James Kunstler:Addresses oil shortage and Urban Planning

The most recent speaker of this years Humanities Symposium, was James Kuntsler, who recently wrote, “The Long Emergency and the Destiny of Cities,” where most of his address came from. He told the audience that America must “re-imagine” the city to be something different than it currently is in today’s changing world and economy. Kunstler also talked about how America’s dependency on oil, will eventually catch up with the country and lead to devastating results.

Kunstler appeared to be very negative, constantly reminding the audience that our problems are not just going to go away, and they are only going to get worse. This point reminded me of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The woman in the story had a problem, and the husband thought by keeping her away from the world, her mental problems would go away, which as the story proved, was very far from the truth. Kunstler says the county’s increasing state of emergency in terms of energy will not just go away. People assume there will be a solution in the future and some new technologies will be developed and everything will be saved. Kunstler pointed out not many resources have been given to develop these and most of our resources have been put into oil, which will eventually be gone.

Kunstler also spoke of downscaling American cities. He feels by having large American cities and large suburbs, a lot more energy is used than if everything were to be more condensed. He also felt that everything should be more localized, meaning food production would be localized as many other things like energy sources. This continues his idea that the city should be downscaled. If things are more localized, then more rural areas will depend less on the city and thus, the cities will be downsized as the rest of the country will not need them as much as they once had.

Another point Kunstler made was to improve transportation methods in this country to save energy. Kunstler wishes to have the trains start working again as they used to. This would save a lot of oil for the country as people would not drive as much. I know for me personally, I would like to visit people at other schools but its hard to move around in this country without either flying or driving. To fly somewhere only 3 or 4 hours away is a waste of money on the plane ticket. To drive that far cost a lot of money in gas and also uses a lot of our countries resources if people keep going on 4 hour drives. If the train system were revived, then people would be able to move around more freely, while using less natural resources. Something that Kunstler did not directly touch on relating to this is the need for better public transportation. In Baltimore, compared to other cities, the public transportation is not very adequate. The bus system is not up to par. Busses often run late or early causing people frustration. There is no good subway system at all in Baltimore and the only way to really get around is by being over charged by a taxi.

The majority of Kunstler’s talk was very negative. He did not leave a lot of room for hope for the energy crisis and the problems of current urban planning. He did not have the answers himself, but did tell us, the audience, that we could solve these problems. As college students, when we get out into the world, we will have the power to try to address these issues. Time will only tell if our generation will handle them well or not.