Suburban Nightmare, Italian Dream

James Howard Kunstler achieved fame for his book “The Geography of Nowhere” a critique of the way we have designed and built since World War II. When I was at Community Builders and did an annual conference called Lovable Communities, we had Kunstler come and speak. This was in the middle to late 1990s. He is a caustic, cantankerous critic who pulls no punches. Most of what he says is accurate. I recently was sent a link to a 20 minute talk he gave in 2004. If you don’t like swear words, don’t listen. Click here to connect to the talk.

The reason I began doing trips to Italy was because it is such a great instructor of what civic design and human places are. It remains so. And what happens on our art and culture based trips is that the wonderful human scaled environment of Orvieto softly and subtley caresses people. It makes them more human, more in touch with humanness. We have forgotten what this is like in so much of America because we mostly live in suburban blandness. One gift of these trips is the reconnection to that which is human. We have so many places we can reclaim in the U.S., even suburbia. First, we have to know what we are missing. Then we can act. We hope our trips begin the process of awakening that will lead to better communities at home.