Those planning Severance's future should read book by Kunstler

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To the Editor:

The people involved with planning the future of Severance Center might want to read The Geography of Nowhere: the Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, by James Howard Kunstler.

To quote from the back of the paperback: the book ”traces America’s evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where every place is like no place in particular, where the cities are dead zones and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots.”

In the last chapter, “Better Places,” the author offers hope for a more people-oriented space, “based consciously on deep human emotional and psychological needs: the need for greenery, sunlight, places to be with other people, places to be alone, places for the young and old to mix, for excitement, and so on." And, I might add, places to walk to shopping. Examples are: Boston, Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Center City Philadelphia, and Seaside, Fla.