It has begun.

Energy, Environment, News, Peak Oil, Policy, Transportation

The suburbs of 50 American cities will soon be bulldozed in order to let the remaining city cores run more efficiently. This will, of course, begin with the more distressed places, like Flint MI. James H Kunstler should be chuckling right now. First, these places get bulldozed. Then the streets get depaved and turned into gravel.

Then they disappear.

Then the nightmare of the North American suburban disaster unwinds and we get to go on to the next downshifting of civilisation from this decidedly UNcivilised disaster to something perhaps more civil. Perhaps.

I don’t know if I should be happy or not. I am happy to see worthless suburbs disappear. Every time I spend anytime in those environments I get really depressed and angry. Still, I am sad to see all that sunk cost go to waste – this more than half century of investment into an ill-conceived lifestyle. It’s just frustrating and sad to know it was all a big mistake. Oh well. It’s the first step in a long road down the back side of Hubbert’s Curve.

HW

1 Comment

One Response

  1. Marta P  •  June 19, 2009 @9:12 pm

    Hey there Mr Warwick :) ,!!!

    Well suburbs’ life style used to be considered among the highest life-style standards ever. I guess that was what triggered the “American Dream”. I mean, who doesn’t want a house of their own, a family and pets. Anyway, I’m no big lover of suburbs but developing a new life style for the huge American land it is still to be even conceptualized. I mean. I live in New York City, part of it are crowded, parts are pretty damn nice landscapes with bridges, parks, so on… but for the world to have numerous monster-cities like New York it is simply unsustainable for the environment.
    I mean, if the suburbs are no ideal life-style as far a energy consumption, big cities are not too much different in that aspect.
    What I got it. I think that the whole world should follow on China’s policy about people having just one child. I mean, the problem is not technology, the problem it’s that there is simply too many human beings in this planet… It is not only the irrationality of consumerism, it’s that if the worlds population continues growing there just be no fucking enough space and resources to meet such demand, even if we rationalize our life-style.

Leave a Reply

Allowed tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>