene in a movie. The air smells as though it would be something from a local garden; scenery that would be portrayed in a painting. The colors are seen as bright and vivid, with all different kinds of hues sprawled across the land for what seems like an infinite plane. Trees fly by at breakneck speeds as I drive by. Trying to focus on one thing seems impossible as all of the landscape speeds by in an instant, just to be replaced by something else. Flagstaff seems as though it is a place that was never intended for an automobile. I grab my bag setting out for my next
Los Angeles is a city that resonates with glamour and opportunity. Its attraction as the place to live in is everlasting. It attracts immigrants such as from China, Korea, and Mexico. In fact, according to one of the authors of the assigned readings, Ray Bradbury, Little Tokyo in Los Angeles is the “largest Japanese community outside Japan.” Los Angeles offers the dream of what most people yearn for. Another author from the readings, Wanda Coleman expresses her amazement with Los Angeles in her excerpt “L.A. Love Cry” (1996). She uses the simile of fast food to describe the lovely city, “Loving you is to love fast food.” (21) Coleman seems really to enjoy living in Los Angeles as she continues, “to eat with one hand while maneuvering steering wheel with the other, working that arm rest” (21). Los Angeles does not only offer the good life and multiculturalism, but it is also the city of hope.
The spaces of the American West are far from uniform, in fact, they could be considered the complete opposite. This variety is what makes the West stand apart from the rest of the United States. The lack of a more common landscape and culture, such as in the American East, provides the backdrop for a plethora of Literary prowess from authors like Jack Kerouac and Douglas Coupland, who saw the American West as the perfect setting for two of the most influential novels of our time. The wide open road was just as much of an inspiration to Kerouac as the concrete megalopolises of malls, fast food, and tracts homes were to Coupland. Western culture would be fraction of what it is today if not for its exceptional diversity among space.
One of the main issues that the book, “Ecology of Fear,” discussed about were the inherent dangers and problems that suburbanization imposed upon the landscape of Southern California. Although suburbanization in theory and in reality did create abundant benefits to a great mass of people, especially to those who wanted to avoid the daily nuisances of urban city life, its negative consequences were quite grave indeed. Suburbanization led to a complete eradication to the natural landscape of many areas in California. The book’s vivid accounts of how the lush, green landscape was bulldozed just to build tracts of homes were a painful reminder of the beauty that was lost due to suburbanization. “In 1958 sociologist William Whyte – author of The Organization Man – had a disturbing vision as he was leaving Southern California. ‘Flying from Los Angeles to San Bernardino – an unnerving lesson in man’s infinite capacity to mess up his environment – the traveler can see a legion of bulldozers gnawing into the last remaining tract of green between the two cities’.” (Davis, p. 77)...
winded conversation between an American man and a woman as they drink beer and wait for a
I am proud to say I was born and raised in the small town of Tallassee, Alabama. There are not many landscapes and main attractions that we have in Tallassee, but it is the movement and human-environment interactions of people who live to make their town better that makes it remarkable. Even though I love Tallassee Al, I have always wanted to travel the world and see everything there is to see. So back in 2009, I decided to relocate to the historic city of Montgomery, Alabama and it has been the greatest move I could ever make. Montgomery, Alabama was integrated in 1819, built over rolling terrain at an altitude of almost 220 feet (67 m) above sea level. Majority of Montgomery lies along the southern bank of the Alabama River.
In Jane Jacobs’s acclaimed The Life and Death of Great American Cities, she intricately articulates urban blight and the ills of metropolitan society by addressing several binaries throughout the course of the text. One of the more culturally significant binaries that Jacobs relies on in her narrative is the effectively paradoxical relationship between diversity and homogeneity in urban environments at the time. In particular, beginning in Chapter 12 throughout Chapter 13, Jacobs is concerned greatly with debunking widely held misconceptions about urban diversity.
American cities in the 1900’s were the prime place to be. Cities were clean, industries were booming and education was a priority. “The city, not the farm, had become the locus of national experience” (Chudacoff and Smith 255). Everyone wanted to live their dreams in the city until they shortly realized the cities became overpopulated, hectic, and stressful. Streets became filled with garbage from people littering, traffic is always a problem, and there is no where to relax and enjoy yourself without the stress of work. The suburbs became the place of relaxation. Where people who had jobs in the city took a vacation to their house in the suburbs. To bring American cities back to life, people should focus on the way suburbs construct their ways