Our Old Utopia- Suburbia will die when oil rises enough

[drbubb]

New Urbanism

 

"Giving more people more choices about how and where they want to live, while providing the solutions to global warming, climate change, and peak oil"

 

http://www.NewUrbanism.org

...was started in 1998, and has since grown to become a leading and well respected informational website promoting good urbanism, smart transportation, transit oriented development, and sustainability. NewUrbanism.org is independently owned and operated and has no connection to any other organization, corporation, or public entity.

 

TRAINS:

A new train system promotes many different goals for improving society. Trains are the most effective way to encourage smart growth, urban revitalization, and the creation of livable, walkable communities. They are a sustainable form of transportation that strengthens and stabilizes our economy, can help break our dependence on foreign oil, and stem the transfer of our countries’ wealth to the increasingly unstable Middle East. A high quality train system is a long-term, community-building investment that benefits many. It is the smart transportation solution for our society today, and well into the future. High-speed trains are a major form of daily transportation all across Europe, many of them making a profit for their operators, while providing safe, moderately priced transportation for the public

 

- -

 

I am tempted to make a list of ideal things to have in one's immediate environment,

and see how many exist in suburbia.

 

i may start this list here, and ask others to add to it

 

Those with *-are common in suburbia

 

Ideal

====

Rich and varied street live

Unique restaurants with character

Efficient public transport

Unspoiled nature

 

Sub-optimal

========

Parking lots*

Chain restaurants*

 

Ugly-Unpleasant

===========

Anonymous highways*

 

- -

 

3/

New urbanism is an urban design movement whose popularity increased from the beginning of the 1980s onwards. The goal of new urbanists is to reform all aspects of real estate development and urban planning. These include everything from urban retrofits, to suburban infill. The movement is particularly associated with the USA, with its "rediscovery" of urban patterns, which have had greater continuity in Europe.

 

 

Market Street, downtown Celebration, FloridaThere are some common elements of new urbanist design. New urbanist neighborhoods are walkable, and are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs. New urbanists support regional planning for open space, appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. They believe these strategies are the best way to reduce the time people spend in traffic, to increase the supply of affordable housing, and to rein in urban sprawl. Many other issues, such as historic preservation, safe streets, green building, and the renovation of brownfield land are also covered in the Charter of the New Urbanism, the movement's seminal document. Because new urbanist designs include many of the features (like mixed use and emphasis on walkability) which characterized urban areas in the pre-automobile age, the movement is sometimes known as Traditional neighborhood design. Another named variation, emphasising the lack of car traffic is New Pedestrianism.

 

@: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_urbanism

[drbubb]

MICHAEL ARTH and New Pedestrianism

==========

 

In 1999, Michael Arth founded a more pedestrian-and-ecology-oriented version of New Urbanism called New Pedestrianism.

 

His new approach calls for very compact new towns and neighborhoods where tree-shaded, pedestrian and bike lanes are in front of all residences and businesses, with tree-lined automobile streets at the rear. While this idea is not entirely original (examples of rear loading garages with front sidewalks that replace streets were built in Naples, California, as early as 1910), his fervent emphasis on this as a panacea is somewhat unusual. Arth claims that living in what he calls a "Pedestrian Village", coupled with a compact, mixed-use neighborhood or village center, will ameliorate a wide range of problems related to urban living. Having such a development built near a downtown area reduces the amount of travel time that would normally be spent in an automobile, thus increasing the physical activity of the homeowner and decreasing dollars spent on car maintenance and fuel. In more densely built new towns or developments, he claims that this new form of housing would greatly reduce the dependency on the automobile and the resulting village-like towns would vastly increase both aesthetics and quality of life.

 

2/

Arth found a small slum in DeLand, Florida, where he could try out some of his ideas. Subsequently, he purchased thirty dilapidated homes and businesses, which he restored over a six-year period. Running out the drug dealers and rebuilding the downtown neighborhood won him the support of the community and a number of awards. He changed the name of "Crack Town" to Downtown DeLand's Historic Garden District. Arth enhanced the existing infrastructure by planting trees and by building pedestrian lanes, gardens, courtyards, and bike facilities in the district

 

@: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Arth

[frizzers]

Very interesting interview with the unfortunately named JH Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, which touches on this very subject. Well worth a listen.

 

Also you can hear part 1 of Dr. Ron Paul's End of Dollar Hegemony speech.

 

http://www.radio.goldseek.com/

[drbubb]

(as posted on a HPC thread)

 

... if people are going to be trapped by negative equity, then these gentrifying professionals wont be going anywhere anytime soon, right?

 

Wrong.

They may lose their jobs, or have to take lower-paying jobs.

 

In such circumstance, budgets will be tight, and the gentrifying will stop, perhaps abruptly.

 

How do you think house got into a rundown condition in the first place?

They were once owned by people who had the money to buy them, were proud of their homes, and looked after them.

...then a recession hit...

 

"Slummy Suburbs"- a possibility??

 

I see a future where oil prices shoot up, and the real slums are in the suburbs.

People who work, and can afford to move, will move to someplace with better transport links, so they dont need to spend a fortune on commuting to work. Those not working, will gravitate to the suburbs, because they will find rents cheaper, and the daily (expensive) commute will not be needed- exceptt to get handouts. Governments may find it preferrable to offer handouts: like food, clothing, healthcare in certain suburbs, rather than having the poor people blight the cities, which the poor may have trouble affording.

 

Those slummy suburbs of the future will look very different from the middle class areas of today.

 

(I hasten to point out that not all suburbs will become slummy. A few may become gated enclaves of the rich- but fewer than you ight think today. And peopel will be thinking differently about transport by car.)

[Rikk03]

So basically what we are saying is that city living will be cheaper / more cost effective in the future than living in the suburbs. The suburbs will die a slow painful death with esculating fuel costs people will choose to live in the cities; the result will be falling house prices in suburban areas.

 

Just one possibility of course ..... what could save us all is green fuel powered cars ..... high tax on non green cars, and abundance of buses in suburban areas.

 

You could of course look even further into the future, - lack of global strategy to combat pollution results in a climatic meltdown - irreversable atmosphere loss resulting in the Earth being bombarded by cosmic rays and evaporation of our water into space.

 

Only way to survive is to live in city domes like in "Total Recall" - the Mars experience. On the up side - at least the city air you breath will be clean - air filtered.

 

You gotta be positive in life ........ hopefully by the time we run out of water we will have built a space craft fast enough to reach Earth II, and will have build mining ships to mine the huge quantities of H3 from the moon - keep the lights working for a while.

 

But hay - at least the lucky few rich people will survive to continue on with the human race on Earth II! Cheer them on - have a kid for me mate, what am I saying, - I'll provide the expedition with a sperm sample ..... or better yet, my DNA fully mapped out!

 

SOrry for the ramble ....... im tired.

 

Oh and ive watched one too many oblivion type movies.

 

Greenhouse effect / Global warming -> Sea levels rise -> Golf stream fails -> Ice age (weight of the ice will cause mega earth quakes and volcanic eruptions).

 

Oh and dont forget the astroids, and the Super volcano waiting to erupt under Yellow stone national park.

 

And the fact that the magnetic poles are over due to flip - (they do so every 10,000 years or so) wiping out civilizations (I know the film "The Core" is a joke, but it gives u the general idea).

 

Oh ....... and the best for last .......

 

ALL carbon has a half life - slowly decays. And guess what - we are carbon based Lifeforms. So yes - we have a half life too just like plutonium eventually just as its mass will be nothing ....... so will we!

 

OH ...... the positive bit again ...... if we could some how re-engineer human DNA to work on Silicon rather than carbon - then we would be half life free.

 

We are going to have to come to terms with genetic engineering humans at some point - bring on cloning i say!

 

Heres another prediction ....... Planet Christianity, Planet Islam, Planet Black, Planet WHite, Planet Blue, Planet Engineered....... nice recipe for intergalactic war!!

 

Yawn - good night.

[drbubb]

So basically what we are saying is that city living will be cheaper / more cost effective in the future than living in the suburbs. The suburbs will die a slow painful death with esculating fuel costs people will choose to live in the cities; the result will be falling house prices in suburban areas.

 

 

Of course, people would adjust. So new cities would grow up around transport hubs, and those former suburbs that are connected by rail would thrive, while those that lack the links would fade.

 

Rails are expensive to build, especially in built-up areas, so a limited number of suburbs would get the links.

 

Personally, I like the idea of not owning a car, or usiing it only infrequently, and walking or cycling to a rail link.

 

Cars are destroyers of environment, and i detest parking lots

[drbubb]

(Kunstler reviews a book called "Sprawl" by Bruegmann ):

EXCERPT: on the Failure of suburbia:

 

Despite his boatloads of statistics, Bruegmann is just flat-out wrong in many of his positions and virtually all of his conclusions. At the center of his thesis is the unquestioned assumption that the suburban project can continue indefinitely, that it is a good thing, that we will get more of it, and we ought to stop carping and enjoy it. His book fails entirely to acknowledge the fact that we are entering a permanent global energy crisis that will put an end to the drive-in utopia whether people like it or not

. . .

. ..

 

What Bruegmann leaves out of the picture is the same thing that the mandarins of American municipal planning have left out for half a century: any consideration of quality and character of place, and the means for achieving it. This is evinced most dramatically in the issue of the public realm, the part of our everyday world that belongs to everybody and that everyone ought to have access to most of the time. In postwar America, the public realm was trashed, relegated purely to the needs of the automobile until America became a nearly uniform automobile slum from sea to shining sea. It didn’t even matter whether you were in a rich place or a poor place anymore – the parking lots of Beverly Hills weren’t any more rewarding to the human spirit than the parking lots of Hackensack. More to the point perhaps, the very methods of the municipal planners, which produced the ghastly sprawl environments of our time, are based on exactly the same kind of statistical methods employed by Bruegmann, instead of the one thing that might have mitigated or constrained the mess, namely artistry in design.

 

The public realm has two crucial roles in our collective existence. First, it is the physical manifestation of the common good. Second, is literally the dwelling place of civic life. And so if you fail to design the public realm with deliberate artistry, and by so doing degrade and dishonor the public realm by turning it into a uniform automobile slum simply to accommodate x-number of cars, you will automatically degrade the quality of civic life and the public’s collective ability to conceive of a common good beyond incessant motoring.

 

@: http://www.kunstler.com/Mags_Bruegmann.html

 

= = =

 

JUST DISCOVERED this wonderful new website, with some great podcasts:

 

Post-Car Culture :: http://postcarculture.libsyn.com/rss

[drbubb]

NEW URBANISTS TO THE RESCUE

 

The New Urbanists came on the scene just as the final exuberant phase of the cheap oil fiesta was getting underway -- meaning the climactic phase of American suburban expansion. They positioned themselves as a minority opposition to the "conventional" developers who utterly dominated the landscape. The things that were built under the New Urbanist name represented probably less than two percent of everything built since 1990. The work they did occurred as a valiant swimming against the tide -- or, more specifically, against a huge blast of reeking, toxic entropy.

 

The final blowout of cheap oil is now ending, and the suburban juggernaut is entering its death throes. It wasn't slain by the New Urbanists, but they will be the last ones standing -- just as the little warm-blooded mammals were the last creatures standing when the dinosaurs expired in the warm Cretaceous mud. The focus of their work will certainly have to change. There will be no more suburban subdivisions (or the accessories and furnishings of them -- the strip malls, Big Box pods, and fried-food out-parcels), and the TND will emerge not as a counterpoint to all that crap, but as the template for a redefined type of village or town scaled to the new realities of available energy.

 

We will be inhabiting the terrain differently from now on. Whatever intact farmland remains will have to be reserved for feeding ourselves, and the "countryside" that has been regarded as having only scenic or recreational value for so many decades, will have to be both productive and carefully tended by human hands. Our big cities will certainly shrink, contract, and the fortunate ones will redevelop and re-densify at their old cores and around their waterfronts. The part of Philadelphia that we were in last weekend may be about as big as a sustainable city can get -- minus the skyscrapers, which, alas, will be obsolete.

 

The demographic shift to come will be a shocking reversal of what has been going on since the start of the industrial revolution. The small towns and small cities of America -- the places that have moldered in desolation and squalor for decades -- will be coming back to life, surrounded by an agricultural landscape shaped by human attention.

 

What we'll need in this process will be the most valuable things that the New Urbanists recovered along the way: the knowledge required to create a human dwelling place with a future. That was really the extent of their ambitions all along. But it was too straightforward for a twisted culture to understand. In a few years, even the mental defectives and the professional jive-narcissists will understand where we've been and where we are going

 

...more: http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary21.html

[Sir Humphrey]

Just a practical thought: if oil-dependent suburbs began to die, it would be fairly simple matter to demolish strips of surplus housing/malls for railways or interurban tramways.

[drbubb]

Just a practical thought: if oil-dependent suburbs began to die, it would be fairly simple matter to demolish strips of surplus housing/malls for railways or interurban tramways.

 

YES. Possibly.

But where do you put the tracks?

 

BTW, anything near a station should go way up in value, so homeowners may want those links in future,

but only after property values have first collapsed

[Sir Humphrey]

YES. Possibly.

But where do you put the tracks?

 

BTW, anything near a station should go way up in value, so homeowners may want those links in future,

but only after property values have first collapsed

 

I more thought of completely new rail links, rather than widening existing ones. At the moment they have to be underground which is very expensive. In future, they could be conventional overground railways (with maybe Paris RER style connecting tunnels in the city centre - there would be plenty of cheap labour to build them). This could be done, Liverpool did something not a million miles away from this in the 1970s (when municipal socialists were in charge rather than Trotskyite nutters).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merseyrail

 

If property values have collapsed, an above (depressed) market value compulsory purchase order would presumably be desirable for homeowners. They would be rehoused in nearby housing stock, which would then increase in value once the rail link was complete. You'd have to be stupid or very sentimental to turn down such an offer IMHO.

 

EDIT: I am assuming that the afflicted areas would be partly depopulated - as was/is a lot of Merseyside.

 

EDIT2: You only have to look at the Canary Wharf area to see the development that can be sustained with a proper (heavy) rail link. Development (admitted IMO nasty, postmodern and tacky development) has mushroomed since the Jubilee Line arrived there.

[No6]

YES. Possibly.

But where do you put the tracks?

 

BTW, anything near a station should go way up in value, so homeowners may want those links in future,

but only after property values have first collapsed

It does say a lot about life today that homes near a station would go up in value. I'd be thinking of all the noise as they mention the inflated asking price and would probably think no, not for me. You wouldn't want to live too close to a line.

[drbubb]

It does say a lot about life today that homes near a station would go up in value. I'd be thinking of all the noise as they mention the inflated asking price and would probably think no, not for me. You wouldn't want to live too close to a line.

 

In Hong Kong, the MTR builds rail-lines to once remote areas, and gets land in the area for doing so.

 

They then profit, by forming JV's with developers to put up highrise properties, which they can then sell at high prices.

People are happy to pay because of the rail links

[Sir Humphrey]

In Hong Kong, the MTR builds rail-lines to once remote areas, and gets land in the area for doing so.

 

They then profit, by forming JV's with developers to put up highrise properties, which they can then sell at high prices.

People are happy to pay because of the rail links

 

That is how many of the London suburbs were built. John Betjeman made a famous documentary about it (Metroland - which was the advertising slogan in the 1920s). This included icons such as Wembley stadium (which was on the very outskirts of London when first built).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-land_%28TV%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-land

 

I'd much rather live near(ish) to a rail line than a motorway. I grew up about 100m away from a main rail line (with diesel trains). They are much quieter than they used to be, nothing that double glazing can't cure. You also get used to the background noise (which unlike a road is not constant). Electric trains are also non-polluting.

 

You can commute without having to worry about where you parked your car/parking meters etc, so in fact are more liberating than cars in urban areas IMO. The fact that city commuter trains run several times an hour (about every ten minutes on most lines in London) is important in this of course.

[drbubb]

Escape from Suburbia videos -

 

Dealing with peak oil ... by "digging in, and making things better"

 

Escape from Suburbia: Kate Holloway Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuYOymcCqAc

 

My comment:

"Good start, laying out some of the key issues. But much work needs to be done, still done, in defining the key issues and outlining solutions."

 

Escape from Suburbia: Kate Holloway Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbeC4AIIo7A

 

"I liked David Suzuki's comments: Food is all about oil. Since it travels such a long distance to get to the end consumer."

[drbubb]

The Video of J.H. Kunstler's lecture for the TED conference :

 

 

James Howard Kunstler: The Tragedy of Suburbia :

 

In James Howard Kunstler's view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life -- the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about. Reengineering our cities will involve more radical change than we are prepared for, he believes, but our hand will be forced by earth crises stemming from our overconsuming lifestyle. "Life in the mid-21st century," Kunstler says, "is going to be about living locally." Passionate, profane and funny, this talk will make you think about the place where you live

 

THE VIDEO

...gets to the deeper cultural issues.

 

He hates "places not worth caring about"

 

"We are going to have to re-learn how to compose spaces that are meaningful, and attractive for people

to live-in and to visit.

 

We are not going to be rescued by the hyper-car or alternative fuels...'

 

The message for the future... will be about LIVING LOCALLY

 

He pleads:

Please stop referring to yourself as CONSUMERS !

We need people who think about themselves as contributors, not consumers

[drbubb]

The US economy and society currently floats

...on the false assumption that it is possible to perpetually borrow increasing sums of money from the rest of the world, to pay for ever-increasing manufacturing and energy imports, while the price of those imports steadily escalates. In particular the US economy and polity floats on the notion that free money (fiat petro-dollars and US Treasury notes) will always be able to buy energy imports from foreign lands. This use of free money equates to FREE energy. But good things don't last forever and so the US's free petro-dollar scam is a transient condition. Once the US dollar loses its world reserve currency status based on its role as the petro-dollar (as is now happening) the flow of FREE energy to the US will cease and much of the US economy will be forced to shut down.

. .

US society is based on money. In the coming economic collapse the

governing elite is already fuelling that collapse by pumping excessive

quantities of virtual (credit) money into the banking system. The

result will be hyperinflation, which wipes out savings. As oil and

other import prices escalate they will be accompanied by rampant

unemployment, which wipes out incomes. The result is a population that

is largely penniless.

 

As most employment in the US is in the private sector, the transition

to permanent unemployment of much of the workforce is likely to be

sudden as businesses rapidly shed workers in an effort to stay viable,

or go into liquidation.

 

In the US very few people own their place of residence free and clear,

and even if they do they need an income to pay real estate and other

taxes. So, people without an income face homelessness. When the

economy collapses, very few people will continue to have an income, so

homelessness will become rampant. Add to that the motor vehicle (mv)

dependent lifestyle in most US cities and the countryside, and the

result of mass unemployment can only be mass migrations of homeless

people, mostly towards city centres.

 

The US population is almost entirely mv-dependent, and relies on

markets that control oil importation, refining, and distribution. They

also rely on continuous public investment in road construction and

repair.

 

 

Also motor vehicles require a steady stream of imports of both

parts and whole vehicles neither of which are designed to last very

long. When these intricately inter-dependent systems stop functioning

the bulk of the US population will be virtually immobilised as public

transport systems are negligible.

 

 

/see: [http://abundanthope.net/pages/article_834.shtml

[Compounded]

I live in a medium sized UK town

 

I bought a house in 1993 in 10 minutes walking distance of work, I am a dentist

 

This has saved, hours and hours of stressful commuting and the need for a second car was eliminated.

 

The walk is loosens me up I have no back trouble unlike most of my dental school friends.

 

The road I walk down has a queue of traffic many mornings I often beat the cars.

 

Ivan Illich sums it up cars create distance.

[drbubb]

I live in a medium sized UK town

I bought a house in 1993 in 10 minutes walking distance of work...

The road I walk down has a queue of traffic many mornings I often beat the cars.

 

Ivan Illich sums it up cars create distance.

 

Agreed.

Cars create distance (distance between people, and distance from reality)

 

Most Americans think the problem of peak oil can be solved easily - by new technology.

 

Once again, Kunstler responds (in this video) to that naive optimism towards future reality:

 

There's "no (magic) rescue remedy", says Kunstler. "We cannot get something for nothing."

(as the current prevalent 'gamblers mentality' would have it.)

[drbubb]

IN THE NERVOUS TWILIGHT of the Oil Pigs - part.01

 

(as Doug Noland puts it, about the current situation in the US):

 

"Our economy – our financially stretched consumers and vulnerable businesses - will now have no option other than to bid against highly liquefied competitors for a lengthening list of resources. Failure to recognize that this situation is a major inflationary problem is disregarding reality.

. . .

Not only is the pool of potential global buying power unparalleled in scope. It is fervidly attracted to tangible assets - as opposed to U.S. securities - and is highly speculative in character. At the same time, an unwieldy global boom is stoking unprecedented demand in China, India, Asia generally, and the other "emerging" markets including Russia and Brazil. Throw in various weather related issues and energy production constraints and the prospect for some very serious bottlenecks and shortages has developed.

 

Granted, these dynamics have been evolving for some time now. What has changed is the speed and breadth of financial crisis enveloping the U.S. financial system. When I read of mounting energy and food shortages and witness the unfolding run on the U.S. financial sector, as an analyst I must contemplate the likelihood we have entered a uniquely unstable monetary environment at home and abroad. In short, the backdrop exists where incredible dollar liquidity flows could be released (from myriad sources) upon key things (notably energy, food, metals and commodities) already in severe supply and demand imbalance. "

 

/see: www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/IK06Dj01.html

 

Oil Price - in fading US$

 

Oil Price - in stronger C$

 

Note: Oil is now at a possible "double top" area when measured in a Real currency- C$