Egotopiaexplains why individual political and economic interestshave eclipsed aesthetic considerations in the rampant billboards, malls,and urban sprawl of the New American Landscape.Egotopiabegins where other critiques of the American landscape end:identifying the physical ugliness that defines and homogenizes America'scities, suburbs, and countryside. Believing that prevailing assessmentsof the American landscape are inadequate and injudicious, John Miller callsinto question the conventional wisdom of environmentalists, urban planners,and architects alike. In this precedent-shattering examination of whathe sees as the ugliness that is the American consumer society, Miller contendsthat our aesthetic condition can be fully understood only by explorersof the metaphoric environment.Metaphorically, the ugliness of America's great suburban sprawl is thephysical manifestation of our increasing narcissism- our egotopia. Theubiquity of psychotherapy as a medium promoting self-indulgence has deifiedprivate man as it has demonized public man. The New American Landscape,Miller argues, is no longer the physical manifestation of public and communalvalues. Instead it has become a projection of private fantasies and narcissisticself-indulgence. Individual interests and private passions can no longertolerate, nor even recognize, aesthetic concerns in such a landscape dedicatedto uncompromising notions of utility.**