Connecting The Dots On High Gas Prices

Pundits may not be facing up to the ultimate answer to rising energy costs — our physical environment — but the American consumer is already deep into the calculus, says Anthony Flint, author of This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America.

A friend of mine switched jobs recently, from a big employer in an office park off Boston’s second beltway, to offices downtown. Before, he had a two-hour roundtrip commute driving alone in his car; now he walks to the train station in Boston’s Roslindale section and rides 10 minutes, just enough time to read the Wall Street Journal, he says. With the shorter commute he’s had more time to be active in the neighborhood, where the storefronts on Washington Street are getting makeovers one after the other, and new restaurants seem to open every few months. He marvels at the prices at the local gas station just like everybody else in Boston

As oil creeps up to $100 a barrel, news stories dwell on outraged SUV drivers shelling out $70 a tank, police departments cutting back on patrols, and calls for waiving state gas taxes. We’ve learned all about hybrid cars and the need for alternative energy (solar, wind, and hydrogen), energy independence, and conservation. But the discussion always comes right up to the ultimate reason we use so much energy — our physical environment and how we live — and then backs away.

Yes, more people are interested in taking transit or walking more. But millions are in no position to do that. There’s no transit to take and there’s nothing to walk to. It couldn’t be more obvious to planners how big a piece of the picture this is — development patterns predicated on profligate energy consumption. Yet suburban development remains the 800-pound gorilla in the room. The good news is, new forms of development that require less driving and more efficient use of energy are teed up and ready to go.

Planetizen