So Long, Suburbia?

Keen readers may have spotted that we’ve been featuring reports about the future decline of the suburbs for a few months now, and now Business Week picks up the theme and interviews author James Kunstler about how the end of the ‘automobile age’ will also damage the communities it helped to build. Kunstler sats that major instabilities in the system will change the way we produce food, the way we conduct commerce, and the way we move around:

What about biofuels?
We will use all of them, probably. But we will be greatly disappointed by what they can do for us. We certainly aren’t going to run Wal-Mart, Disney World and the highway system on any combination of solar, wind, nuclear, ethanol, biodiesel, or used french-fry oil.

Isn’t it a bit radical to declare game over for Wal-Mart?
It is part and parcel of the suburban predicament. How long can they maintain their warehouse-on-wheels as the price of motor fuels goes up?

How will the U.S. have to adapt?
Virtually anything organized on a grand scale is liable to fall into trouble—government, finance, corporate enterprise, agribusiness, schools. Our gigantic metroplex cities will prove to be inconsistent with the energy diet of our future. I think our smaller cities and towns will be reactivated. We are going to be a far less affluent society.

Business Week: Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?