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Could high oil prices shut down suburbia? Date published: 3/17/2008
ASTRONOMICAL oil prices are If any good comes from the fossil-fuel crunch, it will appear in increased energy efficiency and a new appreciation of city-centric life. Assuming the economy continues down its current path and oil prices stay elevated, many of the amenities of modern life will become elusive. Suburban-living models could fail, leading to a new golden age for America's cities and towns. On its face, suburban development has some appeal, but its foundations become shaky in tight financial times. Based on excessive square footage, short home life cycles, and cheap transportation, subdivision development not only renders swaths of land unproductive, it leaves homeowners out on a limb when basic commodity prices rise. City life offers many advantages over suburban living, not all linked to transportation. Cities provide a more efficient use of space, and dwellings are usually more compact and manageable than their suburban counterparts. In turn, the suburban landscape could be reforested or let revert to farmland. Economists have long tried to compare the cost of living in the city versus the 'burbs. Answers usually come down to individual needs and preferences, but even in 1987, a New York Times study concluded that city living is equal to or more affordable than suburban living. Of course, some suburban areas have developed to the point where they are pseudo-towns themselves, with jobs and commercial and industrial development near at hand. Our area is not so fortunate. The potential collapse of the suburban lifestyle is becoming a popular topic. The Atlantic magazine ran a piece on a future when McMansions become next-generation slums, and social critics such as James Howard Kunstler have been deriding our nation's investment in bedroom communities, highways, and byways as shortsighted and risky. Apocalyptic visions are unlikely to materialize, but the reasons for skepticism are solid: Suburban living requires a certain type of economic climate whose constancy is not guaranteed. It doesn't take a weatherman to tell that the winds are shifting. Current trends in real-estate taxes, fuel prices, and home values may swing the pendulum away from bedroom-community living. In much the same way urban decay and crime pushed people out of cities in the '60s and '70s, high commodity prices could force people back into those same areas. If there is an exodus from suburbia, cities like Fredericksburg need to be ready, willing, and able to once again become the thriving and vibrant hearts of restored communities.
The main problem is that a lot of people want a house with a yard for the kids and/or pets and a two car garage. In the days of cheap energy, more people could afford this if they moved out to the "exurbs". Convincing these same people that they need to be happy with the two or three bedroom condo they can afford in the city will be quite difficult. Also, couples often have jobs in different areas and finding a place to live that is close to both can be difficult.
...that claim living in the city is as or more affordable than living in the 'burbs. You can't get a decent place to live in DC for under $600K, or is the NY Times expecting the suburban dwellers to move to the city ghettos, where it is more affordable to live? Most of us suburbanites would find what we would consider decent living accomodations totally out of reach in the city. Also, bring on that sky-high crime rate! That's just what we want in a place to live!
Shouldn't it slow the unrestrained sprawling over development of homogeneous soulless, sterile McMansion farms connected by the automobile necessitating faceless strip malls and big box stores?
Agree. What will be "killed" is SOLO driving in an SUV to/from work - every day.
Many more folks will start doing what other folks have been doing for years ad years and that is carpooling, van/buses and VRE.
We'll end up like the rest of the world has been for a long time. Gasoline in the Netherlands PRIOR to the last run-up in prices was $6.50 a gallon. For a country that is the biggest consumer of energy per capita in the world, we sure are a bunch of crybabies...
The growth of cities is driven by people moving out of the city. Example? Manhattan/Tokyo grew as train lines were built to deliver people to housing outside and jobs inside the cities. Both now are completely urban. Cities grow and they encompass early suburbs and the suburban "frontier" edges further out. So Arlington once was a suburban frontier. Now it is very urban. Sure fuel costs will cause some change. But it won't kill suburbs. Trains and buses will replace cars and life will go on.
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