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Mind Map for Kunstler's talk - Coggle Diagram
Mind Map for Kunstler's talk
Central Thesis
: Bad architecture represents the entropy of civilization, and it needs to be improved if American society is going to move forward
Supporting Point 2
: In order to be a "good" public space, it needs to have many visible public sites no matter where you go.
Kunstler uses the word "permeable", much like a membrane, where people are always going in and out without much restriction. Waiters are not confined and isolated from being outdoors and part of the public space for instance.
A public space success is when a community that has formed on their own without some outside incentive to be there
A public space failure is when, as Kunstler put it, "there's not enough Prozac in the world to make people feel OK about going down this block".
Supporting Point 3
: Utilitarian architecture is overly pervasive in the United States, at the cost of the people's wellbeing
He shows the back of Boston City Hall Plaza, which doesn't promote a natural community to form but instead makes American people "feel like termites".
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that when the back of the civic center in Saratoga Springs has the exact same problem, even on a smaller scale.
He compares the function of buildings to be, "designed like a DVD player"
This issue is not helped by simply adding natural elements like trees to it, as it is only a surface level solution to the fundamental flaws of the architecture.
When early suburbia tried to exaggerate how much it was a country getaway for people who wanted to stay away from poor people, it also proved to be impractical by emphasizing how isolated it is rather than providing anything useful
Suburban children end up with anxiety and depression, which causes them to take up harmful habits such as violence and drug use. This creates a feedback loop of children doing harmful thing because of depression, which gets picked up by more children creating more depression, leading to suburban towns being a worse place to live.
Supporting Point 1
: A sense of self and how it cannot be seen in through suburban architecture. Kunstler states that the combination of architectural elements that make up a public space should represent the people living there.
How is this expressed?
: He states that the space that Americans live in has two roles, "the dwelling of our civilization and our civic life" and "the physical manifestation of the common good". So when these two traits are reduced in quality by a significant amount, the livelihood of the people living in that space will be much worse.
Consequence:
By abandoning civic design after World War 2, people both inside and outside American civilization cannot get a sense of where America has been (its history) or where it is going.
Suburbia has ruined any understanding of rural and urban distinction. To try and cover up the poor architectural decisions made, they fuse the natural elements of rural land to give off the notion that suburbia is more "natural" than a city.
How is it represented in the TED talk visually?
: Kunstler shows that even when there are landmarks, those being a Walmart and a Target store, the area is constructed so poorly that they cannot even be seen or indicated from most perspectives.
How is this done?
: Kunstler shows this by examining how suburban sprawls and recent architecture in cities have taken away any good qualities that were previously seen in society
Recommendations for the future
: There needs to be a
serious
change in all of America's architecture, especially as we are approaching what Kunstler calls, "the end of the cheap oil era".
Architecture needs to be built with the realization that we need to live close to where we work and close to
other people
.
Many features that were forgotten about after World War II need to be relearned: the courtyard, the civic square, street and block systems imposed on malls by retrofitting them
Do not use the term "consumer" in public discussion, as it removes the weight of responsibility that everyone should be sharing in a local community
Personal note
: The dry humor of Kunstler is quite funny throughout this talk (example: the Hannibal Lecter school in Nevada section)