A very big problem to challenge America today is how to create urban or suburban places that have meaning to people. As James Kunstler said in his TED Talks speech, America could be described as “the national automobile slum.” To accompany this, he shows pictures in his presentation of how very ugly is the American landscape. Kunstler says that America is full of places that “are not worth caring about” and make the people lose hope about the past, present, and future. In another TED Talks feature, Jeff Speck talks about the requirements to make cities and other places to be the “kind of place where people want to be” and he shows how this is good for people. In the example of the 24 Hour Fitness business, it is easy to see that this building is an ugly architectural disaster. There are many ways in which 24 Hour Fitness can be improved, but using the ideas of Kunstler and Speck about making it a place worth caring about and redesigning it as a walkable location are a start to bringing it toward the utopian ideal place.
According to James Kunstler, Americans gave up on the use of good civic design after World War II. However, to him, good civic design is the requirement for making places that people can care about. It is also necessary to help people to understand their culture and to feel hope about it. The 24 Hour Fitness business does not do this. It is a very plain building, even an ugly building. It is hard to imagine people of the future would look back to this building with happy feelings about the beauty of the architecture that America added to the world in the 20th or 21st century. If the sign could be removed, it would be impossible to know what kind of business this is. Without the 24 Hour Fitness sign, it could be a big electronics store, it could be a hospital, or it could be a clothing store. In a better, utopic version, this building would be clearly something about fitness and not just a big cement box. It would be a beautiful place. A place with meaning should be created to last for the ages, not for the small time on earth of people who want to make a profit. A utopic version could employ materials and settings that could last for centuries, but this building looks like it could last for only ten years before becoming old. Perhaps the whole concept of a fitness center as a lasting and permanent structure instead of a cheap constructed building would be a good way to start bringing 24 Hour Fitness to the ideal kind of place.
In addition to making the building of 24 Hour Fitness a better, more beautiful, and a more lasting place, according to Jeff Speck, the location would be better if it was “walkable.” This means that a person would not be required to have a car to be able to use this place. Unfortunately, from the picture it appears that 24 Hour Fitness can only be reached by car. It is isolated from other locations. It is very ironic that a place that is supposed to offer good physical health can only be reached by driving a car. In fact, in the utopian version, the 24 Hour Fitness would not show only paved parking spaces for cars, but also a bus stop, places for people to have bicycles, paths for people to walk, and show it is located in a place that is in the middle of where people live so that it is easy to reach. In fact, people may be able to have more time and money to spend on fitness if they do not have to spend a lot of time to drive there. A smaller and more local place would be ideal.
Speck and Kunstler know that a very important thing to the hearts and mind of people is that the places they live, work, and play are worth caring about and want to be. Sadly, the 24 Hour Fitness business is like a shoebox. It does not have beauty, it will not last for centuries, and it is a place you must have a car to go to. It is not healthy. It looks more like a plain factory designed to make many products and not like a place where people can become healthy and enjoy themselves. The giant size seems so impersonal. In the ideal, 24 Hour Fitness would be a beautiful, smaller, central location that even people with no car would want to go to every day.
Figure 1 24 Hour Fitness
Works Cited
Kunstler, James Howard. “The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs.” TED Talks, Feb. 2004. Web. <http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html>
Speck, Jeff. “The Walkable City.” TED Talks, Sep. 2013. Web. <http://www.ted.com/talks/
jeff_speck_the_walkable_city.html>
