From the article: Stop Sprawl: How to Design a Walkable Neighborhood
New Urbanist thinker James Howard Kunstler wrote that America has become a "national automobile slum" with a landscape dominated by parking lots and highways. Do you agree? What's your vision for America's cities and towns?
Speak your mind
America is not ugly, it's HORRIBLE!!!
- I am Colombian and in Colombia I grew up with cities being very urban, with public squares, open cafes, streets filled with mom and pop stores, walkable neighborhoods and widespread public transportation... upon visiting the USA I felt nothing but repulsion as I visited city after city in over 7 different states and found that not only the cities lack personality and are incredibly sterile, but also they all look exactly the same!!! Then the whole fact that I need a car to be able to interact with a society that resumes itself to parking lots, big box chain stores and highways makes me very depressed!!! The only reason I decided not to settle in America but rather go to Europe is the cities... American cities are soulless mega-sprawls of suburbias that look all alike!!!
- —Guest Andres
Sad Sad Country
- I've travelled a lot, for work and pleasure! Never, never seen such a boring and depressing situation like the one we are experiencing in our society.
- —Guest Chappy Max
Uglier Than Necessary
- I agree that large parts of the country are ugly, but I don't agree with Kunstler that suburban architecture is automatically ugly. I like the "walled in" feel of a city or downtown street, but I don't believe anything associated with cars has to be ugly. American car culture makes sprawling neighborhoods possible, but 2 acre zoning in (often in the name of "environmentalism") is what keeps anything more engaging from being built. Even suburban houses don't have to be ugly, but the separation makes some ugly building practices easier to justify. If houses were closer together, the trashiness and fire hazard of vinyl siding would be less tolerable, but in many parts of the country , we have the luxury of being able to build with such plastic crap and convince ourselves that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. The public has already reacted against wall-to-wall carpeting, fake-wood-paneling and other outdated suburban cliches; plastic-scab-covered houses should be next to go.
- —Guest PCL
Country
- I live in the country in Texas, and while I do have to drive to get groceries, etc., it's remarkably beautiful at times. I can see the lake from my back yard, and the house is on a small grassy lot in the middle of the woods on top of a hill. I wouldn't live in a city for anything though, and as far as cities are concerned, I agree with everyone else. Disgustingly ugly, trashy, concrete, glass, and steel.
- —Guest Chance
Definitely
- After living in Germany and moving back to the US, I've gotta say we have a pretty ugly country and unnecessarily so. The historic architecture is a big part of it, but even the newly developed areas are far more attractive than comparable American ones. The Germans would build new suburban developments as compact villages surrounded by woods/farmland and connected to the city with clean, quality public transportation. You could walk to the bakery, pub, a few stores and restaurants without ever getting in a car. In the US, the vast majority of us live in areas where the only things within walking distance are other houses (assuming there's even sidewalks). In exchange for living on larger lots, we have created suburban wastelands and forced ourselves to be completely reliant on cars and endure the traffic that inevitably comes about when everything is spread out and everyone has to drive to get anywhere.
- —Guest Alex
Relatively?
- I would agree with most of the posters here...that America is a naturally beautiful country. But, compared with other places (mainly Western Europe) the country as a whole doesn't compare. Of course, we haven't had a long history of empires and nations to have built before our time nor the population density. True development went hand-in-hand with industrialization (infrastructure and transpiration) and there was always that profit motive attached to the practical needs. It sad and I don't ever see American towns and cities being as "charming" as a whole than much else of the developed world.
- —Guest Matt
Ugly is as ugly does.
- The chain sameness is kinda cute but in a kinda sad way. There is good news, though. As soon as people realize the worth of space within their city, town or suburb, and how much they're wasting on car 'ownership,' they will find better things to with massive parking lots.
- —Guest Sam G
UrbanBuilder
- Why have our new neighborhoods become so boring and ugly?-It has been the perfect storm of converging ignorant sprawl-friendly city "planners" and buck-chasing-builders who are more interested in making a quick buck instead of building a "neighborhood". The majority of city planning departments have adopted regulations to enable builders to develop neighborhoods that are filled with repetitious homes- the predominant architectural feature a 16' wide garage door behind a parking lot of concrete. The rare development that purposes to keep cars and concrete BEHIND the homes has at least "the chance" to be a neighborhood. The builder who then has at least a minimal iota of design sense will build a melody of homes consisting of variant and tastefully detailed elevations with front porches that encourage folks to spend time outside. It ain't rocket science....just drive down any core area of any old town and you will see the genesis of true neighborhoods. Observe...use newer materials, repeat.
- —Guest donbunker900
Beautiful America, Ugly Sprawl
- America is a naturally beautiful country, and has many beautiful cities, but architecture and planning practices after WWII have ruined both city and country. Current codes in many areas make it ILLEGAL to build beautiful, walkable, pleasant cities. Sprawl is rapidly destroying our country.
- —Guest Sam
Inferior Architecture
- Down every main road in non-big city America, there are strip malls and fast food restaurants, parking lots, and not a single pedestrian in sight. The streets are dominated by cars and recent building designs ignore craftsmanship.
- —loweesidah
NYC
- Here in New York City the entire landscape is composed of essentially two materials, concrete and metal, each in varying stages of decay. It gets uglier, more polluting and repulsive each day. I say turn the island over to Disney and let's all get out!
- —Guest tom
Ugly America
- It's sad to say "Ugly America," but unfortunately it's true. It seems our senses are underestimated in American cities: sense of smell, touch, vision, and even our hearing. All one is surrounded with are highways, parking lots, and cars. No people on the sidewalks, no smell of bakeries or coffee shops on the sidewalks. Even though we have many rules for pedestrians' safety, we don't care about their real needs - which might be social correlation. Our designers never ask what people really want, instead they dictate what they think would be good for people...
- —maryami
Ugly America
- Yes, I'd have to agree, but I'd want to qualify it to say that most suburbs are ugly -- strip malls and boring houses, or worse, McMansions dominated by garages. Despite the beauty and diversity of the landscape, there's a dreadful sameness in contemporary America. There may be a few nods to traditional local building styles, but in general, you could scoop up a suburb in North Carolina and transport it to the suburbs of New York and it would fit right in.
- —Guest Alice
