Exurbs untenable?
Life on the fringes of U.S. suburbia becomes untenable with rising gas costs
Excerpt:
Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, heating and cooling homes on the outer 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 has drawn a steady exodus from U.S. 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 snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
But life on the distant fringes 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, Boyle recently paid $121 to fill his pickup truck with diesel. The price of propane to heat their spacious house has more than doubled in recent years.
Comment: It would be great if the energy crisis revitalized the cities!
JP, that's an interesting comment you made. Isn't that their goal - to "revitalize" (may mean different things to different people) cities? Take a look at Agenda 21 and you'll see the goal is precisely what you said. This is part of the reason why many people do NOT want fuel prices to go lower; they want them to keep going up even more. By the way, I am not in favor is this type of social engineering, but many people who favor more of a socialist, central planning philosophy are in favor of it.
ReplyDeleteJP, I thought you had referencing an article that I also saw earlier today. But in actuality, they are entirely different articles but are so close in theme that much of the info could be swapped.
ReplyDeleteHere's an excerpt from it:
The 20th Century is truly over. (I think this has much to do with the meteoric rise of Sen. Obama as well... He offers nothing new -- mostly just classic, populist Democratic Party bromides -- but he offers it in such a sweet and beguiling, teflon-coated manner...)
And it will get worse before it gets better. To be perfectly blunt, it might not even get better. Over the next year, and into the forseeable future, in the developed world people will go broke buying motor-fuel, heating oil and natural gas.
Wow. That's not real encouraging news. I hope he's wrong and that gas actually will get cheaper because the powers that be realize it will just wreak havoc on the economy to keep it so high and going higher. These are interesting times.
Here's the link: http://www.dailyreckoning.co.uk/economic-forecasts/miscalculation-00162.html