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NOWHERE_MODERN

"The Geography of Nowhere" (1993) 
by James Howard Kunstler: 
                                               NOWHERE_MAN 
   "Pretending to be places of enduring 
   value, the American suburbs had 
   proved to be made of nothing more                   Jane Jacobs is the 
   lasting than parcels of real estate.                author of the 
   It was a shame, because the reaction                tremendously 
   to the disillusion that followed was                brilliant, 
   a far more fradulent and barbarous                  ground-breaking 
   movement called Modernism, which                    work "Death and 
   dedicated itself to the worship of                  Life of Great 
   machines, to sweeping away all                      American Cities". 
   architectural history, all romantic 
   impulses, and to jamming all human             A better anti-modernist 
   aspiration into a plain box."  p. 57           rant delivered by 
                                                  Kunstler (in the midst 
                                                  of a long interview with 
This kind of                                      Jane Jacobs): 
rant can be 
entertaining                                        "Corbusier comes up with a 
to read, but                                        cockamamie scheme for 
does it                                             destroying the Right Bank 
really sum up                                       of Paris, the Marais 
the subject?                                        District. And the idea 
                                                    immigrates to America 
Are there                                           where it takes America by 
no saving                                           storm. Meanwhile, in 
graces for    How about the Guggenheim?             France every year 
Modernism?    There form followed function,         Corbusier goes back to the 
              and it really does function,          officials in Paris and 
Nothing to    and it really has form...             says I have this wonderful 
be learned                                          idea to destroy the Right 
from it?                   (Or did,                 Bank and they laugh at 
                           before they              him. For years -- decade 
                           tacked a                 after decade -- they laugh 
  A thought: letting       flush tank on            at him. They never do what 
  the form flow from       the side of              he proposes. They do build 
  the function may in      the bowl).               a lot of crappy stuff 
  many cases be a                                   outside of the center of 
  better idea than                                  Paris. But they never 
  trying to force a                                 knock down the center of 
  pre-conceived form.    When we                    Paris. In America we took 
                         consciously                that idea and we just 
                         choose an                  loved it. Why didn't we 
  If the suburbs had     appearence we              laugh at it?" 
  truly been built       often do a bad 
  according to the       job. 
  modernist spirit, 
  rather than an               UNINTENDED 
  attempt at building 
  faux-countryside,             "If you can't think once, 
  what would they                don't think twice." 
  have been like?                  The Buzzcocks, "Sixteen Again" 
 
 
                      No "Dairy 
                      Barns", at 
                      least. 
 
 
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