I think it's telling that you choose to ridicule his taste rather than engage the arguments that he set forth.

I thought his ridicule was in bad taste. I admit, anti-growth arguments don't much interest me, and I write about what does.

But I'm in an unselfish mood and I see you like the word "faggot." So does Mr. Kunstler!

http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200311.html

This exercise in hyper-entropic avant garde faggotry is so cutting edge that it is already out of date.

As are his sentiments about the display of the American flag:

I have a theory about the promiscuous deployment of Old Glory all around the tilt-up utopia of Parking Lot Nation. A flag is a sort of supernatural totem, meant to protect the bearer against animadversion and harm. We're trying to distract ourselves from the spectacle of ugliness and banality that we've created, and protect our sensibilities against the suspicion that we have become a land of wicked, self-destructive slobs.
Happy Independence Day.

You're right. I'd rather not engage such "arguments."

Why would you want to engage this James Howard Kunstler, when it is so much more fun to ridicule him!

In the section you've excerpted, this Kunstler comes off as a miserable little pile o' compost who has zilch sense of history. Not my idea of a pleasant dinnertime companion.

Plus, based on years of experience, I've decided that anyone other than a physicist who uses the word "entropy" is an idiot poseur trying to fake being intellectual. And failing. I bet this Kunstler dresses in all black. Because he's sophisticated!

PS: This Kunstler may wretch - his wretching threshold must be low - but I love my tan house in the suburbs. "Monkeyshit brown," he calls it. That is just so witty! Of course, I do not have any ape excrement handy to compare color swatches to my exterior, so I haven't a clue as to the precise shade he's referencing. Yes, the garage faces the street, but that's because tht way it's easier to get into and out of. The builder tried having the garages open to the roof, but the houses didn't sell. There's not enough commuting by helicopter.

Well, here in Tokyo, we have the world's most jizzed-over commuter rail system, vertiginous fees for gas and parking spaces, a population density that would make Juliette Beck swoon, and lots of, uh, "cooperation" between the government and the construction industry to make sure everything's done for the "public benefit."

And the place is still so eye-assaultingly ugly that buildings of mere drab anonymity are lavished with affection.

I have a lot of problems with today's McMansions, mostly related to their ugliness, but primarily because they exemplify bad design. There are a large number of people who buy these homes and then literally find them unliveable, whether it's bad construction or just bad function.

However.

Therer are large numbers of people who *like* these houses, so obviously, there's something to them. So my major problem is not the houses themselves but the competing developers who, for some reason, manage to make these areas actively dangerous to pedestrians and make it literally impossible to get around town without a car— a big issue in a state where registering a car is often a yearly four-figure event. (I am speaking of my current city-of-residence; YMMV.)

I am not against sprawl per se; my major problem with the local idiocy is a little matter of either a) putting developments on prime farmland, rather than moving five miles over to rocky ground; or b) building on floodplains and requiring governmentally-guaranteed flood insurance. Grr. But sprawl sounds nastier than it really is; even in the hyper-developed Bay Area it is possible to get to wilderness in half an hour (okay, given traffic, triple that number.)

I can almost hear Graham Chapman's voice: "Eewh, I'm off to play the grahnd piahno. Pahdon me while I fly my aeroplane and look down on our high-entropy socahhty..."

Well, actually leaving aside all the politico-socio-BS... it is not an especially attractive house. The one farther down the street and slightly out of focus is a great deal more aesthetically appealing.
It hard to tell from the angle, but it looks to me like it is actually the side of the house--- the actual front it it may be an improvement. And it sits on a slope, so it may very well have a nice view from that side.
That said, I live in a little white-painted 20-year old tract house,with a garage at the front... I'd rather have a quaint Craftsman-era bungalow, or a cottage in the Napa wine country, but I work for a living, and the white tract house is what I can afford.

A flag is a sort of supernatural totem, meant to protect the bearer against animadversion and harm. We're trying to distract ourselves from the ugliness and banality that we've created, and protect our sensibilities against the suspicion that we have become a land of wicked, self-destructive slobs.

I suppose it goes without saying that by "we", he really means "you".