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The End of Suburbia


Slick Vik

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Travelogues don't count.

Haha very funny. I go to at least 5 countries a year, in various continents. I'm a cultured person not trapped in one way of thinking. Anyway the point here is that the suburban lifestyle is just not sustainable. It's not fair one country is sapping 1/4 of the world's resources. I guess I'm the only that can see that.

So do "alien" researchers and Fox News. Does that mean that we should buy what they're selling lock, stock, & barrel?

Fox News is a joke. Just stop.

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Haha very funny. I go to at least 5 countries a year, in various continents. I'm a cultured person not trapped in one way of thinking. Anyway the point here is that the suburban lifestyle is just not sustainable. It's not fair one country is sapping 1/4 of the world's resources. I guess I'm the only that can see that.

Fox News is a joke. Just stop.

Well then, I encourage you to open your eyes a little more while you travel. I'll take your word for your culture, but your posts here and elsewhere belie the notion that you are not trapped in a particular world viewpoint.

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Haha very funny. I go to at least 5 countries a year, in various continents. I'm a cultured person not trapped in one way of thinking. Anyway the point here is that the suburban lifestyle is just not sustainable. It's not fair one country is sapping 1/4 of the world's resources. I guess I'm the only that can see that.

Oh come on! You haven't established your argument at all and now you're going to say "I guess I'm the only one that can see that?"

The questoion was whether we were facing the end of suburbia. Not whether the US uses more resources than it should and you've done nothing to support the end of suburbia.

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Oh come on! You haven't established your argument at all and now you're going to say "I guess I'm the only one that can see that?"

The questoion was whether we were facing the end of suburbia. Not whether the US uses more resources than it should and you've done nothing to support the end of suburbia.

The movie explains it better than me, watch it then we can talk it over.

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I've seen more of the world than 99% of people. That gives me the open eyes to see the truth for what it is.

 

Can't tell from your posts. You've made a bunch of unsupported and half-cocked accusations that are completely unsupported by facts. But, then you claim that because you've "seen the world", you know the truth. Frankly, you couldn't be further from it.

 

Sorry that this sounds like a personal attack, but your post was a personal attack on every other poster...and wrong.

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Can't tell from your posts. You've made a bunch of unsupported and half-cocked accusations that are completely unsupported by facts. But, then you claim that because you've "seen the world", you know the truth. Frankly, you couldn't be further from it.

Sorry that this sounds like a personal attack, but your post was a personal attack on every other poster...and wrong.

GM streetcar conspiracy happened. Electric car conspiracy happened. Suburban conspiracy happened. There is a lot of information out there and people who've dedicated their lives to expose it. But then people like you simply laugh it off. It's sad.

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GM streetcar conspiracy happened. Electric car conspiracy happened. Suburban conspiracy happened. There is a lot of information out there and people who've dedicated their lives to expose it. But then people like you simply laugh it off. It's sad.

Yeah! Plus it was on TV so it has to be true.

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GM streetcar conspiracy happened. Electric car conspiracy happened. Suburban conspiracy happened. There is a lot of information out there and people who've dedicated their lives to expose it. But then people like you simply laugh it off. It's sad.

 

I'm curious what these conspiracies have to do with the statement you made in post #1.

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Even then LA is still among the top cities in the country for smog year after year.

 

A lot of that is due to geography. And, LA wasn't that clean 100 years ago, as oil production and industrial activity cranked up. Even the Native Americans called it the valley of smoke, hundreds of years ago.

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People move to the suburbs because they want a bigger house and more yard, not because of some conspiracy/ And developers are happy to oblige, especially since it's nearly impossible, absent eminent domain powers, to build a major development in an already developed area of a city. I recall reading that one of the goals of planning in Portland, Oregon was to get blue collar home owners to give up their nice houses and yards so that more density could be forced. AS it turns out, those folks weren't interested in more density, and liked their yards and houses just fine.

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I still don't understand why the alleged GM conspiracy has any relevance to why the suburbs are doomed in the foreseeable future, but if we're going to do historical research, I would suggest that you also look into the following:

"Traction magnates". That's the name that was used to describe early streetcar owners that purchased the horse car companies and closed their businesses to remove competition that existed for street cars. These magnates ENCOURAGED development of the suburbs so that they could gain ridership for their streetcar lines.

Charles Yerkes - that's the man that illegally bought the independent streetcar companies in Chicago under a series of front companies in order to create a monopoly in the city.

Peter Widener - the man that created streetcar monopolies in Philadelphia and New York making himself one of the wealthiest men in the United States while treating his workers so poorly that his company was one of the early targets of labor organizers. While you're at it, look into the Philadelphia general strike of 1910 where his transit workers walked out demanding better conditions. The company brought in strike breakers from New York which led to a general strike in Philadelphia and the NY Times headline "Mob rule in Philadelphia".

You should also look into the other transit strikes that occurred such as the San Francisco strike of 1907 where 31 people were killed and over 1100 injured when transit workers shut down the city to strike over working conditions.

If you want to look at freight rail, look at the tactics that John D. Rockefeller used to buy up all the railroads to create a transportation monopoly and bankrupt his competitors while he was creating the massive Standard Oil monopoly.

Bottom line, if you're going to look at the warts of history, you have to look at all the warts, not just the ones that you want to pick and choose. The history of rail in the United States is filled with wealthy robber barons that created monopolies by cynically exploiting workers and passengers because they thought they had a monopoly. You're trying to create this perception of big bad GM while ignoring that railroads were built the same way.

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Thank you all who participated in this thread today as it has been quite entertaining.  

 

I see no foreseeable end to suburbia myself.  Not just because of the exponential growth I see in suburban communities everyday that I go to work, but because that has been an American staple for decades.  Not saying that I think it's the best way to expand by any means but that is what's happening and it's only showing signs of gaining strength, not slowing down.

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Just to chime in, I'm not a fan of sprawl.  But it's a necessary part of a city's growth to a certain extent.  I do think Houston would benefit in the long run if they had a denser core, as a city is more efficient the denser it is.  Houston spends more money per capita on roads than any other major city in the US. 

 

It would benefit Houston fiscally to limit sprawl a bit and encourage inner city living.  Sometimes I wish some of the trillions of dollars that go to building highways to suburbia would go towards bettering inner city infrastructure (whether it be streets, power grid, public transportation, drainage, etc).  I know that the money going to highways isn't available for those uses, but I wish it were. 

 

Houston is doing fine as of now though so no need to panic.  Hopefully in the future it will do better.

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The scale of distance the streetcars went can not be compared to freeways, for the most part. The only cities I can think of that had enormous networks were LA and San Francisco/Oakland. Also, another side effect of replacing streetcars with buses and expansion of freeways is the pollution. If you look at a picture of Los Angeles 100 years ago, it looks like a beautiful place. Now, it looks like smog.

 

Houston losing street cars had everything to do with the requirements the city put on the street car company and nothing to do with sprawl.

 

I bet if you zoomed in on that utopian view of LA with no smog you'd see a distopian LA with horse poop everywhere.

 

Here's a neat picture of Houston from the "goodbye foley's" thread, look under the horse....

 

post-11998-0-08498800-1366511675_thumb.j

 

That is a quite the pile of horse poop!

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Very interesting documentary. Basically spells the end for Houston pretty soon.

 

I noticed that Slick Still hasn't responded to my request. I'll just state that any dismantling of Houston's suburbs would take decades to occur, since the 5.5 million people who live in those suburbs must find new places to live in Houston's inner city, and as Slick certainly knows, that housing does not currently exist.

 

Perhaps if he gets around to answering my question he'll also tell us where those 5.5 million people will live.

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Just to add that even modern US cities, the only time Manhattanization (yes that is a real word) occurs is when real estate and demand warrant it. Miami didnt become the 3rd most populous downtown (in the US) in less than 1 decade  because of Mass Transit, Street Cars, or Gasoline prices. It became that because of demand and what people wanted. Btw, their suburbs didnt retract at all during that growth period. 

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I noticed that Slick Still hasn't responded to my request. I'll just state that any dismantling of Houston's suburbs would take decades to occur, since the 5.5 million people who live in those suburbs must find new places to live in Houston's inner city, and as Slick certainly knows, that housing does not currently exist.

 

Perhaps if he gets around to answering my question he'll also tell us where those 5.5 million people will live.

 

I challenge you to watch the film. All I see in this thread are knee jerk reactions and denial. The reality is staring us in the face, we can choose to accept it or deny it, just like global warming. Otherwise we will all find out together. The point is suburbia is simply not a sustainable activity, and it will fall apart.

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I challenge you to watch the film. All I see in this thread are knee jerk reactions and denial. The reality is staring us in the face, we can choose to accept it or deny it, just like global warming. Otherwise we will all find out together. The point is suburbia is simply not a sustainable activity, and it will fall apart.

 

Who said anything about denying global warming? I actually believe in global warming. Hell, heaven forbid, I voted democrat in the last election!

 

Youre making the case that high gasoline prices, peak oil, will crush the suburbs. That is intrinsically false. Even if gasoline rises to $10 a gallon and monthly fees for fuel are $1000/month, its still less than the average middle class mortgage for a home in the city. You know what cities will do then? Build trains out to the suburbs, so that suburbanites will walk/drive to the train station and then into the city. Are the suburbs dead in that scenario? 

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Who said anything about denying global warming? I actually believe in global warming. Hell, heaven forbid, I voted democrat in the last election!

 

Youre making the case that high gasoline prices, peak oil, will crush the suburbs. That is intrinsically false. Even if gasoline rises to $10 a gallon and monthly fees for fuel are $1000/month, its still less than the average middle class mortgage for a home in the city. You know what cities will do then? Build trains out to the suburbs, so that suburbanites will walk/drive to the train station and then into the city. Are the suburbs dead in that scenario? 

 

But the costs of EVERYTHING go up when the price of oil goes up, simply due to cost of transportation. This includes even basic food costs. I guess it will be difficult for everyone, but I think what the movie is saying the biggest drain is the suburbs. But like others in this train have said, who cares if you have a nice lawn and back yard!

 

PS Good luck getting trains built in this city. That being said, I would love for light, commuter, heavy, and intercity rail to get built around the country, particularly high speed rail between cities, that would make commutes < 500 miles much easier simply because of the hassle of going to the airport.

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Here is the cost of gasoline: Inflation Adjusted

 

Inflation-Adjusted-Gasoline2013_sm.jpg

 

 

Despite the high prices of gasoline, Suburb construction is still extremely high and showing no signs of really slowing down. The only circumstance that has changed is the type of vehicle people of driven, which is, in part, the aforementioned innovation of motor vehicles. So if gas prices rise to $10/gal, Then all of a sudden, perhaps the electric car market becomes viable... Then the price of gas will fall as demand falls with it. Commodity Goods. 

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Gloomy predictions of the future are never wrong and must be taken seriously. If you don't believe me you are in denial. You can face it or stick your thick head in the sand. This point can not be debated. If someone went to all the trouble and expense to actually make a film about a given topic and post it to the internet, that means it must be true. No production company ever made a film unless they were certain of what they were talking about.

 

Just except the message of this film and do not question it!

 

Suburbia is doomed. Sell your house now and move to midtown Houston or Manhattan or your children will go hungry. Working from home is not an option. Technology will never be able to keep up with gas prices. Mankind has lost the ability to problem solve. No further expansion of knowledge can be gained from this point moving forward and this path can not be altered. No other energy source can ever take the place of gasoline in order to move people from the suburbs to the inner city. Jobs can not be moved to the suburbs. Exxon is in denial.

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I challenge you to watch the film. All I see in this thread are knee jerk reactions and denial. The reality is staring us in the face, we can choose to accept it or deny it, just like global warming. Otherwise we will all find out together. The point is suburbia is simply not a sustainable activity, and it will fall apart.

 

Slick, have you seen any of the other "omg the world is going to end" films regarding oil?

 

Crude Awakening, Crude Impact, Fuel, Collapse.

 

I've watched most of these on Netflix streaming when bored, they all have basically the same message, how does this film differ in its message? 

 

It's a disservice that this movie, and other movies are able to call themselves documentaries, as they are editorials that show you the information they want you to see that do not include the complete picture.

 

A documentary imo, is David Attenborough chronicling the life of a pigeon, or some historian talking about how life was in the middle ages, or a movie about the space program.

 

These films are far from that. They are shows about one possible future based on what they want you to see. They're fun to watch, but not based in any way on any reality that should be taken seriously.

 

I'll even go so far as to say that this movie, and movies like it are not much different from Total Recall (the original), or the Star Trek movies fanciful tales that are not real life. They might eventually happen, Idiocracy for instance, it's plausible that this is the future, but does it require serious discussion? Nope.

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But the costs of EVERYTHING go up when the price of oil goes up, simply due to cost of transportation. This includes even basic food costs. I guess it will be difficult for everyone, but I think what the movie is saying the biggest drain is the suburbs. But like others in this train have said, who cares if you have a nice lawn and back yard!

And so when the cost of everything goes up, as it has steadily for the past decade or so, the economy adapts. If it becomes too expensive to import manufactured goods from China then, guess what, companies will move their factories back to the US. Most likely they'll relocate to suburban locations because the costs are less and the workers are already there. Sounds like a win-win to me. As the cost of farm goods increases due to transportation and fertilizer cost increases, more local farms will emerge to satisfy the demand using more organically derived fertilizers and techniques resulting in healthier and tastier local produce on suburban tables. Sounds like a win-win to me. As commute costs go up, employers and retailers will relocate to the suburbs in greater numbers to be closer to their employees thus reducing both costs and travel times. Sounds like a win-win to me. Rising gas costs are just as likely to de-centralize large cities as they are to densify them.

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OK - I've watched the documentary and I'm going to put out a few disclaimers in advance of my comments. I am a registered Democrat, a believer in global warming and a long time backpacker and outdoorsman, so no I'm not tea party and I don't work for an oil company. I've travelled extensively on most continents (over 40 countries) and seen many different lifestyles and cultures.

I was not convinced by the documentary at all. Here's the reasons why:

- The analysis is based entirely on the assumption on the lack of availability of cheap energy, but they don't actually establish with any degree of proof that oil supply is decreasing. They hypothesize that we're at peak capacity, but they openly state that don't know whether we're actually peaking or not. They also state as a firm conclusion that if Saudi Arabia has peaked that the rest of the world has peaked, but they again don't offer any supporting evidence of that claim. Even the discussions at the peak oil conference acknowledge that they don't know whether or when peak will be hit.

- They also ignore that rising oil demand is coming primarily from the rising living standards of China and India, not from the demands of the suburbs.

- They talk repeatedly about Matthew Simmons statements about natural gas supplies peaking. The movie was shot in 2004 and natural gas supply has increased not decreased in that time.

- They talk about the Toronto blackout, but they really don't establish why this was such as catastrophic event. It didn't cause a breakdown of society. There weren't widespread riots. It was generally extremely calm in comparison with riots that occured in the early 20th century such as the streetcar riots of the 1920's that I referenced earlier in the thread.

- They make a correlation between suburbia and consumerism that they don't establish. They criticize consumerism, but they do not establish that urban dwellers spend less than suburban customers. They talk about a lot about Wal Mart, but Wal Mart isn't a suburban phenomenon. It's a primarily rural phenomenon that spread to the suburbs late in it's development.

- They talk about skyrocketing food prices and degradation of farmland, yet there is no visible impact to this. They talk about advances in farming during the 40's, but they don't reference that productivity of farmland increased by 170% between 1948 - 2009.

- They talk about industrialization and the city not being a good place to live. Check the history of cities prior to the industrial revolution. They've always been nasty. A livable city is a modern invention, not a restoration of a historic ideal.

- They talk down the US railroad system as being worse than Bulgaria, but don't discuss that the US has the best freight rail network in the world by a large margin.

- They discuss that we're not prepared as a society to do retail on a local level, but the last 10 years have indicated that this is happening organically out of individual desire.

- There's no discussion about the impact of innovation in terms of lessening demand even though historically innovation has always occurred and always will.

- They comment that "no one wants urban sprawl and McHouses", but don't address why demand is so high for those areas and why people who live there are generally considered happier in polls than urban dwellers.

- They acknowledge the fact that the time period in question has been a period of great wealth, but make it seem like there's no coorelation. Maybe it's worth considering that this way of life has fueled that period of wealth?

I have nothing against New Urbanism as long as it's a choice. When you start telling people that you have to live that way, that's when we disagree. I seem to recall an awful lot of the same kind of comments when Y2K was happening.

A final thought on the overall theme of this documentary.

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That did raise another good point: with one of the highest GDP per-capita's in the world, if/when oil prices do spike up, other countries will be more sensitive to it and reduce their demand more and faster than the U.S.  In other words, if only the wealthy of the world can afford oil, that's us.

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livincinco, thanks for the blow by blow, sounds like it's much the same as the other 'documentaries' published that I referenced above.

 

based on this article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/13/peak-oil-isnt-dead-an-interview-with-chris-nelder/

 

Saudi Arabia may not have peaked, but based on the article above, the supply is declining. 

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That did raise another good point: with one of the highest GDP per-capita's in the world, if/when oil prices do spike up, other countries will be more sensitive to it and reduce their demand more and faster than the U.S.  In other words, if only the wealthy of the world can afford oil, that's us.

 

actually, we'll be affected more, check out that article I posted yesterday, there's 1.2 gallons of gasoline consumed daily per person in the USA. Compared with China who consume .05 gallons of gasoline per person per day. Or take a country like Belgium, they consume .15 gallons a day, and it also says that the average for all countries is .25 gallons of gasoline.

 

Countries that consume less will be able to absorb more.

 

If a person uses 1 gallon of gas a day and the price per gallon goes up $1, they have to figure out where to get $365 a year to cover that. If someone uses 5 gallons a day, they have to figure out where to get $1825 a year extra. go down and someone that uses 1/4 gallon of gas a day only has to figure out where to get an additional $91 a year.

 

So yeah, less developed countries that rely on gasoline less than us, they will be impacted less. So from that standpoint, the movie does have a point, consume more and you are impacted more by a change.

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actually, we'll be affected more, check out that article I posted yesterday, there's 1.2 gallons of gasoline consumed daily per person in the USA. Compared with China who consume .05 gallons of gasoline per person per day. Or take a country like Belgium, they consume .15 gallons a day, and it also says that the average for all countries is .25 gallons of gasoline.

 

Countries that consume less will be able to absorb more.

 

If a person uses 1 gallon of gas a day and the price per gallon goes up $1, they have to figure out where to get $365 a year to cover that. If someone uses 5 gallons a day, they have to figure out where to get $1825 a year extra. go down and someone that uses 1/4 gallon of gas a day only has to figure out where to get an additional $91 a year.

 

So yeah, less developed countries that rely on gasoline less than us, they will be impacted less. So from that standpoint, the movie does have a point, consume more and you are impacted more by a change.

 

Fair points, but what really matters is gas as a percentage of their income.  They may spend a lot less but it's coming out of $5k/year income instead of something like $40k/year in America - so it could be a higher percentage of income for them and therefore are more impacted.

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