An Interview with James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler has written four books on Urban Design and Suburbia including the ground-breaking “Geography of Nowhere” in 1993. He has also written nine novels, the newest of which is entitled “Maggie Darling” and it’s a doozy. He is a passionate author, a painter, an insightful social critic, and a sharp-witted observer. His latest book is called “The Long Emergency” and it talks about life after “peak oil” – or, as he describes it in this interview, “the cheap oil fiesta of the late 20th century”.

His “Clusterfuck Nation” is loaded with his commentary on our social condition and his “Eyesore of the Month” serves to remind us, with wit and sincerity, of the horrible things we’re doing to our surroundings. But most of all, James Howard Kunstler gives voice to the uneasy feelings that bubble up within us, from the discomfort and confusion regarding our current urban environment to the uncertainty regarding our future post-cheap oil.

MungBeing: Your background is not in urban planning or architecture. Where does your passion for urban design come from?

James Howard Kunstler: Well, I’ve had to live in the shitty environments of daily life here in America for half a century, and I have strong feelings about it. The books I wrote represented to a large extent a personal struggle to understand why we could do such damage to our civilization.

MB: What attracted you to New Urbanism?

JHK: When I was writing “The Geography of Nowhere,” I went up a lot of blind alleys. I talked to a lot of people who were, in fact, part of the problem — for example, “star” architects like Bob Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown, who thought all the suburban crap was wonderful, playful, marvelous. When I finally encountered Andres Duany, I realized I had finally come to the right source. That very year, 1993, Andres along with his wife Lizz Plater-Zyberk, Doug Kelbaugh of the U of Washington, Peter Calthorpe, Stefanos Polyzoides, and a bunch of other dissatisfied architect / urbanists were organizing the official group that came to be called the Congress for the New Urbanism — the name was supplied by it’s founding director, Peter Katz. These guys knew the score. I had found my way home.

MungBeing