KunstlerCast - Suburban Sprawl: A Tragic Comedy
411 episodes - English - Latest episode: 8 days ago - ★★★★★ - 380 ratingsJames Howard Kunstler, author of "The Geography of Nowhere" and "The Long Emergency," takes on suburban sprawl, disposable architecture and the end of the cheap oil era each week with program host Duncan Crary.
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Episodes
KunstlerCast#11: Picturing Suburbia
April 24, 2008 16:41 - 12 minutes - 7.02 MBWhen James Howard Kunstler isn't railing against suburban sprawl, he's painting it. Vincent van Gogh painted the peasant sleeping by the haystack because he was living in a landscape populated by people. Our landscape is populated by cars. So, as a sur la motif painter of our time, Jim's subjects include cars on the road, gas stations and the industrial ruins of America's manufacturing past. Making this landscape legible on the canvas is a challenge, but it's also dangerous! An angry manage...
KunstlerCast #10: Children of the Burbs
April 17, 2008 19:16 - 12 minutes - 7.06 MBIs raising children in suburbia a form of child abuse? What happens to developing people when public space is the berm between the Wal-Mart and the K-Mart? When school looks like a maximum security "facility"? When parents are chauffeurs? James Howard Kunstler addresses these topics and speaks of his own experiences growing up in the suburbs of Long Island and in Manhattan. (Info about program and theme music at KunstlerCast.com) Direct Download (7 MB): KunstlerCast_10.mp3
KunstlerCast #9: Urban Planning
April 10, 2008 06:57 - 12 minutes - 7.06 MBJames Howard Kunstler is one of the most vocal critics of modern urban planning. So it's only fair that in this show Jim fields some questions from the professional planning community. First off, the planners want to know how Jim answers to critics who challenge him on his lack of professional credentials in the planning and architecture fields. Next, a planning professor wants to know: what is the most important thing that cities can do to most improve the quality of the built environment? ...
KunstlerCast #8: The Glossary of Nowhere
April 03, 2008 17:55 - 12 minutes - 7.08 MBWhen James Howard Kunstler wrote The Geography of Nowhere, it was to give people "the vocabulary to understand what's wrong with the places they ought to know best." In this installment we run down a few choice Kunstlerisms, like "parking lagoons" , "nature Band-Aides" and "patriotic totems." Kunstler also tells us why the depressing topic of suburban sprawl is also really funny. (Info about program and theme music at KunstlerCast.com) Direct Download (7 MB): KunstlerCast_08.mp3
KunstlerCast #7: Fate of Flagstaff & Hydrogen Cars
March 27, 2008 15:14 - 12 minutes - 6.99 MBA listener from Flagstaff, Ariz. wants to know what fate awaits his town in the post oil future. The verdict from Jim? At least it's not Phoenix, but most of Flagstaff looks like the service road around Newark Airport. The caller also asks about the new Honda hydrogen fuel cell car, which reminds Jim to bash so-called environmentalist Amory Lovins' fantasy to keep the motoring scene going at all costs. (Info about program and theme music at KunstlerCast.com) Direct Download (7 MB): Kunstl...
KunstlerCast #6: Zoning
March 20, 2008 16:24 - 12 minutes - 7.08 MBYa seen one town in America ya seen 'em all. But that's because they're all mandated to look that way! James Howard Kunstler tells the tragic story of zoning codes in the United States. At one time, zoning was a rational response to unpleasant conditions of the newly emerging industrial city. But the fanatical level to which zoning became worshiped by public officials has reduced urban planning from an art form to the mere administration of curb cuts, signage and statistical analysis of tra...
KunstlerCast #5: Starchitects
March 13, 2008 06:49 - 12 minutes - 7.08 MBHow and why did Seattle build that hideous new public library? asks one listener from that city. James Howard Kunstler tells us how cities get hoodwinked into a status fashion contest to have a museum or library built by one of the celebrity architects of the day. Rem Koolhass, Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman and others are deliberately designing these disastrous, anxiety-inducing mothership UFOs in order to mystify people into thinking they're supernaturally brilliant. And then we're stuck with...
KunstlerCast #4: Parking Garages
March 06, 2008 05:06 - 6.86 MBA listener from Columbus, Ohio shares the bad news about two proposed downtown parking garages. Even though James Howard Kunstler thinks the happy motoring scene in America is on the way out, he explains how to design a better parking garage with first-floor retail, a central lightwell and taller ceilings. The Europeans have a better solution, though: the car club. (Info about program and theme music at KunstlerCast.com) Direct Download (6.9MB): KunstlerCast_04.mp3
KunstlerCast #3: World Made By Hand
February 28, 2008 14:07 - 7.06 MBJames Howard Kunstler reads from World Made By Hand, his new novel based on the post-oil future. Published by The Atlantic Monthly Press, World Made By Hand is set in upstate New York in the not distant future. It is a fictional account of the ideas based in Kunstler's nonfiction book, The Long Emergency. (Info about program and theme music at KunstlerCast.com) Direct Download (7.2MB): KunstlerCast_03.mp3
KunstlerCast #2: Small Cities & Towns
February 21, 2008 08:05 - 7.62 MBJames Howard Kunstler describes the impending end of cheap oil, which he calls The Long Emergency. Suburbia is a living arrangement with no future. Things are going to get pretty gnarly in the big cities, too. But small cities, that exist at a scale that can be rebuilt, are the places of the future. (Info about program and theme music at KunstlerCast.com) Direct Download: KunstlerCast_02.mp3
KunstlerCast #1: Drugstores
February 12, 2008 06:00 - 15 minutes - 6.91 MBJames Howard Kunstler rips on drugstores: the one-story, junk food- dispensing boxes that masquerade as buildings on America's street corners. Topics include: monocultural zoning; big retail vs. mom & pop; separating the business programming from the container that it comes in; and the destiny of these awful structures after the cheap oil fiesta is over. (Info about program and theme music at KunstlerCast.com) Direct Download: KunstlerCast_01.mp3