Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?

[Prefer]

Author James Kunstler says the Automotive Age is almost history and deconstructs McMansion living

The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, thinks there's a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era. Kunstler, 59, predicts a return to towns and cities centered around a retail hub—not unlike his hometown of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. But the shift to this new paradigm, he says, will be painful.

[Sequoia]

1. Where did you get those cute little eggs?

[Hydra]

2. It's expensive for me to commute

the problem is that I can't afford to live in the town I work at. I suspect most people will simply swallow the higher gas prices and cut the additional amount from somewhere else in their budget- maybe even food.

[DFW]

3. Much of Europe has kept to that very model

Public transportation is no longer cheap here, but with
gasoline at $8.50 a gallon, it is still more attractive
than driving in most cases. My kids either walked to school
or took buses when they still lived with us. The only people
who drove their kids to school did so because it was on the
way to work, there was a transportation strike, or because
they lived so far out in the boonies that there was no public
transportation where they were (very rare here in Central Europe).

EVERYbody here owns a bicycle, and even those who drive around
in a Mercedes use their bikes frequently.

[Speck Tater]

4. Link to original story ---

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_18/b4082056979063.htm

[depakid]

5. Interesting that it's in Business Week

[evlbstrd]

6. See this film, too.

The End of Suburbia
http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

I agree with Kunstler. I live in a city with tremendous suburban sprawl. My fellow citizens have voted down light rail time and again until, finally, last fall. Then, the city government decided the voters were too stupid to understand and tried to overturn it. The bus systems of the urban core and its suburbs barely acknowledge each others' existences.
I'm lucky enough to live just a few blocks from my place of employment, groceries, two library branches, the post office, etc. And I can catch a bus downtown when I need to.
I try really hard not to be smug when I hear my co-workers complain about the cost of commuting from the 'burbs, I really do. I used to commute just as far in the opposite direction. But I understand there will be wrenching changes for everyone as transportation and heating fuel costs continue to rise. The jobs aren't distributed where the people are.

[Robb]

15. I used to joke about Denver

For decades, Denver's solution to all traffic problems was to widen the roads and add a lane. Over and over and over again.

I used to say we'd know we were screwed on gas prices for good when they built light rail in Denver.

Guess what. :eyes:

[kestrel91316]

17. Well, but I think you will have to admit, they REALLY REALLY

did need to fix the mousetrap (going through it in the 70s and 80s was an ever-worsening mightmare).

[HughBeaumont]

19. I watched that recently . . .

Pretty eye-opening movie. It really brings to light how poorly designed and planned the suburb is. What it all comes down to, again, is lack of foresight and the big picture. It was built, really, on the idea that energy was always going to be cheap and available. The originators of suburbs probably never took into account what a metropolitain area that centers around driving and not walking/adequate public transportation does to an environment, nor did they figure that it would require almost eternal sustainability to survive. They never asked "well, what happens IF the oil runs out or IF electricity grids can't sustain this demand"?

Newer behemoth mansions that are patently unnecessary only add to all the problems outlined in this movie, in addition to the pollution caused by the necessity of cars to go everywhere.

[Liberal Gramma]

7. That's going to be painful, but in the end, maybe a good thing.

Another thread was talking about the high cost of living and how trapped we are by it. I think there is much to be gained by a return to neighborhoods, some economic and some cultural.

[lunatica]

8. Maybe I'm being really simplistic here but

Wouldn't it be easier to create more commercial centers in suburbs in a way that people can walk or ride their bikes there? How hard could that be? All those suburbs people can't move into the towns. There would be too much overcrowding.

With a little planning it would be quite feasible to create a 'town' every few miles by building a business center like the malls, only more groceries and dentists and services.

The part about living near your work is another matter, but with some real effort it can be addressed as more efficient public transportation. If I had a bus that came close to my house that I could take to go to work I wouldn't drive. As it is right now I have to drive just as far to get to a subway station as I do to go to work. I know that if there's a will there a way.

[JVS]

9. I think that's how it will actually work

[Speck Tater]

11. The population PER SQUARE MILE is not there to support that.

How many customers does it take to support a store of a given type? How many square miles of suburban sprawl does it take to supply that many customers. Do the math and you'll see that people would have to walk 3 to 4 miles to get to their closest "local" store.

It works in cities because people are stacked up several layers deep, not spread out one family per quarter acre.

[lunatica]

13. I frequent a little store near me all the time

It's located in a tiny little cluster of businesses like a dry cleaners with a working seamstress, some insurance and realtors, a veterinarian and a pizza place and a small video store (which is not doing so great since cable). They do just fine and expansion is possible. The little store could easily become much bigger if the need is there. Decent public transportation would go a long way towards keeping our cars parked so they would be used only for necessary trips.

[kestrel91316]

18. Here in Los Angeles, the city without a "heart", the mayor

has decided that there simply will be no further development/redevelopment more than a half mile from any mass transit. So this spread-out abomination of a city is starting to develop some "village centers" of a sort at major intersections and transit hubs.

We have the answer at hand if we care to open our eyes.

I live 12 minute's walk from one such hub, same from another, and my office is 10 minutes from a third. If gas gets too expensive, I become a "New Yorker", leave the car parked, and commute like anyone with any sense would.

[Warpy]

10. Suburbia will be served, somehow, because

that's where all the workers will live. Exurbia is out of luck, I'm afraid, except for the very rich and the agrarian.

It looks like the city centers will be enclaves of the wealthy with the poorer in concentric rings around them, the old urban paradigm. Only cheap oil provided a reversal of this for so long.

[Speck Tater]

12. "Suburbia will be served SOMEHOW"?

I seriously doubt that. The poor workers will live in inner city slums, like they did in the time of Dickens. "Somehow" just doesn't cut it. There will be no magic wands when the oil runs out.

[Warpy]

14. Rubbish. Inner city real estate is too pricey for the poor now

and it's getting pricier. By "somehow," I mean a patchwork of light rail, regular rail, buses, and even bike paths.

There will be no magic wands for the poor. They will be forced out of the convenience of the cities and into the two hour mass transit commute from the burbs.

You did know the poor in the suburbs now outnumber the poor in the inner cities, don't you?

Expect that trend to continue, not reverse, and for the reasons I have explained.

[high density]

20. Nuke power plants + electric rail

Works for me.

[KamaAina]

16. Did you know? DU has its own Public Transportation and Smart Growth group

which exists precisely to discuss these kinds of issues.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=398

[dysfunctional press]

21. electric cars.

nt