James Kunstler: How bad architecture wrecked cities

This talk should be mandatory for anyone approaching architecture school.

"notice that nature is present" 

This is the most important Ted Talk I've seen in a long time. It just hits so close to home. It's no wonder Americans are by and large depressed and unhappy. Driving your car two hours a day between a cartoon house and a fluorescent lit cubicles is no life, it's a joke. 

I want a refund from my four years of architecture school with interest and compensation for my time wasted being taught by pretentious professors with big egos who did little to address the cancerous state of architectural theory. They taught me jack and shit about how to think about the future of design. And Jack left town. Thank you Kunstler for articulating everything I hate about "American" architecture and consumerism. I wish you spent more time bashing the big oil companies for convincing America to adopt a petroleum based infrastructure in the fist place, but hey....

This would be one of the five best TED talks I've seen. And +1 calling citizens consumers is evil.

I love the irony of a BMW commercial, one set in lovely natural environments, purporting all-natural fuel use, following Kunstler's lecture. It's so fitting as to be tailor made.

The place "not worth caring about" is not just the ugly isolated architecture, but the loss of a beautiful town square, of a sense of belonging to a community with multiple overlapping relationships. Walking the dog should occur in the central park town square surrounded by your neighbours who are having coffee, eating in the local diner, reading the paper, buying a book, collecting their dry cleaning, buying a few groceries, getting their hair done, grabbing a pizza, and all the other varied activities in the local neighbourhood. We've lost street life, a sense of place. The problem with suburbia is there's no there, there.

"A despotic building that makes us feel like termites." This guy should be getting $100,000 a speech.

Little shout out to all my @NotJustBikes people - always good to learn about and be aware of your surroundings! :)

15 years later, and this video ages like fine wine. All the predictions and warnings he made, were ignored and came true. Should have been youtubes most watched since 2007

This guy is like the George Carlin of Architecture.

Architecture is such a joke nowadays. There is a total disregard to how people will feel in and around buildings. I hope that will change soon.

I'm viewing this talk 13 years after the fact, in the middle of a pretty severe crisis. Part of why the crisis is so bad is because all this time later we're still building inefficient, idiotic cities with diminishing returns in life value vs. increasing financial cost. As far as "uplifting" goes, the architecture of the decade is some of the most abysmal minimalist modernism seen since the 60s that will age just as badly. New Urbanism hasn't prevailed, sadly. James H. Kunstler is an interesting guy, I'd recommend reading "The Geography of Nowhere."

I am Bulgarian and I am ashamed of the US railroad system

I love this TED talk. I do not like modern city design or architecture. I'm glad someone is saying what most of us have been thinking for years!

The final note on the prevalence of the word "consumer" is so right on. "Consumer spending is down", etc. I get so tired of people being reduced to the word "consumer".

"these habitats are inducing immense amoutn of anxiety and depression in children" -- so true

He's not saying nature is bad. He is saying that architecture should be beautiful enough that it doesn't need nature in order to make it bearable. I don't know if you've ever been to Rome, but there are many places that have no trees of flower beds whatsoever, but they feel great and look beautiful. You don't miss nature because the urbanism and architecture is so good. Watch the video again, he describes what nature should be used for.

Not Just Bikes sent me here.

Isn't it a bit ironic that there's a car commercial within this video.