kook predicts end of american suburbia, frightens other kooks

all this talk of climbing oil prices is starting to spook some people out about the very fabric of american society, including some people with enough prestige to write books about it. one said kook, james kunstler, is claiming that the age of american suburbia is over. from his interview in businessweek:

"The suburbs were largely products of industrialism. We had a huge supply of oil and cheap undeveloped land, and we decided to become a happy, motoring utopia. It had many practical benefits. The trouble is after a while it became a cartoon of country living."

hell, i believe it. i live in southern california, the world's capital of hastily constructed, not-quite-fire-retardant-enough mcmansions. about 5 years ago, when we were all living in era of false economic prosperity that i like to call the 'war bubble,' many of the people i knew who thought they knew a thing or two about money were buying up huge plots of land far from the city centers to build gigantic houses. the conventional wisdom at the time was that supply and demand would do their thing, people would keep pouring into these burbs, and these prices would continue to skyrocket. basically, if you sit on this land for a while, you'll be rich, right?

meanwhile, people who knew slightly less about money but still wanted them big purty houses were getting conned into shit loans whose interest rates climbed nearly immediately. you'll get that raise, and you'll be able to afford that interest, right?

WRONG. alla y'all fucked up!

turns out that housing bubble was completely unnatural, you took out a ton of loans on home equity that you no longer have, and gas prices are supremely fucked. i bet that commute from temecula is a bitch.

it's getting so bad that starbucks' earnings are starting to drop, since suburban moms can hardly afford their venti mocha crack macchiato after dropping $20 just to drive to the store (oh snap...did i mention food prices are getting fucked too?) and take little connor to soccer practice.

"Cheap oil is what made suburbia possible. But we'll run into problems with spot shortages. As we get into trouble with these supplies, our economy will suffer. Major instabilities in the system will present themselves much sooner than we are led to believe. And by that I mean the way we produce food, the way we conduct commerce, and the way we move around."

the fact of the matter is that gas being more expensive will make everything more expensive: transportation, pizza deliveries, nascar races, EVERYTHING. i believe this guy when he says it - the suburban way of life is probably fucked. im already planning to make my way into the city. what about you?

EDIT: yep. fucked.