Elementary school playground named ‘eyesore’

By DAVID MARTIN

Joining an addition to the Akron Art Museum and a 10-story tower in a suburban Des Moines office park, an elementary-school playground in Lawrence has been named “Eyesore of the Month.”

“Eyesore” is a regular feature on the blog of James Howard Kunstler, a writer who sees tragedy in the highway strips, McMansions and megamalls that surround us. Kunstler is the author of The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency, a 2005 book that predicted the housing bubble would produce impressive “economic wreckage.” (Kunstler 1, Greenspan 0.)

“Eyesore of the Month” provides photos of brief descriptions of various architectural atrocities. In June, Kunstler shared images of a playground at Broken Arrow Elementary School with his readers. Kunstler called the stark playground a “prison exercise-yard-in-training.”