future ghettos

gas prices straining budgets, cnn.com readers say

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i am so glad i kicked my car addiction 15 years ago. i live in new york currently and prior to that, san francisco for 5 years, but for the first 2 years without a car i lived in san diego. san diego, like every other suburban metropolis is a city in which 98% of it's citizens simply refuse to consider possibility of commuting without a car.

now people typically say, "it's easy for you to live without a car, you live in new york. where i live, there is no public transportation." what they don't understand is that i moved to new york because i don't want to drive. it was a conscious decision on my part, not a situation that just happened upon me. it's not like i live 50 miles from work and a subway leading from my front door to work magically appeared, i made a sacrifice to move to a place where i could live without a car. driving requires no effort, only money from your wallet. not driving requires making a sacrifice and the name of that sacrifice is convenience. making sacrifices are things americans just aren't used to doing.

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the availability of cheap gasoline has fueled everything from road rage to smog to global warming and in true american form, the only thing that could stop people from continuing this idiotic behavior isn't the reality that they shit where they eat, but that gas is simply too expensive. being the lemmings that we are, if gas was still a dollar a gallon everyone would be happily driving their escalades into the apocalypse.

now that we now realize that gas will never be cheap again, how will this affect us?

first off, people will move closer to their place of employment or a central area within the city/town they live in. this is the opposite of the "white flight" of the 60s and 70s, where people fled from the inner cities, they are now fleeing to them. with real estate being in the shape that it is and the fact that americans live in suburbs, this will essentially start turning suburbs into ghettos. the market is down, foreclosures are up. double whammy.

we will now see upper and middle class city centers surrounded by ghettos. as an aside, take a look at the architecture of suburban tract developments from the last building boom. i swear to god, the first thing i thought when i saw them was "future ghetto." i saw tens of thousands of them in california's central valley and all over oregon, the southwest, everywhere. the homes were constructed with the cheapest materials and blandest possible designs - ugly as all get out. builders wanted to take advantage of the boom before the bust and they seem to have unwittingly supplied our country with needed ghettos.

next, this could finally stop suburban sprawl. huzzah. build it and they will come. cars don't typically drive in places where there are no roads, they need roads and freeways. when freeways and roads are paved into undeveloped areas, an opportunity presents itself for the development of new suburbs, where there were none before. if middle class families can no longer afford to live 100 miles from work, because of the cost of gasoline, they aren't going to be living there. they are going to move to where it is cheaper and more convenient. i have seen gentrification in harlem and bed-stuy and even in east new york. poor folks make way for richer ones. they have to live somewhere. where is it cheapest to live now? the suburbs!

if it becomes unprofitable to build houses in suburbs, developers will be forced to build in core districts within cities, increasing the need for public transportation and new public infrastructure in these districts. but there is no money available for this. the fucked up thing about it is that cities and states are facing budget shortfalls from decline tax revenue from real estate at the same time that the federal government is caught in a vicious cycle or war that it can never win, sucking hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue, that could go to preparing for the next phase in american history.

another thing to consider is the effect this will have on the already fucked auto industry. american auto manufacturers can't seem to make cars that americans want anymore. this has caused problems, not only for the auto companies, but it's workers. general motors has offered to buy out every union member in it's company. i would imagine that ford and chrysler will follow, on some level. union members are highly paid and pump alot of money into their local economies. once these folks lose or leave their jobs, there is a high possibility that they will never reach the same salary level. it's trickle down economics at work here. the workers, put the money they earn back into the economy. if they earn less money, they spend less money.

we are so totally unprepared for our future.

link | rss | share | posted: 2008-02-29 16:24:30