The End of the Suburbs?

Take a look at this response to Jim Kunstler's post about the coming end of "Peak Suburbia."

Kunstler is convinced that the end of the oil economy will mean the end of suburbia as we know it. To some extent I think he's right. The remorseless proliferation of retail space, for example, is seriously threatened by the web. Of course, there's another side to this: Chicago's population is shrinking because affluent gentrifiers consume more space. Perhaps the same is true in retail, though how that will be enough to sustain long-term expansion isn't clear. Here's where I think regulatory interventions designed to encourage the "recycling" of abandoned retail and residential space makes a lot of sense.

. . .

So what will the next American lanscape look like? I think Paul Krugman had came close in "White Collars Turn Blue," still one of my favorite magazine articles of all time.

But this proved to be a transitory phase. For one thing, high gasoline prices and the cost of environmental permits made a one-person, one-car commuting pattern impractical. Today the roads belong mainly to hordes of share-a-ride minivans, efficiently routed by a web of intercommunicating computers. However, although this semi-mass-transit system works better than 20th-century commuters could have imagined -- and employs more than 4 million drivers -- suburban door-to-door transportation still takes considerably longer than it did when ordinary commuters and shoppers could afford to drive their own cars. Moreover, the jobs that had temporarily flourished in the suburbs -- mainly relatively routine office work -- were precisely the jobs that were eliminated in vast numbers beginning in the mid-90s. Some white-collar jobs migrated to low-wage countries; others were taken over by computers. The jobs that could not be shipped abroad or handled by machines were those that required the human touch -- that required face-to-face interaction, or close physical proximity between people working directly with physical materials. In short, they were jobs best done in the middle of dense urban areas, areas served by what is still the most effective mass-transit system yet devised: the elevator.

Except I think this "share-a-ride" arrangements will work well in old suburbs retrofitted for 24-hour living. We'll see.

Getting the prices right will have cross-cutting effects. In some cases, this will mean making driving more expensive, a strike against suburbia. But it will also mean encouraging telecommuting and a decentralization of America's growing population, from dense inner suburbs to existing small cities and towns. That will be a strike against downtowns, which will have to diversify from hulking office towers devoid of families to flourishing 24-hour communities. Consider the added advantage is that 24-hour suburbs, with more and more adults working from home, will be better communities for children, with more eyes on the street.

Something to think about when you've had enough about the strengths and weaknesses of the School Board and the athletic director.