Canada’s CBC Offers Provocative Documentary

I’ve been watching an interesting documentary this evening on CBC titled Radiant City, which examines daily family and social life in the North American suburb …. life from the perspective of sustainability in an era of peak oil, social alienation and social conformity.

It struck me halfway through the documentary that the host / narrator is James Howard Kunstler, author of the book The Long Emergency and the blog Clusterfuck Nation (I recognized him in the documentary from the picture on his blog 😉

The documentary also features commentary by Joseph Heath, one of the co-authors of the book Rebel Sell – why the culture can’t be jammed.

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RADIANT CITY
Sunday April 6 at 10pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld

Genie Award-winning Radiant City offers an entertaining look at life in suburbia.

While Evan Moss zones out in commuter traffic, Ann toils away in her dream kitchen and the kids play sinister games amidst the fresh foundations of monster houses. Developers call it big business, but the Moss family call it home.

Welcome to the neighbourhood and welcome to Radiant City – an entertaining and startling look at 21st century suburbanites and suburban sprawl.

Venturing into territory both familiar and foreign, Radiant City is a vivid account of life in The Late Suburban Age, where urban sprawl is eating up the planet. Across the continent the landscape is being levelled and blasted clean of distinctive features.

An array of cultural prophets provide insight on the spectacle that is suburbia: author James Howard Kunstler speaks out against the brutalizing aesthetic of strip malls, philosopher Joseph Heath fears the soul-eating "burbs", although admits they offer good value for money, and urban planner Beverly Sandalack dares to ask, "why can’t we walk anywhere anymore?"

Through a variety of cultural references, from Jane Jacobs to The Sopranos, Radiant City creates a provocative reflection on why we live the way we do. The theatrical version of the film recently won a Genie for Best Canadian Documentary.

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