Book Review: World Made by Hand (2008)
Tags: Book Review, kitchen table sustainability, localism, unplugging, urban design
Unique among planning literature reviewed so far in the Planning Pool, World Made by Hand is a fictional novel. Its author, James Howard Kunstler is best known for his non-fiction books like The Geography of Nowhere. Here he describes the workings of fragmented social groups deep in the “long emergency“, in and around the small town of Union Grove, New York.
“Small is beautiful” is one of the many planning lessons that Kunstler has woven into his story. Despite enduring hardships, Union Grove proves more resilient than larger cities like Albany, which has degenerated into a lawless dystopia. Likewise, only human-scale and efficient infrastructure like the town’s early twentieth century gravity-powered water system can be maintained with the limited resources of post-oil, post-globalism America.
A second planning lesson deals with urban form. The narrator describes with relish the ruin that has befallen poorly-constructed, unwalkable exurban landscapes in the absence of cheap oil. The local Kmart is a stripped ruin. Families living along the crumbling highway suffer abject poverty and social isolation.
Because civilization has collapsed rapidly, shattered by terrorist bombs and influenza, the townsfolk of Union Grove are able to remember the “old days” of plenty. While they miss cold beer and modern medicine, several characters also reflect on increased meaning in their lives since circumstances forced them to live more simply. They experience the return of peace, quiet, and something like magic. (In a possibly related development, the people of the future smoke plenty of marijuana, which grows wild in the absence of government regulation.)
A disturbing counterpart to the book’s optimism about simplicity is its portrayal of social organization within Union Grove. Our narrator and hero, Robert Ehrlich, is an influential pillar of his community. More broadly, power in Union Grove is held exclusively by male landowners like Robert and his peers. The book’s few female characters are flat, uninteresting and of questionable intelligence.
The following passage describes the town’s governance:
“All the trustees were men, no women and no plain labourers. As the world changed, we reverted to social divisions that we’d thought were obsolete. The egalitarian pretenses of the high-octane decades had dissolved and nobody even debated it any-more, including the women of our town.“ (p. 101, first edition)
Should the subservience of labourers and women among the “free” people of the town be read as some kind of implied natural order in the absence of “egalitarian pretenses”? Race, at least, is a subject on which the book manages to be mostly silent, since the population of Union Grove is entirely white.
Despite disturbing overtones and flawed characters, World Made by Hand is worth reading for its thought-provoking portrayal of a possible future. It humanizes issues that preoccupy planners, like peak oil and urban form and makes them accessible, provoking consideration of mitigation and adaptation strategies.
You can also catch James Howard Kunstler’s colourful and curmudgeonly wit and insights on his weekly podcast about the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl.
