APPLETON, WIS. — Suburbia, according to author and social critic James Howard Kunstler, represents “a set of tragic choices that we made collectively.”
Kunstler offers his explanation of how and where things went wrong in the final installment of Lawrence University’s 2007 Spoerl environmental studies lecture series on “green” cities.
Based on his 1993 book of the same title, Kunstler presents “The Geography of Nowhere” Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 7 p.m. in the Wriston Art Center auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
A one-time staff writer and editor for Rolling Stone magazine, Kunstler has written four nonfiction books and nine novels, but he is perhaps best known for his observations about the urban landscape and life in big cities. In “The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-made Landscape,” Kunstler offers an irreverent critique of the suburbanization of America, arguing that endless highways and nondescript strip malls are in part responsible for the deterioration of civic life and the growth of social and economic problems.
A native of New York City who has no formal training in architecture or city planning, Kunstler also addressed urban life issues in the books “Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-First Century” (1996) and “The City in Mind: Meditations on the Urban Condition” (2001).
In his most recent book, 2005’s “The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century,” Kunstler asserts the world has passed its peak oil production and reflects on the implications of living in an industrialized world with diminishing energy resources.
Kunstler’s appearance is sponsored by the Spoerl Lectureship in Science in Society. Established in 1999 by Milwaukee-Downer College graduate Barbara Gray Spoerl and her husband, Edward, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on the role of science and technology in societies worldwide.
