Oil prices poised to cripple suburbs?

Aaron Newton of Powering Down sounds off on the suburbia-oil nexus:

There is little doubt that during that last 60 years we here in America have transformed our manmade landscape in a way that is fundamentally different from any form of human habitation ever known. While many have flocked to this new way of organizing the spaces in which we live, critics have noticed the shortcomings and have loudly pointed them out. It’s been suggested that the development of the suburbs here in the U.S. was a really bad idea. Author James Kunstler describes suburbia as, “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” The ability of most citizens to own and cheaply operate an automobile means we’ve had access to a level of mobility never before experienced. The outgrowth of which has been a sprawling pattern of living that changed the rules about how and where we live, work, and play and how we get there and back. We are now more spread out than ever before, mostly getting back and forth from one place to another by driving alone in our cars.

This could turn out to be a really bad thing. As the cost of fueling those cars increases, it’s becoming obvious we’ve foolishly put too many of our eggs into one basket.

Sticking it to the suburbs is one of my favorite pastimes, but there has to be some type of acceptance that they exist and are in trouble. As Newton alludes to, the problem is that suburban life is exclusively dependent on the petro-automobile. Thus paying $4.00 per gallon of gas is a tax simply to function in that lifestyle. Therefore, the question is how to wane them off of their petroleum addiction.

A lot of people who live in cities self-impose this problem upon themselves, but if they absolutely couldn’t use their car tomorrow, they’d be OK. That’s because most cities have elaborate mass transit, sidewalks on both sides of every street, bike lanes, and commerce within walking distance.

Taking public transit, walking, or biking is practically impossible for most people living in the suburbs. You can’t go shopping for a family of four on your bike when the store is 6 miles away. Moreover, suburban life is about living there and working somewhere else. Everyone commutes to work, usually at distances of around 50 miles per day. That’s a sad reality, a direct result on an egregious abdication of responsible urban planning, but it’s the way it is.

Adding mass transit or sidewalks, in my judgement, won’t do much to aid surbanites. Unlike urbanities, they are simply too spread out and have too many origins and destinations to effectively replace their cars with a bus or rail system.

Another aspect of this problem, which I have experieced firsthand, is that alternative forms of transit are scorned in the suburbs. ‘The bus?’

Again, the problem with the suburbs is how to get them to off their prodigious — and financially destructive — addiction to petroleum, not necessarily the automobile itself.

This leads me to the electric car. I’m sure you’ve all seen “Who Killed the Electric Car?” As such, there’s no need to reboot their arguments except to say that consumers did play some role in its death. With suburban America in transit trouble over petroleum prices, wouldn’t it seem reasonable that they are beginning to look for alternatives? The electric car is the one that is the furthest along and doesn’t require changes to our infrastructure.

As a footnote, considering the anti-irregular psyche of the typical suburbanite, I would suggest not making the car look like its electric.

You may be a college graduate; you are definitely a typical inexperienced youth and dumb bastard who delights in the sound of his own voice and own hands on a keyboard. You are also an America hater. Obama, and his pied piped ilk, are enemies within this country. Credit your way, however, for your thoughts on suburbia; you are dead on correct.