http://www.ted.com In James Howard Kunstler's view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Comments

1. Study Percival Alfred Yeoman work.
   Study Gilles Lemieux work.
   Study Bill Mollison work.
   Architecture is an automatic fail without the study of any of those three thinkers.
2. Yes, there is going to be a hydrogen economy. Kunstler doesn't know what's going on in the energy market.
3. It seems that badly needed are bike paths & community gardens &/or rooftop gardens, areas that are user friendly to wheelchairs & those with canes. Transit stations that can withstand the pouring rain. Get rid of all use of stryro foam in packing & serving containers. It might be a good idea to have dog parks & branch libraries.
4. Haha I always thought we in Germany were fucked up because the Allies bombed our beautiful cities away. But how I can see some US citizen have similar problems although they have too much space.
5. Great talk. 240p? C'mon TED
6. there will not be hydrogen fuel. -sponsered by bmw
7. My biggest gripe with this lecture..."CP-30"
8. all good until the agenda 21 scare tactics at the end
9. we need to send some of these creative kids pursuing electronic music to architecture school
10. I don't care for the nationalist spin or the cheap jokes, but at least he acknowledges that there is no "alternative" that can sustain the oil-based economy.
11. When he speaks of the military and what they are fighting for....Their last thought of home is their family. The nostalgic feelings of home are still there despite the area; it is grown out of familiarity, experiences there, and time in that place.
    He coats his presentation with jokes to make a claim that suburbia is what induces degeneracy...with no evidence presented.
    
    Suburban areas have local parks and restaurants. The strip malls are a short drive out of the neighborhood into consumer convenience.
    His idea of community planning is being forced to live in a condominium or apartment with droves of other people and being forced to interact and work with them as you are huddled together, you also have to deal with local through-traffic and businesses being far too close. There are no options.
    The suburb is superior. You have the community of the suburbs, the neighborhoods, the block parties, neighborhood cohesion and unity - but you also have the space and proximity for freedom and privacy. There is enough community that you know your neighbors and your kids play together, and you enjoy each others company now and then, but you have the privacy of your own home, the space of your own home (there is much more space in suburbia in the US than other countries), and the lawns, fences, yards, etc that give you a sense of ownership and designates space from your neighbors (especially if you wish to be left alone).
    
    As for the architecture itself, yes a lot of the US is quite ugly. That came during the 70s-80s mostly.
    
    These comments are like people imagining every part of Europe has a cathedral at the end of the street.
12. Resoect
13. We are sleep walking into the future...
14. All of his demands are coming true in Washington DC as fast as lightning. U St came back followed by 14th St and then H St and now the old reservoir on North Capitol St and the Walter-Reed center. I probably left out a lot of stuff.
15. Isn't it a bit ironic that there's a car commercial within this video.
16. This talk gives a misleading impression of what the origins of the problems are. A lot of it is dumb jokes about aspects of architecture and urban planning that are no longer true - these lessons have been learned by architects and planners. This talk was relevant 30 or 40 years ago. Using Boston City Hall as an example of the real problem and making authoritarian political comparison to it is a cheap shot, superficial and not where the nature of the problem lies.
    
    So who is to blame - it's developers, corporate retail and you. Are trends moving in the direction that Kuntsler recommends -? NO! If anything, more power, authority and influence is moving toward developers, corporate entities and property owners, not to government, citizens and the public interest. And this is what the conservative movement is giving us. Your town probably has a nice walkable downtown shopping district, but the shop fronts are empty because you want to shop at WALMART!
17. "C-P30"
18. Pol Pot, Jose Stalin.....that building could easily be used like the Lubyanka in Moscow. You know, the one with the echoes of people being shot in the basement. The one with the "special " drains. I take that back--the Lubyanka is prettier.
    
    
    Modern architecture---no more worthless subject is gassed about by more pensive, thoughtful, more over-educated men. As they remove their glasses and place them on their gorgeous rosewood desk (beauty, in fact, never found in their work), they spout on about the poor and underprivledged, about concrete walls and "negative space". Please, God--save us from them! If just one developed a cornice, he'd think it was cancer.
19. Brilliant. This got me interested in TedTalks again.
20. OMG... I always thought I loved my home state, California, because of the mountains and oceans. I claimed that anywhere east of rockies was not worth existing because it's so flat... and yes I've lived all over due to the Army. I never thought about architectures influence.... although I did enjoy the weekend stints in major cities...