Jude links to a video of James Kunstler doing his schtick at the TED Conference.
I watched all 21 minutes and 42 seconds. The first 15 minutes is Kunstler's stand-up routine mocking crappy suburban design. It's pretty funny -- I laughed a couple of times. (Note that 21:42 is about the length of a Family Guy episode without the commercials.)
But it really is too easy. Kunstler mixes photos of bleak, suburban strip malls and neo-brutalist, urban buildings with images of pleasant, New Urbanist streetscapes. Of course it's funny. It’s much harder to figure out how to integrate new urbanist environments with the automobile and the modern demand for convenience. (The automobile hasn’t disappeared yet, to Kunstler's continual surprise). Adres Duany, Peter Calthorpe, and Stefan Polyzoides have been wrestling with this issue for years, doing the hard, gritty work. Kunstler’s just a clown.
Around the 15 minute mark, Kunstler launches into one of his apocalyptic rants about peak oil and the end of society as we know it. Tellingly, he prefaces it by saying that “Chris” — presumably, one of the conference organizers — “told me not to go on too long about this.” The smart people there know he’s full of crap.
