… can be felt in small-town America. Just sit on a bench in downtown Round Lake Beach for a half-hour some evening… sit and watch.

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James Howard Kunstler calls suburban sprawl “the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known.” His arguments and examples make very clear the link between “places and spaces” with civic and cultural vitality.

This presentation by Mr. Kunstler is a great overview of the issues at the heart of this blog. The problems he describes are not just “out there”… on the East Coast, or California, or some decaying rust-belt city. Many of them are right here in Lake County IL and our own towns and villages.

We can deal with at least some of these challenges (and not all the fixes involve millions of $$$ of “urban renewal”), but first we must  actually understand the enormous economic and social impact these challenges present.