The End of Suburbia As We Know It?

When James Howard Kunstler describes the future of the American suburbs, it sounds like he’s describing a disaster movie.

The housing crisis, he says, isn’t just a low point in a real estate business cycle. High gas prices aren’t just a temporary problem for suburban commuters. None of those problems will go away.


We’re at the end of the suburban phase of American history, he says. “We’ve invested all our post World War II wealth in an infrastructure of daily life that has no future.”

Kunstler, an author who writes widely on architecture, says suburbs were able to develop, because of cheap oil and cheap land but our dwindling natural resources will not be able to sustain the heavy demands of suburbia and exurbia in the future. “We’re just not going to be able to run them,” he says. “It’s unfortunate, it’s tragic, but it’s the truth.”

NPR