On his book Indoor America: The Interior Landscape of Postwar Suburbia
Cover Interview of January 09, 2019
Lastly
I hope Indoor America will speak to
a wide audience that is interested in different aspects of America’s urban and
cultural history. As the current state of U.S. cities makes evident, the
development of a self-sufficient interior landscape in the postwar years as the
setting of private and public life for most Americans (what we might call the
car-garage-house-office-mall complex) did not come without consequences. The
steady decline of public transportation, street life, and livable public places
that are not owned and run by private companies has contributed to exacerbating
and reproducing social inequalities. There is still too little attention paid
to architectural preservation, to safeguarding public places from private
interests, or to making cities into inclusive places whose spaces can be shared
by people from all backgrounds.
There are two directions one can look to
for improvement: backward and outward. Americans should be encouraged to look
outside their country for examples of sound urbanism that has fostered more
equal, inclusive and safe communities. To look backward, instead, is to learn
from history and turn it into a powerful tool to guide future decisions. Although
the book focuses on events that happened long ago and already had an impact on
the country’s landscape, future urban policies should be informed by a deeper
knowledge of the past and of the long-lasting effects of postwar urban visions.
I see this book as a story whose ending is
still to be written. There are contrasting views among sociologists and urban
analysts on whether suburbanization is still under way, or cities are making a
comeback with the gentrification of some central areas. However, little
progress would be made if places are still designed as defensive oases of privilege
and exclusion in the future. Separation and segregation only breed further separation
and segregation, ultimately bringing a city’s life to an end. I hope that
readers will get a sense of where and how things might have gone differently in
the past, and of how much can still be done to improve the state of America’s
urban life in the years to come.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Lastly
I hope Indoor America will speak to a wide audience that is interested in different aspects of America’s urban and cultural history. As the current state of U.S. cities makes evident, the development of a self-sufficient interior landscape in the postwar years as the setting of private and public life for most Americans (what we might call the car-garage-house-office-mall complex) did not come without consequences. The steady decline of public transportation, street life, and livable public places that are not owned and run by private companies has contributed to exacerbating and reproducing social inequalities. There is still too little attention paid to architectural preservation, to safeguarding public places from private interests, or to making cities into inclusive places whose spaces can be shared by people from all backgrounds.
There are two directions one can look to for improvement: backward and outward. Americans should be encouraged to look outside their country for examples of sound urbanism that has fostered more equal, inclusive and safe communities. To look backward, instead, is to learn from history and turn it into a powerful tool to guide future decisions. Although the book focuses on events that happened long ago and already had an impact on the country’s landscape, future urban policies should be informed by a deeper knowledge of the past and of the long-lasting effects of postwar urban visions.
I see this book as a story whose ending is still to be written. There are contrasting views among sociologists and urban analysts on whether suburbanization is still under way, or cities are making a comeback with the gentrification of some central areas. However, little progress would be made if places are still designed as defensive oases of privilege and exclusion in the future. Separation and segregation only breed further separation and segregation, ultimately bringing a city’s life to an end. I hope that readers will get a sense of where and how things might have gone differently in the past, and of how much can still be done to improve the state of America’s urban life in the years to come.