I read the following Business Week article called Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long Suburbia? and I kept thinking to myself something is missing. According to the article James Kunstler hypothesizes that the automotive age is almost history and will destruct McMansion living.
It reminded of a Yahoo Money conference a few years back when one of the speakers said "we told people to move out to the suburbs and now with the price of oil we are going to tell them to move back?" Simply put, that's basically what the article implies. Here are some quotes from the question and answers in the article:
- Cheap oil is what made suburbia possible. But we'll run into problems with spot shortages
- It's not that we're driving the wrong cars. It's that we're driving cars of any size, incessantly.
- I think our smaller cities and towns will be reactivated. We are going to be a far less affluent society.
- Of course, I'm a self-employed author and don't have to commute to work.
We'll come back to that last quote in a second. What was missing for me are questions and answers about our digital society. As broadband in the US increases (currently at 58% among US households and 90% for internet users) I can't help wondering if there isn't a new local market. The local market of your home or local business center.
How many actually commute 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year? Is that declining now? How much of your work can be done locally? Haven't big companies been pushing for telecommuting for decades now? The more I spend working from the home office the more I find other people just like me. It isn't just for the sales person, but many executives, managers, and consultants power their businesses from their local area.
So why does suburbia have to die with rising oil prices? Can't it still survive at a very local level? Where is the impact of broadband penetration on Mr. Kunstler's analysis? How many people in the US just need a wireless connection, a PC, and a phone and they can conduct business anywhere?
Perhaps Mr Kunstler just didn't get to answer a question like that or perhaps he did and it didn't make the final article, but I'd like to know why can't suburbia be transformed by millions of small business, telecommuters with broadband increasing at a high rate? Aren't there more people like Mr Kunstler who describes himself as a self-employed person (author) that doesn't have to commute?
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
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