A Quote by James Howard Kunstler
Consider how badly-built suburbia is. Many business buildings are not designed to outlast their tax depreciation periods, and the McHouses are made of particle board, vinyl siding, and stapled-on trim. A lot of suburbia will simply become the slums of the future. Most of the rest will be salvage or ruins.
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Most of suburbia will end up in three ways: ruins, slums, salvage yards for materials.
[Suburbia] represents, after all, the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. We built it during our most affluent period of history, and in the decades to come we will be comparatively destitute collectively. In short, we will not have the resources to retrofit most of suburbia.
In my view, suburbia in general has very poor prospects. I think it will only become devalued and probably more dangerous. It's chief characteristic was that it represented a living arrangement with no future - and that future is now here.
I believe most of suburbia is unreformable and will not be fixed.
I'm Jewish, and my family is Jewish. I was very interested in Woody Allen when I was growing up, but I don't think of myself as a Jewish writer. I'm more from suburbia, American suburbia. I'm more from the '70s than I am from Judaism.
I pay tax, and I pay federal tax, too. But I have a write-off, a lot of it's depreciation, which is a wonderful charge. I love depreciation.
People in suburbia see trees differently than foresters do. They cherish every one. It is useless to speak of the probability that a certain tree will die when the tree is in someone's backyard . . . . You are talking about a personal asset, a friend, a monument, not about board feet of lumber.
Americans are suffering so much from being in unrewarding environments that it has made us very cynical. I think that American suburbia has become a powerful generator of anxiety and depression.
Public buildings, built from the rates and taxes paid by past generations, are being auctioned off by impoverished councils who need the money to pay the redundancies of workers they can no longer afford to employ. Many of these grand Victorian buildings will be turned into flats that most people will never be able to afford.
We exist because of suburbia. Suburbia is a freak’s dreamworld, a world of extra rooms upstairs and long, lazy afternoons with no interference. A place where you can listen to your LPs for hours on end. You can live in your room, your own rent-free corner of the universe, and create a world of pleasure and interest entirely centered on yourself and your interior aesthetic and logic.
I believe that vinyl will outlast CDs.
James Hardie(R) siding is a sustainable and marvelous substitute for wood. It's available pre-colored and the finish truly looks like high-grade wood siding. I've used this product line for years, and have been delighted with the results. It's the only product I will consider substituting for wood, and in many climates it's significantly preferable because of its stability.
We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we made.
The fortunate and successful New Urbanists will be the ones who can find local infill projects in small towns and small cities associated with farming, water transport, (perhaps rail too) and water power. I do not believe personally that we will retrofit much of suburbia in the way many people wish we might. The capital won't be there, and I'm rather convinced that the population is headed down - though this will be a lagging effect, because even starving people have sex.
Suburbia, to me, was the most fantastical, unusual place. I thought it was Disneyland.
It wasn't the first film to show a kind of alternate vision of suburbia, but it left an indelible impression, I think, on everybody, and all films like that will forever be measured against 'Blue Velvet.'
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