James Howard Kunstler is an American author and is best known for his books on urban life and cities. His book The City in Mind is about the innerworkings and history of some of the most famous cities in the world and is a very fascinating narrative on urban life and city history. Kunstler talks about many different cities such as Paris, Atlanta, Mexico City, Las Vegas, and several others. The author reveals a lot about what he thinks makes a city great and what can lead to a failed city. The City in Mind shows readers how some of the greatest cities were created and how some failed which can be crucial for planning future cities and a lot can be learned from reading this book. Kunstler does not exactly tell you whether a city is bad or good. …show more content…
Instead he leaves many clues and a lot of evidence to deduce whether a city is great or not. The main topic of this book is what makes a city good and Kunstler mentions some qualities a city must have to be good. There are three main features that make a city great. The city needs to be planned and built for the future not the present, can economically sustain a large population with large population growth spikes and it needs to be beautiful with carefully and painstakingly designed architecture and infrastructure. It’s hard to say what makes a city great and there are many factors that make cities so different and great in their own way. The most important one is that a city needs to be planned very well. A great city should be near water and should be almost self-sustaining without the need for expensive and finite resources. This is the most important because this factor basically means the city must be able to function as a city and can provide for the civilians living there. The second factor Kunstler discusses a lot about cities is their population growth. He uses population growth statistics a lot to show how a city grows overtime. This can also be a bad thing if a city is not able to handle a large, rapid population growth or house many new people. The last factor that makes a city great is the way it is built. A great city is a work of art. The infrastructure and architecture of a city can make it beautiful. Having a beautiful city can attract both a lot of people who want to admire its allure. Kunstler mentions these factors about each city he thinks is great. The cities he doesn’t like usually have poor qualities and it is easily seen why. Paris is one of the most famous cities in the world and has a rich, beautiful history. Paris wasn’t always a great city. It has been devastated and was rebuilt several times. The reason is due to the leadership of Louis Napoleon III and Haussmann the Prefect of France. You can clearly tell Kunstler likes Paris and thinks it is a good city. He Thinks Paris is a great city because it has great leadership and excellent planning, and has beautiful architecture and infrastructure. Kunstler describes Paris as a “rat-maze of poorly connected, narrow disorienting streets, medieval in character, with centuries-long accretion of tightly packed buildings falling into decrepitude” (8). Napoleon was charged with the task of turning the disgusting slums of Paris around and its infrastructure was one thing that had to change. Once Haussmann got into the picture things changed quickly. New, and clean boulevards were build and the slums shrunk. This was the start to Napoleon’s dream of renovating Paris. Paris is a good example of a city that was prepared for a large population boom. “Under Louis-Napoleon, the population of Paris rose from 1.27 million in 1851 to just under 2 million in 1870. City revenues tripled. Per capita income doubled” (35). This statistical data show how in under twenty years the population grew by almost 60%. That is a huge spike and a city needs to be able take in and sustain that many people. Although there were still some slums in Paris the overall city took a huge turn for the better. With a 60% increase in population the city revenue tripled meaning the wealthy people were moving in. This can lead to more money for the city to build more buildings for people to live in and a more vibrant and clean city. Thousands of travelers and tourists visit Paris due to its everlasting beauty but the city hasn’t always been what it is today. Paris is a city that has been almost destroyed many times but could bounce back. With all the revenue, the city could rebuild all of Haussmann’s destroyed building and even build new better ones. Shortly after the city’s large growth boom many more buildings were built such as the rebuilding of the Hotel de Ville, and of course the Eiffel Tower which was the tallest man-made structure of its time for over forty years. All these factors contributed to making Paris a great city and one that has been around for hundreds of years and it still one of the most visited and loved today. Kunstler’s next city is Atlanta which he describes as being the opposite to Paris. Immediately you can tell that Kunstler is not fond of Atlanta. He describes it to be a boring city and has not been planned well due to its high dependency on oil. He calls the city a “big-ass parking lot” (46) and describes how there is a poor taste in architecture there with its many oversized malls, roads, and highways. It is easily noticeable that Atlanta does not have any of the features that Kunstler thinks make a great city. The people in charge designing Atlanta thought it would be a better idea to waste billions of dollars on malls rather than having quality architecture.
Kunstler thinks that this move was a cash grab and the city is just “Following the Money” (46). He describes the Mall of Georgia as a form of cheap entertainment that isn’t even entertaining. Kunstler talks about how many of the Malls entertainment nightclubs pulled out leaving only “the usual twenty-screen multiplex cinema (yawn)” (48). Kunstler stigmatizes Atlanta for having very little if not any public transportation in the county. This shows how the city was poorly planned and the only way of transportation is someone’s personal vehicle. This relates back to how Atlanta has a big problem with too many vehicles on the road all the time and it has poor infrastructure with just massive overused …show more content…
highways. One of the most critical setbacks for Atlanta is the city’s dependency on oil. This can lead to a huge problem if oil becomes scarce or hard to obtain or just more expensive. With all the vehicles on the roads and all the construction going on in Atlanta, an oil crisis can lead to a huge crisis on the city that might lead to an end to the city. With Atlanta’s incredible use of oil and gasoline that led to “record 69 smog alert days” (51). Oil is also a resource that the city has a finite amount of and will soon all go away. Atlanta has not been planned well and it will be hard to fix all the problems when a crisis occurs. While on the subject of terribly planned cities, Las Vegas deserves to be mentioned as well.
The fact that the city was built in a desert doesn’t make much sense as well as having terrible infrastructure such a billion dollar casinos wrapped in neon lights. Sin city attracts millions of people with its many casinos, nightclubs, circuses, and massive hotels. The city is fueled by its many sources of gambling and a nightlife that makes the city look like a clown fiesta. Kunstler titles the chapter on Las Vegas as the “Utopia of Clowns”. This could be referring to the many circuses in Las Vegas or the clowns that built it. Kunstler mentions that Las Vegas is the fastest-growing city in the United States but can it handle the large population growth rate. No. The city is almost all made up of massive casinos and hotels. Most of the streets are filled with homeless people and the city is just a haven for gamblers hoping to have their dreams come true. Las Vegas’s terrible planning, architecture and lack of housing are some of the qualities that make Las Vegas a bad
city. “Another questionable factor in the equation of Las Vegas’s future is the water supply” (158). You would think that the people who plan these mega cities would be smart enough to build a giant city in a location that isn’t dryer than the Sahara Desert. Las Vegas is in the desert regions of Nevada and is always competing for water from the Colorado river. Water is an obvious important thing to have near a city for many reasons. Drinking it being the most obvious one but water is also used as a liquid coolant and is used in the innerworkings of many of the large casinos and hotels. Las Vegas is destined to fail and it may come sooner than anyone thinks. James Kunstler’s The City in Mind is a good read for anyone interested in the innerworkings of cities and can teach you a lot about the history of some of the most famous and successful cities in the world. The City in Mind is one of his best sellers and for good reason. Kunstler shows his intelligence about urban life and what cities need. This book questions a lot of things that city planners have done wrong and things that have been done exceptionally well. Kunstler lets readers know what makes a city great whether is the infrastructure and architecture of a city, to its well thought out and planned attractions and location, to its incredible size and ability to house millions of people. Urban life is a very interesting topic and is very complex and reading a book like The City in Mind is sure to boggle your mind about how many of the cities you know are what they are today.
The first article, “The Best Night $500,000 Can Buy,” portrays the perfect night out in Las Vegas. Devin chronologically takes the reader through a night in one of the famous clubs in Las Vegas, Marquee. He describes the fundamental marketing techniques that promoters use to lure women into the venue, the prices that high-rollers pay to get a VIP access and tables, and the “shitshow” atmosphere where people are dancing as if they are on Ecstasy (some people are actually on drugs). From personal experience, Las Vegas is definitely the Disney World for adults because people can openly consume alcoholic beverages on Fremont Street while enjoying their time at the arcades, night and day clubs, pools, gambling rooms, theme park rides, shopping centers, restaurants, strip clubs, and wedding chapels. Which ultimately le...
One half of the story was of a man named Daniel Burnham, who was a famous architect of his time. It’s in this half of the story that can you see the good part of the city. Pride can be seen mainly throughout his story. His life in these pages was based on the construction of the World Columbian Exposition which was a fair held in Chicago in 1893. This magnificent fair was in honor of one of America’s most well known discoverers, Christopher C. Columbus. This was the 400th anniversary of his discovery of the new world. Through Burnham’s pride and his determination, he was able to complete the fair in almost a year. However, it was not truly ready for opening day due to a few construction issues, such as the world’s f...
Chicago, one of the most popular cities in America. Visits from families all around the country, what makes this place so great? Is it the skyscrapers that protrude the sky? Or is it the weather people loved? Does Chicago being the second most favored city in America show that this town has some greatness? In the nonfiction novel The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson uses imagery, tone, and figurative language to portray the dreamlike qualities of Chicago and the beauty that lies within this city.
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
In City of Dreadful Delight, Judith Walkowitz effortlessly weaves tales of sexual danger and more significantly, stories of the overt tension between the classes, during the months when Jack the Ripper, the serial murderer who brutally killed five women, all of them prostitutes, terrorized the city. The book tells the story of western male chauvinism that was prevalent in Victorian London not from the point of view not of the gazer, but rather of the object. Walkowitz argues that the press coverage of the murders served to construct a discourse of heterosexuality in which women were seen as passive victims and sexuality was associated with male violence. Much of City of Dreadful Delight explores the cultural construction and reconstruction of class and sexuality that preceded the Ripper murders. Walkowitz successfully investigates the discourses that took place after the fact and prior social frameworks that made the Ripper-inspired male violence and female passivity model possible and popular.
From walkmans to CD players to iPods, technology has evolved over the succession of the years; humans have taken extensive steps towards a technological transformation that has revolutionized the manner in which several individuals communicate with one another. Likewise, various humans have opted for more modern methods to connect and contact their loved ones such as speaking on a cell phone, video chatting, e-mailing, instant messaging, and conversing through social media. With these contemporary methods of communication, global interaction has now been facilitated and easily accessible; conversing with individuals from across the world is as transparent and prompt as speaking with individuals within the same city. Nonetheless, these technological
Firestone, David (April 8, 2002). "Overcoming a Taboo, Buses Will Now Serve Suburban Atlanta". The New York Times. Retrieved February 24, 2008.
According to Jack Patton, a retired steelworker, he affirms that the steel industry used to be the strength of the US economy, as well as the driving force of the Cleveland Economy. But now, most of the steel mills have closed, businesses have left, and Cleveland has lost thousands of jobs. On his part, Paul Volpe, an architecture, states that Cleveland used to be the centerpiece of Fortune 500 companies until most of them left and only a few now remain. The population itself has not grown as expected, thereby giving rise to the concept of “sprawl”. In the 1960’s and 70’s, part of what drives business to the suburbs is numerous free and large parking space, however, officials of Cleveland, to salvage the situation, tore down many vacant structures to create parking lots for businesses. Sadly, this effort did not work: more businesses collapsed and more people left, leaving the city in isolation. Regrettably, the problem persisted, the situation of things got exacerbated, until late 1966 when things finally exploded. This led to serious riots and protests which even drove many away; the straw that finally broke the camel’s back was when the Cuyahoga River caught fire, this led to more and more people deserting the city and eventually, the city went into bankruptcy. As tax revenues fall, basic city services also fell; police
A Tale of Two Cities Essay Throughout history, the powers of love and hate have constantly been engaged in a battle for superiority. Time and time again, love has proven to be stronger than hate, and has been able to overcome all of the obstacles that have stood in the way of it reaching its goal. On certain occasions, though, hate has been a viable foe and defeated love when they clash. In the novel A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens presents several different power struggles between love and hate.
In the essay “The Public and the Common good” by James Howard Kunstler after reading the introduction the paragraph and evaluating carefully, I believe that it is not an effective introduction. One reason is The Arthur's does State the problem but, He also gives a list of several other problems that he thinks is wrong with the United States government and the way people are treated thought out the nation’s communities. This authors several topic he to discuss was not all related bring it together no resolutions for the different topics. The author does not give an implied solution of how to solve the listed problems that he has acknowledged. By giving you a list of problem in his introduction without solution the author this could give assume
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.
Talking about the changes that Atlanta will go through in upcoming 50 years, I think there will be lots of changes. I see a prominent need in increase in the lifestyle of people and the march towards making lots of public transportation available to deal with traffic issues. The mentality of majority of people is that public transportations are usually for uneducated and poor people. This concept of people has to be changed to improve on the transportation facilities and eliminate the traffic hassle peopl...
In White Flight, author Kevin Kruse studies white Atlantans’ movement away from the inner city to the suburbs. According to Kruse, this movement began as white flight and morphed into what he calls “suburban secession.” Kruse makes a convincing argument that white flight occurred as African-Americans were pressed by a shortage of housing in traditional black neighborhoods, and encouraged by the rising tide of the civil rights movement, to seek residence in traditionally white city neighborhoods. White residents at first resisted these movements and then retrenched in suburbs that made
Goss argues that developers and designers of the built environment, specifically shopping centers and malls, use the power of place and understanding the structural layout of the space to boost consumption of the retail profits. Shopping centers are separated from the downtown area of shopping either by distance and/or design. These establishments emerge for many to be the new heart and location for public and social life. In his article The "Magic of the Mall": An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment, Goss also argues that the regulation of the spaces within the mall creates an atmosphere of "community" rather than one that is "public".
Discuss Eliot’s treatment of the theme of the modern city in Preludes. Also refer to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock if you wish. In both ‘Preludes’ and ‘The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, the modern city is one of the main themes. Eliot’s fascination with the modern city could stem from the fact that he was an American, and so when he moved to England in 1915, the modern city was a part of England of which he was in awe.