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Detriot finally went to pot in the years following the late '60s Black riots.

 

White flight ensued, as has occurred in many other parts of the USA.

 

How might a reversal of this phenomenon, which for practical economic reasons we might expect, be played out?

 

Racial demographics are ignored at one's own peril.

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Very moving article, the American Dream is faltering.

 

Yes. Things seem to have turned very sour over the last week or two in particular. They'll be back [the US], but things are clearly going to get worse before they get better. Let's hope the next cycle is a little more constuctive and thoughtful than the last. Yes, a triumph of optimism over experience, but hope springs eternal. :P

 

 

The article is part 2 of a series in TT. Part one is online, and part 3 will be publsihed nest week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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That Telegraph piece is a great article, here is another story from the Guardian that someone had posted on HPC.

Fuel prices may lead to population decline in America's small towns

Wednesday July 2, 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/02/gas.usa

 

In Leeton, Missouri, directions usually begin with, "From Casey's, you go ... "

 

That would be Casey's General Store, the only petrol station in town. It's where folks fill up while talking about goings-on, politics, weather and who's got the best-looking tomatoes. These days, they're also cussing and shaking their heads about the price of that fuel. People are doing that everywhere, but in small towns such as Leeton, with 619 residents, it's even more of a gut punch because nearly every working adult commutes to jobs elsewhere. These days, there had better be a really good job on the other end of that trip.

 

Don Campbell's daily commute to Kansas City - about 100 miles (160 kilometres) each way - costs him roughly $866 (£433) a month at $3.90 per gallon. But he's a union iron worker and says he can make the math work. Most of his neighbours can't. For them and thousands of other small-town residents across the US who drive long distances to jobs that pay little more than minimum wage, the high cost of petrol is making that daily commute cost-prohibitive.

 

So much so that economists predict that over the next few years, the country could see a migration that would greatly reduce the population of small town America - resulting in a painful shift away from lifestyle, family roots, traditions and school ties. "This town's the only place I know," said Louie Rector, who drives 35 miles to his job at a window factory from his home in tiny Dixon. "I grew up here ... raised my kids here. I got my family and friends all here. I don't want to pack up and leave. But it's getting to the point where a fella can't afford to drive to work, and that don't seem right to me." Towns such as Dixon and Leeton are everywhere in America. Many don't have much beyond a post office, a grocery store and maybe a school. Economists use Wymore, Nebraska, as an example in that 68% of working adults in town commute to jobs elsewhere.

 

The expected exodus from small towns, said Don Macke, head of the Centre for Rural Entrepreneurship in Lincoln, Nebraska, will be far more profound than the gradual erosion that has been going on since the second world war. That decline was due to the country's shift away from an agrarian economy and a choice for convenience: People wanted to be closer to jobs, shopping and entertainment. The new flight, Macke thinks, will be more out of necessity.

 

Most commuters from small towns are high school graduates. They are driving 50 miles or more to work as school cooks, hospital aides, office workers, dental assistants and unskilled factory workers. "The reality is that those jobs don't pay all that well," said Macke, who is also a visiting scholar with the Rural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri. "They're spending up to $500 a month on gas. A third to half is already technically working poor. "And as gas goes higher, they will get poorer and these towns will soon struggle to hold on to these people."

 

David McGranahan, a senior economist with the Economic Research Service of the US department of agriculture, added that the decline would not be entirely longtime residents moving away. "Young people who leave these towns to go off to college or the military may decide not to go back - as many have always done in years past," McGranahan said. "Also, fewer people will leave the city to move to small towns in search of a quiet life." But nobody is writing off small towns. Who knows what type of vehicle will come along next? There's car pooling. Computer technology increasingly allows people to work from home. And some communities are working on ways to provide jobs in town. "I have a lot of faith in ingenuity and the entrepreneurial spirit," Macke said.

 

That rescue better happen fast, said Leeton Mayor Larry Mudd. He has lived all his 62 years there and used to commute to Kansas City to work as a school administrator - back when fuel was cheap. He hears the talk around town and he expects to see people, particularly young families, move away. "People are mad as hell, but they don't know who to blame," Mudd said. "I know we got people here who are buying gas instead of paying bills. "What a lot of towns are going to end up with is a bunch of empty buildings and empty houses."

 

Brian Dabson, co-director of the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, said the new financial reality has changed the parameters of "rural poor". The term used to apply mainly to pockets of poverty in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, Indian reservations, and the Texas-Mexico border area.

 

"Now, it's everywhere - Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska," Dabson said. "The price of gas has redefined a 'sustainable wage'."

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Yes. Things seem to have turned very sour over the last week or two in particular. They'll be back [the US], but things are clearly going to get worse before they get better. Let's hope the next cycle is a little more constuctive and thoughtful than the last. Yes, a triumph of optimism over experience, but hope springs eternal. :P

 

The Comeback of the US requires:

+ Facing reality - the Stranded Suburban ideal is obsolete in a time of Peak Oil

+ A national concensus that the US suburbs must be restructured and/or written off / see: Restructure

+ A national effort to build new transit infrastructure, and re-densify in the cities

+ A US economy which becomes refocussed away from consumption, and towards re-industrialisation,

and exports. A focus on alternative energy, with the US becoming a global leader would help mightily

 

Problem is: Neither of the presidential candidates is talking about this sensible agenda

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"They're spending up to $500 a month on gas. A third to half is already technically working poor. "And as gas goes higher, they will get poorer and these towns will soon struggle to hold on to these people."

 

Don Campbell's daily commute to Kansas City - about 100 miles (160 kilometres) each way - costs him roughly $866 (£433) a month at $3.90 per gallon. But he's a union iron worker and says he can make the math work. Most of his neighbours can't. For them and thousands of other small-town residents across the US who drive long distances to jobs that pay little more than minimum wage, the high cost of petrol is making that daily commute cost-prohibitive.

. . .

"Now, it's everywhere - Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska," Dabson said. "The price of gas has redefined a 'sustainable wage'."[/indent]

 

Like Detroit, Kansas bet massively on the automobile. In fact, Kansas City is number one in freeways,

ahead of Detroit, which is number two (according to the Telegraph article.)

 

JH Kunstler believes that small cities and samll towns will be the saviours of America.

(In fact, he lives in Utica, in upper state New York.) But they had better have:

 

+ Local jobs, preferably in the energy or agricultural sectors

+ Rail links to markets, and big cities

 

Maybe we should make a list... (note: UK "market towns" might fit the bill too.)

 

== ==

 

THEIR PAIN is meaningful - but will they "get it"??

 

"People are mad as hell, but they don't know who to blame," Mudd said. "I know we got people here who are buying gas instead of paying bills. "What a lot of towns are going to end up with is a bunch of empty buildings and empty houses."

 

istockphoto_730937_come_down_like_a_ton_

 

THEY SHOULD BLAME THEMSELVES for being stupid and short-sighted in thinking that cheap oil would last forever.

The ton of bricks descending upon them is payment for their sheep-like stupidity, and the short-sightenedness

of their leaders. What they need to do now: is WAKE UP and restructure their living and working arrangements,

as this website has been recommending repeatedly (and ven stridently!) since its very first day.

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Detroit has the second largest amount of freeway lane miles of any metropolitan area in America, after Kansas City. And it is the only city in America without a rapid transport system - the legacy of years of resistance by the powerful lobby of the car industry that dictated that workers should drive their own products rather than taking public transport.

 

I spent some time in Detroit a few years back, they have the mono-line :lol:

The thing i noticed (besides the lack of public transport) is the car happy attitude. I would walk 2 blocks in Harper Woods to the store and get strange looks from the people driving. If i ran or had a dog no-one battered an eyelid.

Another thing i noticed is the ammount of crap that is on their roads, $200 cars that would get no-where near a road over here.

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  • 2 weeks later...

(COLORADO has another "Stranded Suburb" area - thanks to Stumbo):

 

A nice article from IHT...bye bye suburbia? Energy costs are biting.

 

 

Rising energy prices inflate costs of suburbia and beyond

By Peter S. Goodman

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

 

ELIZABETH, Colorado: Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life, idealized around the world, are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, heating and cooling homes on the distant edges of metropolitan areas.

 

Just off Singing Hills Road, in one of hundreds of two-story homes dotting a former cattle ranch beyond the southern fringes of Denver, Phil Boyle and his family openly wonder if they will have to move close to town to get some relief.

 

They still revel in the space and quiet that have drawn a steady exodus from American cities toward places like this for more than half a century. Their living room ceiling soars two stories high. A swing set sways in the breeze in their backyard. Their wrap-around porch looks out over the flat scrub of the high plains to the snowcapped peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

 

But life on the edges of suburbia is beginning to feel untenable.

 

Boyle and his wife must drive nearly an hour to their jobs in the high-tech corridor of southern Denver. With gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, or 3.8 liters, Boyle recently paid $121 to fill his pickup truck with diesel fuel. In March, the last time he filled his propane tank to heat his spacious house, he paid $566, more than twice the price of five years ago.

 

Although Boyle finds city life unappealing, it is now up for reconsideration. "Living closer in, in a smaller space, where you don't have that commute," he said. "It's definitely something we talk about. Before it was 'we spend too much time driving.' Now, it's 'we spend too much time and money driving."'

 

Across the United States, as across much of the world, the realization is taking hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a change with lasting consequences. The shift to costlier fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs.

 

In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to an analysis by Moody's Economy.com.

 

In Denver, housing prices in the urban core rose steadily from 2003 until late last year compared with previous years, before dipping nearly 5 percent in the last three months of last year, according to Economy.com. But house prices in the suburbs began falling earlier, in the middle of 2006, and then accelerated, dropping by 7 percent during the last three months of the year from a year earlier.

 

Many factors have propelled the unraveling of American real estate, from the mortgage crisis to a staggering excess of home construction, making it hard to pinpoint the impact of any single force. But economists and real estate agents are growing convinced that the rising cost of energy is now a primary factor pushing home prices down in the suburbs, particularly in the outer rings.

 

More than three-fourths of prospective home buyers are now more inclined to live in an urban area because of fuel prices, according to a recent survey of 903 real estate agents with Coldwell Banker, the national brokerage firm.

 

Some now proclaim the unfolding demise of suburbia.

 

"Many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and '70s - slums characterized by poverty, crime and decay," declared Christopher Leinberger, an urban land-use expert, in a recent essay in The Atlantic.

 

Most experts do not share such apocalyptic visions, seeing instead a gradual reordering.

 

"It's like an ebbing of this suburban tide," said Joe Cortright, an economist at the consulting group Impresa in Portland, Oregon. "There's going to be this kind of reversal of desirability. Typically, Americans have felt the periphery was most desirable, and now there's going to be a reversion to the center."

 

In a recent study, Cortright found that house prices in the urban centers of Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland and Tampa have fared significantly better than those in the suburbs. So-called exurbs - communities sprouting on the distant edges of metropolitan areas - have suffered worst of all, Cortright found.

 

Basic household arithmetic appears to be furthering the trend: In 2003, the average suburban household spent $1,422 a year on gasoline, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By April of this year - when gas prices were about $3.60 a gallon- the same household was spending $3,196 a year, more than doubling consumption in dollar terms in less than five years.

 

In March 2008, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles, or nearly 18 billion fewer kilometers, on public roads than in March 2007, a 4.3 percent decrease - the sharpest one-month drop since the Federal Highway Administration began keeping records in 1942.

 

Long before the recent spike in the price of energy, environmentalists decried suburban sprawl as a waste of land, energy and tax dollars. Governments from Virginia to California have in recent decades lavished resources on building roads and schools for new subdivisions in the outer rings of development while skimping on maintaining facilities closer in. Many governments now focus on reviving their downtowns.

 

Denver, a classic Western city, with snarling freeway traffic across a vast acreage of strip malls, ranch houses and office parks, has had an urban renaissance over the last decade.

 

A $6.1 billion commuter rail system has been in the works over the last four years, drawing people downtown without cars, while stimulating swift sales of densely clustered condominiums near stations.

 

Coors Field, the intimate, brick-fronted baseball stadium for the Colorado Rockies, has transformed the surrounding area from a desolate skid row into fashionable Lower Downtown, a neighborhood of restaurants and microbreweries in restored warehouses. Along the Platte River, new condos set on a park strip offer an arresting tableau of glass, steel and futuristic geometry, attracting throngs of buyers at rising prices.

 

"This is a city where it's fun to be in the center," said Tim Burleigh, 56, who sold his house in the suburbs and now walks to Rockies games from his downtown condo.

 

To Denver's mayor, John Hickenlooper, $4 gasoline offers a useful incentive for such plans. "It can be an accelerator," he said during an interview inside the imposing column-fronted City Hall. "It's not going to be the dagger in the heart of suburban sprawl, but there's a certain inclination, a certain momentum back toward downtown."

 

Dollars spent at the gas station leave fewer for mortgage payments.

 

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, calculated that the jump in gas prices from $2 a gallon to $4 has taken $50 a month from the typical suburban commuter driving 25 miles a day.

 

"The fuel price change should be capitalized into the cost of houses," Zandi said. "Prices in the outer suburbs will get clobbered."

 

Elizabeth is the archetype of a once-rural community sucked into the orbit of the expanding metropolis, its ranch lands given over to porches, picket fences and two-car garages.

 

But now, the new math is altering the choice of where to live. Houses are sitting on the market longer than in years past.

 

"The pool of buyers is diminishing," said Jace Glick, an agent with Re/Max Alliance in Parker, Colorado, next to Elizabeth.

 

Juanita Johnson and her husband, both retired Denver schoolteachers, moved here last August, after three decades in the city and a few years in the mountains. They bought a four-bedroom house for $415,000.

 

Last winter, they spent $3,000 just on propane to heat the place, she said. Suddenly, this seemed like a place to flee.

 

"We'd sell if we could, but we'd lose our shirt," Johnson said.

(Too bad. You've "lost your short" already- DB.)

 

On a recent walk, she counted 15 for-sale signs. A similar home nearby is listed below $400,000.

 

"I was so glad to get out of the city, the pollution the traffic, the crime," she said. Now, the suburbs seem mean. "I wouldn't do this again."

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  • 2 weeks later...

"suburbs suffering the worst" (especially the stranded ones)

======

 

2.2 million vacant homes for sale (future firewood in the stranded suburbs)

Census Bureau report shows percentage of vacant houses available for sale and of Americans who own homes were relatively unchanged in 2nd quarter.

 

By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney.com senior writer ... July 24, 2008:

 

Foreclosure business boom / Home sales at 10 year low

 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The percentage of vacant homes available for sale remained relatively flat in the second quarter, but still hovered in record territory.

 

Some 2.8% of homes, excluding rental properties, were empty and on the market from April through June, according to Census Bureau figures released Thursday. The vacancy rate hit a record high of 2.9% in the first quarter of 2008. It was 2.6% a year ago.

 

"They are still not showing a downward trend," said Christian Menegatti, U.S. lead analyst at RGEMonitor.com, an economic research and consulting group. "That's the bad news. The numbers are telling us that prices have to fall more."

 

Just under 2.2 million empty homes were for sale in the most recent quarter. The vacancy rates for homes built in April 2000 or later was 9.8%, more than triple that of houses constructed earlier.

 

Builders capitalized on the boom in home prices and demand earlier this decade, Menegatti said. Many of those houses now are standing empty.

 

"There was a lot of reckless construction exploiting the fact that prices were going up," he said. "Suburban areas were flooded with new construction in locations that were commuter-unfriendly. Now those are suffering the most."

 

/more: http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/24/news/econo...rship/index.htm

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As posted on an HPC thread,

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...79862&st=30

Totally disagree with you I'm afraid Dr. Bubb.

 

In the US I think you may have a point.

 

In the UK I think you're dead wrong. If you go back to pre-car of course there were very obviously wealthy city centre areas which remain wealthy to this day. There were also areas of huge deprivation, slum conditions, high mortality rates, violence and so on.

.. ..

US suburbs may have been predicated on the car, but in England they predated the car, and to some extent also the railway.

 

You have a point:

+ Americans are now screaming about gasoline prices at $4-5

+ In Britain, petrol prices are about twice that: $8 -10

 

In a way, America is beginning to go through an adjustment that Britain (and Europe too!)

has already made, over a longish period. But I reckon that oil prices in both countries will

keep rising. This will force a HUGE adjustment upon the American suburban way of living,#

and a relatively smaller adjustment upon the UK.

 

Unlike the S-Piggers, I can see a future in SOME centre city flats, if they are:

+ Well located, near public transport

+ Are in safe, and walkable communities

+ Have begun a downwards spiral into crime and de-gentrification

 

About 100 to 150 years ago when London was a genuinely wealthy city (not one with just expensive property), Londoners built pleasant, liveable, and walkable neighbors like: Kensington, Chelsea, Chiswick etc. Meantime, in its own period of "Imperial Over-reach", American spent trillions building McMansions in stranded suburbs like Stockton, California.

 

America to have to restructure and retro-fit that heritage, or see those stranded suburbs go to firewood. Meantime, London is still living off the legacy of those wonderful old homebuilding decisions.

 

Maybe Americans will learn to design communities better in the future. I certainly hope so. Meanwhile, I could see some nice walkable areas of London be driven down to very cheap prices in 2-3 years of a price slide. And I will pay little attention to those who say that "City Centre Flats are a disaster", and instead rely on teh evidence of my own two eyes, and calculations derived from my different view of the future.

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Kunstler insists suburbs are done for

Writer airs views on gas, housing during locally-produced podcast

Sunday, July 27, 2008

By Miles Reed (Contact)

Gazette Reporter

 

James Howard Kunstler isn’t shy about sharing his worldview.

 

For years, the Saratoga County writer has been pounding out his message loud and clear: Suburbia doesn’t work.

 

In scores of books, magazine articles and public-speaking engagements, Kunstler has decried America’s love affair with its gas-guzzling SUVs and McMansions in the ’burbs and beyond. Along the way, the 59-year-old has steadily gained a national audience for his outspoken campaign against the “tragic comedy of suburban sprawl,” as he puts it.

For more info

 

Go to kunstlercast.com to hear James Kunstler’s podcast anytime.

 

This spring, Kunstler, who is probably best know for his 1993 book, “The Geography of Nowhere,” added a locally produced podcast to air his views. The KunstlerCast, as it’s been dubbed, lets him discuss everything from peak oil to “the end of suburbia.”

 

Kunstler and the podcast’s host and producer, Duncan Crary of Troy, record it weekly and post a fresh one every Thursday. The show is aired on three out-of-state radio stations, but it’s available online anytime at kunstlercast.com.

 

The Sunday Gazette caught up with Kunstler recently to discuss the podcast and the current state of Mother Earth.

 

Q: Oil has been trading in the range of $120 to $140 a barrel in the past month. Where do you see things going from here? $200?

 

A: I think it will ratchet up and down basically following an upward trend-line. It may fall sharply for a while if the global economic contraction is severe. But if it falls to lower price levels (say the $100 range) that will only re-start oil consumption again and the trend upward will resume. Another way of seeing this is the possibility that the current price situation will create such severe distortions in finance and certain industries, such as trucking and aviation, that will result in permanent damage to our way of life.

 

The aviation industry, for instance, will not get back up again if it goes down — at least not in the form we know it in.

 

Q: You’ve been talking for years about the need for America to rethink the car-based sprawl model. Now with gas prices going through the roof, it seems the rest America is starting to pay attention to the same things you’ve been preaching for years. Do you feel vindicated in any way?

 

A: Sure, I feel somewhat vindicated. I was keenly aware of the process described by [søren Aabye] Kierkegaard regarding “new and disturbing ideas.” They are first greeted with ridicule, then violent opposition, and finally accepted as self-evident. So I didn’t expect my message in “The Long Emergency” to be warmly welcomed. And it wasn’t. Now, reality is catching up with it.

 

Q: Are you getting more requests for media interviews these days?

 

A: Yes. I get calls these days from Katie Couric’s producers and CNBC’s Larry Kudlow show. So far I haven’t been on them due to inconvenience issues — I live far from their studios. I have had a pretty steady stream of calls from radio stations and newspapers for many years.

 

Q: Where do you see things going in terms of the housing market? Will America abandon the suburbs in favor of the cities?

 

A: A lot of people (Realtors, builders, bankers) are waiting for the “bottom” of the housing crash, with the idea that we’ll re-enter an up-cycle. I see it differently. There won’t be a resumption of “growth” as we’ve known it, certainly not in suburban residential and commercial real estate. The suburban project is over. We’re done with that. (I know people find this unbelievable.) The existing stuff will represent a huge liability for us for decades to come as it loses value and utility and falls apart.

 

However, I also believe our big cities will contract. They are simply not scaled to the energy realities of the future. The successful places, in my opinion, will be the smaller cities and towns that 1.) have walkable neighborhoods, 2.) have proximity to water for power, transport and drinking, and 3.) have a meaningful relationship with a productive agricultural hinterland. Some places you can forget about completely: Phoenix . . . Las Vegas . . . they’re toast.

 

Q: In the age of McMansions, Americans have been building bigger and bigger homes. In your opinion, how many square feet are needed for a family of four to live comfortably?

 

A: I would tend to re-frame the question: what will the composition of a household be in the years ahead? I doubt that will be the simple “nuclear family” we think of as the standard household of today. So, your question will be mooted by new arrangements we can only guess at.

 

Q: I grew up in classic suburban neighborhood and I loved it. Summers were one long game: bike riding, fort building and games of “jail break” and “kick the can.” Do you see any good in these kinds of developments?

 

A: We have to be clear about something: just because we liked something, or we enjoyed certain arrangements, does not mean reality will allow you to continue living that way. I lived in a suburban subdivision on Long Island for three years between the ages of 5 and 8.

 

The suburban milieu had advantages for kids that age. But once you get beyond that, kids need more than a safe “nursery” setting (segregated from the normal activities of daily life). Luckily for me, I moved into Manhattan at age 8 and completed my upbringing there. On the whole, I think the disadvantages of suburbia for children above age 8 have become increasingly severe over the decades and that we will be fortunate to be done with it.

 

Q: What’s the most “walkable” city in the Northeast? What about in this area?

 

A: There are plenty of them. New York City, of course, is an astounding place — though I believe it will face enormous liabilities of scale in the decades ahead — especially with skyscrapers — that will be a huge drag on its ability to survive. Boston remains pretty walkable, but also faces scale issues. Providence, R.I., is a hidden gem and closer to the scale of a city that might have a plausible future. Northampton, Mass., Concord, N.H., Portsmouth, N.H., Portland, Maine, Hudson, N.Y, and Montpelier, Vt., are agreeable places scaled to a lower energy future. Albany, Schenectady, and Troy are, for the moment, at their nadir of disinvestment. All of them share an advantageous relationship to a major inland waterway, with all that implies.

 

Q: What will the Capital Region look like in 50 years? What will be the “must live” city or town?

 

A: I think the suburban “creamy nougat center” of the Capital District, the area centered on Wolf Road, will be mostly abandoned. As stated above, Troy, Schenectady and Albany all occupy important geographical sites. Some kind of town will exist where they are. It remains to be seen how we can resume any kind of manufacturing activity at a scale consistent with our energy reality, or say what it might consist of.

 

There is also the possibility that our civilization will be in for a harsher landing, so to speak. That was the scene I presented in my recent novel, “World Made By Hand.” In that book, Albany was depicted as having reverted to a small residue of a waterfront settlement, with all the grand stuff “up the hill” largely abandoned.

 

Q: When you drive, what are you driving? What kind of mileage does it get?

 

A: I drive a 2005 Toyota RAV. I don’t have to commute, of course, since I am a work-at-home author. I consider myself fortunate. I don’t know whether I will ever own another motor vehicle. This car gets about 25 mpg highway. I don’t go out “cruising for burgers” in it.

 

Q: Can America survive if everyone starts buying hybrids? Or do we need a more monumental shift?

 

A: In my opinion we are excessively preoccupied with how we’re going to keep all the cars running. We need to accept the fact that the “Happy Motoring” experience is drawing to a close for us. We have to make other arrangements for where we live and how we get around.

 

Unfortunately, our investments in motoring are so exorbitant that we are liable to exhaust and bankrupt our society in a futile effort to keep the motoring system going at all costs. I’d add that most of our alt-fuel ideas amount to dangerous fantasies — for instance the ethanol fiasco. We have to give our attention to many other vitally important projects besides propping up the car system.

 

Q: Who would you like to see win the presidency? What would you like to see them do in terms of the environment, gas prices etc.?

 

A: I voted for Mr. Obama in the New York primary and continue to support him. The Republican party will be hugely discredited by the circumstances we face. In fact, they will be regarded as the party that wrecked the nation. I feel sorry for whoever occupies the White House in January 2009. He’ll have to find a gentle way to tell the truth to the people who elected him, people who will be suffering mightily, and who will be very sore about their losses. He’ll have to tell them that the previous “release” of the American Dream software is obsolete, and the new version will require a whole lot more of them in the way of earnest effort, delayed gratification and revised expectations.

 

Q: Are you working on another book yet? Can you give us any details on what it’s about?

 

A: I’m writing a sequel to “World Made By Hand” set in the post-oil future. This one is set around Halloween.

 

/more: http://dailygazette.com/news/2008/jul/27/0727_kunstler/

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COULD THIS be a "Stranded" suburban home...?

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...ml?hpid=topnews

 

The Extreme Reality Makeover Show

 

Symbolic to our era like a sledgehammer to drywall, the biggest house that ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" ever made over -- a sprawling, four-bedroom starter castle, a three-car garage mahal with a turret and all -- has gone into foreclosure, in the 'burbs south of Atlanta.

 

In that particular episode of the hyper-benevolent reality show, which first aired in February 2005, it took 1,800 volunteers a week to demolish the house with the overflowing septic tank that belonged to Milton and Patricia Harper of Lake City, Ga., and then entirely rebuild a new, larger house, while the Harpers and their three children went away to Disneyland. When they returned, they had the biggest house on Ahyoka Drive, with all the appliances and furnishings, plus enough money to pay taxes on it for decades, plus a fund to send their children to college.

 

The house will be auctioned off, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, next Tuesday on the steps of the Clayton County Courthouse.

 

The Harpers had used their home as collateral on a $450,000 loan from JPMorgan Chase and fell in arrears, the newspaper reported. He ran a home security business; she mommed at home. Happy to be on television back then, they declined to be interviewed last week, when a news crew showed up from local station WSB, wanting to know wha'ppen.

 

== ==

 

You could (and will) say the Harpers had it coming, but really, we all had this coming.

 

One thing we'll always remember about this decade was the constant home do-over fetish, in real life and in the reality of reality TV -- the constant warping of the consumer's sense of entitlement, the fairy-dust economics, the MasterCard reminder that the experience is priceless. We'll look back and think of all the time we spent watching shows where people flipped houses for easy profit, or traded spaces, or designed it to sell, or were led into rooms blindfolded to experience the paroxysms that came with new paint, new furniture, new life.

 

Now comes a long period of tsk-tsk, and tut-tut. The schadenfreude potential is everywhere now in these newly sobered times, and it would be something if the Harpers would make themselves available for an entirely other kind of documented extreme makeover, penny by penny.

 

Every day, we are greeted with fresh evidence of the great American fire sale. If it was wrong to think the economy could go on forever subsisting on money that no one actually had, then it was wrong to think there was something wonderful about watching shows where people got houses for nothing, and then expect them to live happily ever after. Last week, the new numbers came out: Foreclosures were filed against some 740,000 U.S. homes between March and June alone.

 

There should be shows on every cable channel about that, hosted by people who don't cry, and who don't have megaphones and plastered-on smiles.

 

These shows should air only on analog television, after Feb. 17, 2009. A certain kind of television viewer wouldn't mind watching some more of this, please, if certain kinds of television producers are listening.

 

(unquote)

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STOCKTON AGAIN - this time in the Telegraph

 

1/4 in Foreclosure. 1/25 has been repossessed already

 

"Welcome to Stockton, California, the foreclosure capital of the United States.

Here, in this city some 80 miles to the east of San Francisco, one in every 25 homes is in the process of being repossessed by mortgage lenders, more than any other city in America.

 

The "city", which is more like a small town by British standards, is bearing the sharp end of the US foreclosure crisis - fuelled by cheap debt, lax credit standards and a view that house prices would only ever rise.

 

Despite its largely desolate, unattractive and at-times dangerous downtown district, Stockton became popular with commuters pushed out of San Francisco's Bay area and Silicon Valley. The town, which was originally put on the map during the Californian Gold Rush in the mid-1800s, became popular again when new housing sprang up on the outskirts as builders took advantage of cheap land prices and potential homeowners sought refuge from price inflation in the major urban conurbations.

 

Today, that new gold rush is over. The city is hurting and the local economy is taking a nose dive. Just a fortnight ago, even the local Sheraton hotel - intended to be the centrepiece of a regeneration of its tired marina area - went into receivership."

. . .

The Reality of Unreality:

"For Marian Norris, a local broker with Prudential California Realty, new lending remains a key part of the problem.

 

"There is no mortgage insurance," she says. "You just can't get it and so, without that, the customer needs to come up with 10pc down [deposit]. That might not sound like a lot but, when you're a family living on $35,000, it's an impossible amount of money."

(then they shouldn't be buying !!!)

 

. . .

Back to Reality

Another estate agent says some sale prices are being inflated by buy-to-let investors but "the investment market is difficult because you need 25pc to 30pc down [in the form of a deposit], and to get a loan which is applicable for Fannie or Freddie coverage [the two main government-sponsored mortgage agencies], you can't own more than four or five properties.

 

"We need to get foreclosures out of the market; we need to get short-sales out of the market, and we need to get back to real buyers and real sellers, and some sense of normality. That is slowly beginning to happen."

 

/more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm...cccrisis105.xml

 

 

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$1.3 Trillion Lost in California

=======

 

In Stockton, the U.S. metro area with the highest foreclosure rate, home sales more than doubled in the second quarter after prices fell by an average 37 percent, said PMZ Real Estate Corp., the area's largest broker. Across the state, sales rose for three consecutive months starting in April after 30 straight months of declines, the California Association of Realtors said. About 40 percent of those transactions were foreclosure sales, DataQuick Information Systems reported.

''California is having a wrenching decline in wealth, but this is a cathartic event that will lay the foundation for a recovery,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com in West Chester, Pa. ''This signals the beginning of the end.''

Almost $1.3 trillion of homeowner equity was lost in California since home prices peaked in December 2005, Zandi said. Discounts of as much as 50 percent will extend into 2010, helping clear a glut of foreclosures and leading to a more balanced housing market, said Ryan Ratcliff, an economist at the Anderson Forecast at the University of California in Los Angeles, and Christopher Thornberg, principal of Beacon Economics LLC in Los Angeles.

''Half off in a decent neighborhood is close to the bottom,'' said Bill Gross,

 

/more: http://www.sltrib.com/ci_10062968

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I would buy a house in one of these stranded suburbs (in California or elsewhere with a lot of sunshine) if

(1) I could plaster the roof with solar panels,

(2) I could store the electricity somehow (see solar/hydrogen/palladium thread),

(3) A plug-in hybrid car (maybe even with a fuel cell) was affordable for me,

and of course

(4) I had a job nearby.

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That's a good menu of things to look for !

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I would buy a house in one of these stranded suburbs (in California or elsewhere with a lot of sunshine) if

(1) I could plaster the roof with solar panels,

(2) I could store the electricity somehow (see solar/hydrogen/palladium thread),

(3) A plug-in hybrid car (maybe even with a fuel cell) was affordable for me,

and of course

(4) I had a job nearby.

One big problem might be safety.

 

Just the other day I was reading about a new housing development which has been halted when half-way built. Many plots which were for new houses remain empty. Over half of the houses built are unoccupied. A resident there said that people come and vandalize the unoccupied houses and one night they broke into his house when he was sleeping but he was able to chase them off.

 

An area with a high proportion of unoccupied dwellings is a risk as vandals, metal thieves, drug addicts and vagrants will likely prey on the area. At least in America you are allowed guns and can defend yourself and your house. But there's always a risk.

 

These stranded suburbs could become the dangerous slum areas of the future.

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... These stranded suburbs could become the dangerous slum areas of the future.

Good point. My in-laws live out in the countryside in Indiana. However, there are neighbours. Houses like this (in the "middle of nowhere") should plunge in price as much (or more), but will possibly be safer since the mob will possibly form in more densely settled areas. Maybe a pair of Dobermans could still be an idea.

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Good point. My in-laws live out in the countryside in Indiana. However, there are neighbours. Houses like this (in the "middle of nowhere") should plunge in price as much (or more), but will possibly be safer since the mob will possibly form in more densely settled areas. Maybe a pair of Dobermans could still be an idea.

This sounds like an established rural or semi-rural area.

 

As you say, as the cost of driving increases, prices in such places might well plummet as people who have to work in town can no longer afford the commute.

 

If you can become part of the local community and can make a living these could be good, as well as cheap. The important thing is that some real community remains, with local shops, school etc. and no estates with half the houses unoccupied.

 

Somewhere near a market town with a railway (or even waterway) would be good.

 

One or two good dogs are great for keeping trouble away. I've heard that geese make excellent alarms and burglars hate them. :D

 

(I'm thinking post peak oil when only the rich will be able to drive much.)

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This sounds like an established rural or semi-rural area.

 

As you say, as the cost of driving increases, prices in such places might well plummet as people who have to work in town can no longer afford the commute.

 

If you can become part of the local community and can make a living these could be good, as well as cheap. The important thing is that some real community remains, with local shops, school etc. and no estates with half the houses unoccupied.

 

Somewhere near a market town with a railway (or even waterway) would be good.

 

One or two good dogs are great for keeping trouble away. I've heard that geese make excellent alarms and burglars hate them. :D

 

(I'm thinking post peak oil when only the rich will be able to drive much.)

Two smaller towns are 10 miles from them (one with a railway, but no passenger trains [yet]). A village (with 1 food store and a post office) is about 5 miles away. Their business is in one of the 10-mile towns. Overall not that bad. Absolutely ESSENTIAL travel will be affordable even at much higher oil prices IMO (everything else being the same). A major elementary/high school is only two miles away.

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Two smaller towns are 10 miles from them (one with a railway, but no passenger trains [yet]). A village (with 1 food store and a post office) is about 5 miles away. Their business is in one of the 10-mile towns. Overall not that bad. Absolutely ESSENTIAL travel will be affordable even at much higher oil prices IMO (everything else being the same). A major elementary/high school is only two miles away.

This sounds pretty good. And far from the madding crowd (mega-cities) I hope.

 

I agree that absolutely essential road travel will continue for those who have some income. In a good community people can car-share or van-share for work or shopping expeditions. The able-bodied could make good use of bicycles where the 5- to 10-mile distances, which you mentioned, are not too far.

 

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It's very sad, but it was more han clear it would happen (and has effectively happened already). Wealth goes from the middle class of the West into the pockets of the super-rich in the East. Altogether, I do not think that this is a clever investment for SWFs. But it shows just very clearly who has the money/wealth, and who not.

 

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08102008/busin...nity_123879.htm

LOST SOVEREIGNITY

OIL-RICH FUND EYEING FORECLOSED US HOMES

...

There's a new land grab starting in America.

 

Foreign money, which up to now has focused its attention on investing in iconic commercial real estate - like Barneys New York and the Chrysler Building - is now moving to scoop up tens of thousands of discounted foreclosed homes across the country.

 

One sovereign fund, said to have earmarked $29 billion to purchase foreclosed residential real estate, recently hired a West Coast mortgage broker and is starting to search for bargains, The Post has learned.

 

Thomas Jefferson wrote on this topic:

If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.
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Foreclosure Epicenter: Maple Heights, Ohio

By: Diane Tuman Content Manager | September 4, 2007

 

epicenter.jpg

 

It looks like Maple Heights, Ohio is the epicenter of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. This is according to a depressingly grim feature article in Sunday’s New York Times Business section, “Can the Mortgage Crisis Swallow a Town?“ For homeowners, this scenario is like “Night of the Living Dead,” in which the bloodthirsty zombies are the equivalent of property foreclosures and the last, surviving healthy folks are running for their lives before they get swallowed up, too.

 

Maple Heights is in the top one-half of 1 percent nationally in foreclosures, according to RealtyTrac, a company that tracks foreclosure data. To add insult to injury, Maple Heights is located in Cuyahoga County (which includes Cleveland) and 30 percent of sub-prime mortgages are late or in foreclosure.

 

/see: http://www.zillowblog.com/foreclosure-epic...s-ohio/2007/09/

 

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How much negative equity in the US?

 

Bloomberg quoting zillow.com -

 

Bloomberg Link

 

Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Almost one-third of U.S. homeowners who bought in the last five years now owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth, according to Zillow.com, an Internet provider of home valuations.
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