Suburban Nation or Let Us Talk of Many Things

Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

Author: Andres Duany

A manifesto by America's most controversial and celebrated town planners, proposing an alternative model for community design.

There is a growing movement in North America to put an end to suburban sprawl and to replace the automobile-based settlement patterns of the past fifty years with a return to more traditional planning principles. This movement stems not only from the realization that sprawl is ecologically and economically unsustainable but also from a growing awareness of sprawl's many victims: children, utterly dependent on parental transportation if they wish to escape the cul-de-sac; the elderly, warehoused in institutions once they lose their driver's licenses; the middle class, stuck in traffic for two or more hours each day.

Founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of this movement, and in Suburban Nation they assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. It is a lively, thorough, critical lament, and an entertaining lesson on the distinctions between postwar suburbia-characterized by housing clusters, strip shopping centers, office parks, and parking lots-and the traditional neighborhoods that were built as a matter of course until mid-century. It is an indictment of the entire development community, including governments, for the fact that America no longer builds towns. Most important, though, it is that rare book that also offers solutions.

Publishers Weekly

Like "an architectural version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, our main streets and neighborhoods have been replaced by alien substitutes, similar but not the same," state Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck in this bold and damning critique. The authors, who lead a firm that has designed more than 200 new neighborhoods and community revitalization plans, challenge nearly half a century of widely accepted planning and building practices that have produced sprawling subdivisions, shopping centers and office parks connected by new highways. These practices, they contend, have not only destroyed the traditional concept of the neighborhood, but eroded such vital social values as equality, citizenship and personal safety. Further, they charge that current suburban developments are not only economically and environmentally "unsustainable," but "not functional" because they isolate and place undue burdens on at-home mothers, children, teens and the elderly. Adapting the precepts that famed urbanologist Jane Jacobs used to critique unhealthy city planning, Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck call for a revolution in suburban design that emphasizes neighborhoods in which homes, schools, commercial and municipal buildings would be integrated in pedestrian-accessible, safe and friendly settings. While occasionally presenting unsupported claims--such as that gated communities (of which there are now more than 20,000 in the U.S.) deprive children of gaining "a sense of empathy" in a diverse society--their visionary book holds out hope that we can create "places that are as valuable as the nature they displaced." (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Entertainment Weekly - Harlan

Lucidly detailing the environmental, aesthetic, and social costs of sprawl, the authors deliver a passionate, stylish manifesto on community quality of life.

WQ Magazine - Suzannah Lessard

Suburban Nation is a little like a New Urbanist town: smooth, adept, controlling in the way that tacitly excludes alternative views of reality.

What People Are Saying

Kurt Anderson
I usually find missionaries and visionaries tiresome, or scary. But the authors of this book are different. Their diagnosis of late-twentieth-century American ugliness is full-bore, but their prescriptions are nuanced and sensible. Their single-mindedness about what's right is tempered by a hard-earned knowledge of what's practical. They even have a sense of humor. Suburban Nation, as inspiring as it is useful, may be the best guide to reforming the free market ever published. It made me feel like a citizen again.
—Kurt Anderson, author of Turn of the Century

Witold Rybczynski
One does not have to agree with all the arguments in this impassioned critique of suburbia to admire-and learn from-the authors' proven commitment to improving our built environment. An important book by America's premier town planners.
—Witold Rybczynski, author of City Life and The Most Beautiful House in the World

Vincent Scully
Vincent Scully, Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, Yale University

A clear-eyed, closely reasoned description by its founders of the most important movement in American architecture and city making of this generation: the New Urbanism, based not upon the "nostalgia" for which it has been unjustly criticized but upon solid architectural, historical, and sociological analysis and hard common sense.

Richard Moe
Richard Moe, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation

For anyone interested in fighting sprawl and promoting smart growth, this important new book is essential reading. Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck have put flesh on the bones of the New Urbanism movement and given much-needed impetus to the promise it holds for America.

Andrew Ross
The ideas set forth in this book amount to a revolution in design. They will be hailed or denounced; copied or spurned; realized or aborted. But they cannot be ignored, not if we care about the landscapes and localities where a majority of Americans now life.
—Andrew Ross, American Studies Program, New York University, and author of The Celebration Chronicles

James Howard Kunstler
A book of luminous intelligence and wit. The fiasco of suburbia has never been so clearly described. This is not just a manifesto on architecture and civic design but a major literary event.
— James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere

Robert A. M. Stern
Robert A. M. Stern, Dean, Yale School of Architecture

Suburban Nation is an essential text for our time, as compelling and important as Jane Jacob's The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Venturi, Brown, and Izenour's Learning from Las Vegas. This book is not only a passionately argued, carefully reasoned dissection of the mess that is becoming man-made America but also a clear program of steps that can be taken to enhance the humanity of both our suburbs and our cities while conserving our rapidly dwindling countryside. Everyone who cares about the future of our American way of life should read this book.

Andrew Cuomo
This book packs a powerful punch: The city of the future turns out to be the old neighborhood. Sprawl, the dominant pattern of the past, doesn't have to be the wave of the future. Whether or not you subscribe to all of its arguments, Suburban Nation draws attention to the need to radically re-think the way our cities grow- both in our inner cities and on the urban edge.

Joseph P. Jr., Riley
Joseph P. Riley, Jr., Mayor, City of Charleston

Neighborhoods, towns, and cities that make the heart sing; how do we create them? The answers can be found in this wonderful book.

Read also Modelling the Middle Ages or Understanding Consumption

Let Us Talk of Many Things: The Collected Speeches

Author: William F Buckley Jr

Let Us Talk of Many Things, first published in 2000, brings together Buckley’s finest speeches from throughout his career. Always deliciously provocative, they cover a vast range of topics: the end of the Cold War, manners in politics, the failure of the War on Drugs, the importance of winning the America’s Cup, and much else. Reissued with additional speeches, Let Us Talk of Many Things is the ideal gift for any serious conservative.

Library Journal

In his 74 years, Buckley has racked up a dazzling list of achievements: author of more than 30 novels and nonfiction works, founder of the National Review, host of the PBS series Firing Line, and syndicated columnist appearing in more than 300 newspapers. Add to that list well-paid public speaker for half a century. At his peak, Buckley delivered more than 70 lectures annually, and today he still gives about 20 lectures a year. Ninety-five speeches from his repertoire of 184 delivered between the 1950s and 1990s are reprised in this volume. For those well acquainted with Buckley's conservative views, there is little new to recommend this volume, except perhaps the brief introductory remarks that he has added before each speech. For true Buckley believers, however, any volume that bears his name is incentive enough. An optional purchase except for specialized collections in modern U.S. conservative thought and for libraries serving patrons hungry for more Buckley.--William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

The Weekly Standard - Charles R. Kesler

Buckley's speeches are superbly readable. Full of argument, wit, and occasionally drama, they provide lessons for aspiring orators and speechwriters.

What People Are Saying

Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson, Hoover Institution

Let Us Talk of Many Things is an astonishing book. Each speech is completely, compellingly, wonderfully readable--every single one of them.

George Will
George Will

Since young Buckley took Yale to task almost 50 years ago, he has been taking the English language out for invigorating romps. As a result, his collected speeches are a high-spirited tour through the great controversies that have shaped both politics and culture. If you doubt that, or wonder why it is that Bill Buckley is the most consequential journalist and most skillful controversialist of our time, this delightful volume is for you. It is also for any reader who relishes wit in the service of moral convictions.

Ed Koch
Ed Koch

Reading Bill Buckley's collected speeches, which cover the last half of the 20th century, is an exhilarating experience. The cogency of his arguments and his delivery are so extraordinarily persuasive that if this collection is as widely read as it should be, it will cause havoc in liberal salons. This is one of the few books devoted to the thoughts of one person that will be read from cover to cover.

Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite

The book is perfect for either the bathroom or a desert island-either for a quick fix or the one book for a lifetime of isolation.

Andrew Ferguson
Andrew Ferguson, The Weekly Standard

In one of the speeches collected here, Bill Buckley instructs a class of eighteen-year-olds on their paramount responsibility-to enjoy yourself as you go. There lies the key to Buckley's extraordinary career, which like this book spans a half century (and counting), from pre-Korea to post-Lewinsky. Whether as novelist, editor, prose stylist, or public speaker, he always makes clear the pleasure he derives from intellectual engagement. The pleasure is infectious, and anyone who reads this exhilarating book will catch it too.

Charles Colson
Bill Buckley, master wordsmith, takes us on an enchanting journey through the years. Wonderful wit and wisdom, given in eloquent prose.

John Kenneth Galbraith
William Buckley does indeed talk here of many things, with deft mention of the many cabbages and kings that he has addressed politically over these years. As ever, sheer delight from humor and prose, whatever the political faith.

George Nash
Readers of all persuasions will read this splendid anthology for sheer pleasure. Wise historians will study it as an invaluable guide to the intellectual life of our times.

Milton Friedman
A remarkable and moving record of a passionate life devoted to the cause of freedom-a record not by a third party or based on recollection, but embedded in a cornucopia of eloquent, speeches capturing the spirit of the time.

Elliot Abrams
This is Buckley at his eloquent best-his patented combination of icy wit with a deeply serious intellectual analysis. In these speeches-which include everything from Buckley's Class Day Remarks at Yale in 1950, to eulogies, debates and commencement addresses-there emerges the history of social change and political upheaval in this half century. But this is no languorous look back, no mellow memoir: These entries were written and spoken in the heat of battle, and they show it. Ignoring the maxim de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, Buckley skewers two generations of frauds, mountebanks, fellow travelers, and just plain liberals. But you can't read just one. In fact, I bet you can't resist reading entry after entry aloud just for the sheer fun of it.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments	xiii
	Foreword	xvi
	Notes from the Lecture Circuit: A New Yorker Essay	xxi
	The Fifties
	Today We Are Educated Men: An address to fellow graduates	3
	The Trojan Horse of American Education?: A defense of private schools	7
	The Artist as Aggressor: On congressional investigations	13
	Only Five Thousand Communists?: Welcoming the House Committee on Un-American Activities to town	16
	Should Liberalism Be Repudiated?: Debating James Wechsler	20
	The Sixties
	In the End, We Will Bury Him: Protesting Khrushchev's visit	33
	Scholar, Fighter, Westerner: Introducing Jacques Soustelle	38
	The Lonely Professor: Saluting O. Glenn Saxon	41
	An Island of Hope: Defending Taiwan's independence	42
	Norman Mailer and the American Right: A debate	48
	What Could We Learn from a Communist?: An appeal to the Yale Political Union	58
	Who Did Get Us into This Mess?: Debating Murray Kempton	68
	The Impending Defeat of Barry Goldwater: Off the record, to the Young Americans for Freedom	74
	A Growing Spirit of Resistance: To the New York Conservative Party	78
	The Free Society--What's That?: Applauding Henry Hazlitt	85
	Buckley versus Buckley: A self-interview, on running for mayor of New York	88
	The Heat of Mr. Truman's Kitchen: Celebrating National Review's tenth anniversary	93
	On Selling Books to Booksellers: Addressing the American Booksellers Association	96
	The Aimlessness of American Education: In defense of small colleges	100
	"You Have Seen Too Much in China": To a concerned organization	108
	The Duty of the Educated Catholic: To a high-school honors society	112
	Did You Kill Martin Luther King?: To the American Society of Newspaper Editors	117
	Life with a Meticulous Colleague: Saluting William A. Rusher	123
	On the Perspective of the Eighteen-Year-Old: To graduating high-school students	128
	Words to the Counterrevolutionary Young: Addressing the Young Americans for Freedom	133
	The Seventies
	On the Well-Tempered Spirit: A commencement address	145
	Resolutely on the Side of Yale's Survival: At a twentieth reunion	149
	The Republic's Duty to Repress: To a conference of judges	152
	"That Man I Trust": Appreciating James L. Buckley	163
	The World That Lenin Shaped: On visiting Brezhnev's Soviet Union	168
	John Kerry's America: To the cadets of West Point	179
	The West Berlin of China: Upon Taiwan's expulsion from the United Nations	184
	Affection, Guidance, and Peanut Brittle: A special toast	189
	On Preserving the Tokens of Hope and Truth: Saluting Henry Regnery	191
	Without Marx or Jesus?: To the American Society of Newspaper Editors	197
	The "Leftwardmost Viable Candidate": Debating John Kenneth Galbraith	202
	The Terrible Sadness of Spiro Agnew: To the New York Conservative Party	208
	The High Cost of Mr. Nixon's Deceptions: To the New York Conservative Party	211
	On Serving in the United Nations: Testimony to a Senate committee	213
	No Dogs in China: At the National War College	218
	The Courage of Friedrich Hayek: Addressing the Mont Pelerin Society	223
	The Protracted Struggle against Cancer: To the American Cancer Society	235
	A Salutary Impatience: A commencement address	238
	Cold Water on the Spirit of Liberty: Replying to President Carter	242
	The Reckless Generosity of John Chamberlain: A tribute	249
	A Party for Henry Kissinger: A birthday toast	252
	What Americanism Seeks to Be: To the Young Republicans	255
	The Eighties
	His Rhythms Were Not of This World: Remembering Allard Lowenstein	261
	The Rudolph Valentino of the Marketplace: Saluting Milton Friedman	263
	The Greatness of James Burnham: To a friend and mentor	268
	Halfway between Servility and Hostility: At a historic college	272
	Earl Warren and the Meaning of the Constitution: Addressing a class of future lawyers	275
	Sing a Song of Praise to Failure: At a graduate business school	277
	How Leo Cherne Spent Christmas: An introduction	287
	10 Downing Street: The Girls Club of Britain: A transatlantic salute	290
	Moral Distinctions and Modern Warfare: Parsing nuclear war	292
	Democracy and the Pursuit of Happiness: A commencement address	301
	The Genesis of Blackford Oakes: On the distinctively American male	308
	Waltzing at West 44th Street: An ode to the America's Cup	316
	The Blood of Our Fathers Ran Strong: Celebrating National Review's thirtieth anniversary	320
	The Distinguished Mr. Buckley: Introducing a best-selling novelist	322
	On Her Way to the Cross: Remembering Clare Boothe Luce	324
	Out of Oppression, a Political Poet: Introducing Vladimir Bukovsky	329
	The Massive Eminence of Dr. Sakharov: A salute	332
	Towards a Recovery of Gratitude: To the Intercollegiate Studies Institute	334
	A Hero of the Reagan Revolution: Applauding Jack Kemp	337
	The Pagan Love Song of Murray Kempton: An appreciation	339
	The Nineties
	Dismantling the Evil Empire: On the end of the Soviet Union	347
	The Simon Persona: A tribute to a critic	351
	A Distinctive Gentility: Recollections of Yale	353
	Time to Go to Bed: A valedictory	360
	Taxation and the Rule of Law: Analyzing Reaganomics	364
	Can Eastern Europe Be Saved?: To the Philadelphia Society	369
	Singularly Humane: Introducing Aileen Mehle	375
	"If He Gives the Blessing...": A toast to Monsignor Eugene Clark	378
	We Won. What Now?: At the end of the Cold War	380
	The Politics of the Common Man: On modern political manners	383
	"Better Redwoods than Deadwoods": Encountering Arthur Schlesinger Jr.	387
	The Architectural Splendor of Barry Goldwater: A tribute	389
	From Wm to Wm: Remembering William F. Rickenbacker	392
	O. J. Simpson and Other Ills: Analyzing current concerns	397
	The Drug War Is Not Working: To the New York City Bar Association	404
	Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: To the twelfth International Churchill Conference	409
	The Underperformance of the Press: The Theodore H. White Memorial Lecture	416
	The Mother Hen of Modern Conservatism: Introducing Lady Thatcher	426
	Who Cares If Homer Nodded?: To the graduating class	429
	How to Work, How to Read, How to Love: Remembering Richard Clurman	434
	A Serene Gravity: Acknowledging Walter Cronkite	435
	The Special Responsibility of Conservatives: To the International Conservative Congress	437
	The Personal Grace of J. K. Galbraith: A birthday tribute	443
	A Man Who Looks the Beggar in the Face: Saluting William E. Simon	445
	Forgiving the Unforgivable: On President Clinton's problem	447
	The Animating Indiscretions of Ronald Reagan: A birthday tribute	457
	Preserving the Heritage: On the Heritage Foundation's twenty-fifth anniversary	464
	Index	479