A number of recent American writings indicate that the nostalgia for the small town need not be construed as directed toward the town itself: it is rather a "quest for community" (as Robert Nisbet puts it)--a nostalgia for a compassable and integral living unit. The critical question is not whether the small town can be rehabilitated in the image of its earlier strength and growth--for clearly it cannot--but whether American life will be able to evolve any other integral community to replace it. This is what I call the problem of place in America, and unless it is somehow resolved, American life will become more jangled and fragmented than it is, and American personality will continue to be unquiet and unfulfilled

Max Lerner

America as a Civilization

1957

To Judith and our children Jennie, Maren, and Carl

The ensuing years have confirmed Lerner's diagnosis.

If there is one message I wish to leave with those who despair of suburbia's lifeless streets, of the plastic places along our "strips," or of the congested and inhospitable mess that is "downtown," it is: It doesn't have to be like this!