James Howard Kunstler on Atlanta Ga ("Does Edge City Have a Future?") There was, however, at the same time, a gathering recognition among the prospering classes that the development explosion of the past thirty-odd years around Atlanta had begun to produce [Diminishing Returns], as the geeks in econ might say, tending toward a decrease in the quality of life - to use the kind of euphemistic, understated, neutral language that was commonly employed to describe the fucking mess that even hardcore suburban growth cheerleaders, in their narcotic raptures of Consumer Ism and gourmet coffee, had begun to dimly apprehend... Culturally, though, the masses were not disposed to process this information rationally. It went against their current politics, their whole belief system, really, which boiled down to the notion that Atlanta was the ideal expression of democracy, free enterprise, and Christian destiny. There couldn't be anything wrong with the form of the city, the way it had crept over the landscape in a dynamic efflorescence of money, power, and personal freedom, like a pulsating slime mold.

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