[Graeme]

U.S. Suburbs Face Twin Perils of Climate Change and Peak Oil

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us (John Wiley & Sons, 2012), by Maggie Koerth-Baker.

Most people reading this would probably find Merriam, Kansas, very familiar. Not because they've been there, but because it's a lot like home.

Merriam is usually described as a suburb of Kansas City, Kans.—a small town that grew into a residential center for people who worked in the much larger city nearby. Yet the mental images that go with the word suburb don't really fit Merriam all that well. When I think suburb, I imagine something like Levittown, treeless insta-villages where rows of identical houses dot gleaming new cul-de-sacs recently carved out of some farmer's field. The greater Kansas City area certainly has its share of developments that would fit that description, but Merriam isn't one of them.

In fact, when I was a kid, I didn't even know Merriam existed at all. I thought it was Kansas City. Specifically, I thought it was where Kansas City began, the distinct point where you exit the Interstate and find yourself in the big city. This particular misconception has more to do with my family's regular travel plans than anything else—Merriam's main drag happens to be the same road that leads to the art museum my dad and I went to a lot and to the Christmas light displays I visited every winter with my mom. It also speaks volumes about what Merriam actually looks like, though, and it's tied to some important trends in the way most Americans live today.

scientificamerican

[kublikhan]

Here's a few sections of the above article talking about the consequences of Climate Change and Peak oil on Metros:

The warmer climate works in tandem with a wetter one. Merriam and much of the northern and eastern parts of Kansas have become a lot wetter, especially in the winter. The Midwest is experiencing heavier storms more often than it did in the past. Those storms can cause serious damage and cost communities some serious money. That's not all, though. Higher temperatures and more frequent downpours affect metro areas and their residents in a number of ways.

When you combine warm water and flash flooding, you get a risk of water-borne disease. That's because many harmful microorganisms favor higher temperatures. In 1993, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suffered an outbreak of gastrointestinal disease caused by the bacteria Cryptosporidium. This bacteria doesn't merely give you a tummy ache. Instead, it leads to a week or more of diarrhea, cramps, vomiting, and fever. Fifty-four people died. Just before the illness struck, the region had received its heaviest rainfall in fifty years.

Speaking of breathing problems, warmer springs that bloom earlier in the year have also led to longer allergy seasons, and scientists say that the higher CO2 concentrations found in traffic-heavy cities and metros are causing plants to have higher pollen counts. This means that people who weren't affected by allergies thirty or forty years ago might be sniffling and stuffy today. Air pollution is another big problem. In the heat of a hot and sunny day, tailpipe emissions from cars turn into lung-damaging, heart-straining smog.
...
As the price of gas climbs, and middle-class Americans have to start seriously thinking about whether they can afford a given trip, the residents of Merriam will find themselves without an easy, all-weather way to navigate the crazy quilt of metro towns that surrounds them. For those who work outside Merriam, it'll be harder to get to work. Inside Merriam, businesses will suffer the loss of the heavy traffic that now passes by twice a day.

Metro towns aren't self-reliant. Their fates have been tied to the fates of the towns they touch for decades. That interconnection works now because gasoline is cheap. What happens to a metro town when travel from one part to another is no longer easy and frequent, no longer something that can happen daily or hourly?

Maybe the parts of a metro can break down into tighter-knit blocks. In a world of high fuel prices, Merriam could theoretically band together with the cities of Shawnee, Mission, and Overland Park to make a smaller, more walkable version of the metro experience. Yet it likely wouldn't be as well-off as those places are today, when they can easily trade throughout the larger metro area and far beyond, when a local job doesn't have to be closely tied to local demand, when the cost of food and goods isn't also being driven up by the high cost of the fuel needed to make and transport them.

If we don't start trying to mitigate the effects of peak oil until it actually happens, Hirsch thinks we'll be looking at more than twenty years of hardship. We have two problems: our metro lifestyles require energy, but we also want to avoid the negative impacts climate change and peak oil will have on metro communities. The timeline for action: the sooner, the better.

U.S. Suburbs Face Twin Perils of Climate Change and Peak Oil

[AgentR11]

This topic does come up often enough; not surprising given that titles like “End/Death of Suburbia” are almost sysnonymous with the Peak Oil subject itself. But I'd like to offer a modest rebuttal here.

First off, climate change and peak oil are going to make everyone suffer to some extent; there's no avoiding it, urban city dweller, suburban commuter, rural homesteader, all will pay in very personal ways for our excesses.

So, why single out suburbia? I think it has to do with the Boomer generation's concept of building out freeways and manufacturing large tracts of single family housing, dependent upon a vehicle getting 10mpg on a good day, and invested with all sorts of power motif adjectives. It is certainly true enough, that peak oil would give that specific combination a very nasty trial; however, that isn't the world we are in now, and it certainly isn't the world things are moving towards. Instead, we are meeting peak oil conditions with much more durable, reliable, and efficient vehicles; we could, should we wish to do so, field vehicles getting 60-70mpg; and there are more than a few currently selling well that are in the 40mpg range. Coupled with the viability of telecommuting, remote offices, that the modern net makes possible; and you end up with a situation where those folks in Merriam, Kansas, can not only continue to work for downtown Kansas City companies; but could just as easily be working for companies in Dallas, TX or Chicago, IL.

That takes the issue of the commute challenge off the table; what's left? Trade and transport of goods. But we already know that on a pound-mile basis, even at $4 / gallon of gasoline, people still make a solid profit shipping WATER IN PLASTIC BOTTLES from place to place. Get it? There doesn't exist a price for gasoline that will create a challenge to getting food and goodies into the stores. Bob LowerClass might have trouble paying to drive his truck to the store for beer, but meh, not the end of the world if he actually has to walk a mile to the grocery store.

So, commute, food, trade, all tolerable, if pricier. In other words, we all get to suffer some, but city center isn't happy joy-joy, and suburbia isn't doom eternal.

Now, Climate Change. Again, I'm not exactly seeing how being in Merriam is worse climatalogically than Kansas City; and certainly it couldn't be worse than downtown Houston with its muddy, brackish, mosquito infested, bayous nor NY,NY either. This again, doesn't imply horror for suburbs, nor advantages for the city core. They both get to suffer nice and good.

[jedrider]

Cheap Energy, Cheap Food -- those are the substances we live on. Peak Oil and Climate Change will affect both. The problem with Suburbia as James Howard Kunstler has pointed out so many times, is that it is so BORING, especially when you can't be motoring everywhere. I personally think that the smaller towns adjacent to big Cities will do well if linked with rail and 'rapid' transport to the cities, just like it use to be. Just when we have the resources to build City Centers, we have instead decentralized our living arrangements. All those suburnban parking areas will have to be repurposed in the not so far future as farmer's markets and flea markets. It will be a rapid devolution from a motoring livestyle to the chaotic street fairs as they have in third world countries.

[AgentR11]

Ok.. I've never had to rebut an argument about "suburbia is boring" hmmm.

For an issue like "boring"; I have to fall back to just my own experience. I've lived in a fancy apartment near downtown in the city core; I've lived in a close in suburb, and I now live in a modest sized town. I'm trying *very* hard to think of something I did downtown that I don't do now; and I'm coming up blank... Comparatively, I'd have to say biking and fishing are nicer in my current location, air and noise quality are better; available goods are about the same, work's about the same; cost of abode is lower but utilities are a bit higher, a wash really.

But boring???

Boring is more about whether you are engaged with what is around you. rural.. suburb.. city core; any could be boring to one person and engaging fun to another.

[autonomous]

U.S. Suburbs Face Twin Perils of Climate Change and Peak Oil

When I think suburb, I imagine something like Levittown, treeless insta-villages where rows of identical houses dot gleaming new cul-de-sacs recently carved out of some farmer's field.

Speaking of Levittown, the developer William Levitt is known as the "Father of Suburbia." Here is a quote from the "Father of Suburbia":

"The Negroes in America are trying to do in sixty years what the Jews in the world have not wholly accomplished in six hundred years. As a Jew I have no room in my mind or heart for racial prejudice. But...I have come to know that if we sell one house to a Negro family, then ninety to ninety-five percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. That is their attitude, not ours... As a company our position is simply this: We can solve a housing problem, or we can try to solve a racial problem, but we cannot combine the two."

Quoted in Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (Oxford U.P., 1985), 241.
http://www.shmoop.com/postwar-suburbia/quotes.html

[AgentR11]

So.. yet another thoughtful thread slain by the introduction of the race issue.
Nice.

[Pops]

Thanks for posting this G, you beat me to it.

First you must define suburb, which the author didn't do very well. In my mind a suburb is a place so foreign to any means of transport other than a vehicle that you look suspicious moving around without one. A small.medium town laid out on a grid is not a suburb, small-urban isn't sub-urban. No matter how far the average commute, the built environment of a 50+ year-old small town today is designed for multiple uses, that makes it not-a-suburb.

Anyhow, it seems to me the problem of true suburbia is same as its original attraction, not only low density but isolation. Low density and strict separation of geography into work/shop/sleep/play zones accessible only by car. Remember the idea of suburbia was to have the feeling of living in the country with all the conveniences and attractions of the city only a short drive away.

Including increases in efficiency, Exxon sees demand growing by 60% for personal vehicles and 70% for commercial in the next 30 years. Even if every bit of that increased demand is satisfied by something other than oil, that still leaves oil demand at exactly where it is right now, in other words, a 30 year liquid fuel plateau. It could happen I guess but I'd be pretty surprised if it happens without an increase in price so even though efficiency may double or triple I guess the price will do that and more.

Today most people outside of urban centers commute. Even people who live in one little town drive 60 miles a day to a little job in another little town passing dozens of for rent and for sale signs simply because they can! It always amazes me how few people I meet who work in this little town of 4k lives here, they all drive 20 or 30 miles from somewhere else - and everyone who lives here drives to work near the other folk's house 30 miles away!

The difference between a suburb and even the tiny 4k urban environment of my little town is that the only thing stopping the hardware store clerk from walking/biking/scootering to work, shopping, schools and back home is cheap gas. Eventually he'll rent a house here instead of 40 miles away and the gal who used to rent that house here and drive 40 miles to work will rent his old place and walk to work herself.

That can't happen in suburbia because there isn't anything to do there besides sleep and watch TV and the basic design precludes anything else ever being there, it would be cheaper to push 'em all into a pile and start over.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/2 ... Developing

[Graeme]

Pops, Thanks for your post. You and many others on this board have put in an incredible effort to respond to my (& other people's) posts. This one is no different. That in itself is very encouraging because to me it means that people care and want to make a difference even though the prospect of doing so seems daunting.

I didn't expect to have to define suburb because after all I didn't write the article. Anyhow, I looked at wiki, which has quite a long definition. I'll post an exerpt here.

The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city (as in Australia and New Zealand) or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city (as in the United States and Canada). Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods. Suburbs first emerged on a large scale in the 19th and 20th century as a result of improved rail and road transport, leading to an increase in commuting. Suburbs tend to proliferate around cities that have an abundance of adjacent flat land.[1]

This original meaning struck me as quite interesting:

The word is derived from the Old French subburbe, which is in turn derived from the Latin suburbium, formed from sub (meaning "under") and urbs ("city"). In Ancient Rome, wealthy and important people tended to live on the hills of the city, while poorer citizens lived at lower elevations – hence "under the city".

In terms of climate change affects, I would think that low lying areas would be subject to flooding and air pollution. Of course oil prices will affect commute distances so maybe, in order to reduce fuel costs, suburbs may develop within suburbs. Or other initiatives like car pooling may occur.

I don't particularly like Exxon's view of the future because it is biased. Ideally, one would prefer a future envisaged by Greenpeace, where oil use diminishes much quicker, and efficiency strategies are greatly enhanced. Each suburban community will develop their own response. It will be interesting to see just what that will be.

[Pops]

Graeme I was referring to the author of the SciAm article not defining suburb well. Today my little town would fit his definition of a suburb or bedroom community because most of the income and growth the last 20 years is from folks commuting to larger towns down the road.

The distinction I'm trying to make is that if commuting became cost prohibitive tomorrow the little "town" would still be viable whereas the suburb would be much less so. Of course commuting won't disappear overnight but I think it already is becoming much less of a given.

My point is that the suburb is to the built environment what monoculture is to ag. It is efficient when sufficiently plentiful and cheap inputs are available but not in the least resilient when those inputs are taken away.

[jedrider]

Ok.. I've never had to rebut an argument about "suburbia is boring" hmmm.

For an issue like "boring"; I have to fall back to just my own experience. I've lived in a fancy apartment near downtown in the city core; I've lived in a close in suburb, and I now live in a modest sized town. I'm trying *very* hard to think of something I did downtown that I don't do now; and I'm coming up blank... Comparatively, I'd have to say biking and fishing are nicer in my current location, air and noise quality are better; available goods are about the same, work's about the same; cost of abode is lower but utilities are a bit higher, a wash really.

But boring???

Boring is more about whether you are engaged with what is around you. rural.. suburb.. city core; any could be boring to one person and engaging fun to another.

Good point. I'll revise that: Don't move to Boresville expecting to spend most of one's time a long trip away. However, if there are bicycle paths and suitable roads and, especially, fishing and outdoors activities, you could be way ahead of the City dwellers. The worst part of 'Suburbia' is often the lack of committed open space and park areas. It's often more like Sprawlurbia, actually. That's the part I don't like. Exurbia, really far away, is great if you can cut most of your ties with the urban area. Most people can't. How much fishing can you do?

[AgentR11]

Boring is more about whether you are engaged with what is around you. rural.. suburb.. city core; any could be boring to one person and engaging fun to another.

Good point. I'll revise that: Don't move to Boresville expecting to spend most of one's time a long trip away. However, if there are bicycle paths and suitable roads and, especially, fishing and outdoors activities, you could be way ahead of the City dwellers. The worst part of 'Suburbia' is often the lack of committed open space and park areas. It's often more like Sprawlurbia, actually. That's the part I don't like. Exurbia, really far away, is great if you can cut most of your ties with the urban area. Most people can't. How much fishing can you do?

I didn't say only fishing, I said I couldn't think of any activity I did in downtown, that I can't do here in my modest town. Fishing popped in my head, because when I lived downtown, I fished the bayous in the shadows of skyscrapers quite often, while here I have reservoir and less-altered river fishing. I honestly don't fish that much though. In the city core, you have shopping, restaurants, church, school, parks, civic activities (theatre/symphony); and here, you have shopping, restaurants, church, school, parks, civic activities (theatre/symphony). In the smaller setting, the "arts" are less skilled of course, but also somewhat "funner" in that you know the people singing, playing, or making fools of themselves on stage... In the small setting, there's no reason for public transport, even by foot, a couple hours will get you anywhere, and of course by bicycle with the red lights and such, the difference in speed vs cars isn't more than a few minutes at most. I guess you could chalk up professional sports teams as a city core advantage of interest?? But I don't even bother watching that stuff on TV, and certainly would never pay any money to see something like that. Hardly an issue worth ranking as a "peril".

I do agree with Pops that cut off, isolated enclave type suburbs could face some trouble, especially for generic middle income people that shouldn't be there in the first place, but Merriam, Kansas isn't such an area. Just doing a googlemap looksee, and it looks awesomely configured for a commuting hostile world. Looking at a 5mile x 3 mile chunk; you've got parks, small lakes, commercial areas, dense neighborhoods, housing developments that are more seclude a bit off the freeway, a nice combination of non-grid and throughway streets. Kansas City downtown itself is 10 miles away, which is absolutely perfect bike-commute distance; not to short, not to far. (so I'm a bit befuddled by the article selecting Merriam...)

nb.. as a cyclist.. paths are evil. wide, smooth asphalt is heaven incarnate.

[Plantagenet]

I couldn't think of any activity I did in downtown, that I can't do here in my modest town.

Thats my experience.

Before I moved to interior Alaska, I lived in New York (Manhatten), San Francisco-Berkeley, and Seattle.

When I first moved to Alaska I really missed all the restaurants, newspapers, foreign films, etc. that I used to enjoy back in the big city.

But now I read the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times and even PeakOil.com on the internet. I can see any foreign film I want via Netflix. I've got Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Italian, French restaurants in town, and in my freezer I've got all the moose steaks and hamburger I can eat too!

[evilgenius]

For me one of the biggest differences between an urban and a suburban environment is the amenities and their proximity. In an urban environment shops of all kinds tend to be much more closely integrated geographically with the different kinds of places people actually live. In a suburban environment shops tend to clusters, which you have to get in your car and drive to, unless you live in a house close by. Chances are, even if your house is practically next door, if you have to walk the way looks wide from the street (where the cars are), but is either dangerous or impractical if you really have to tread it. Also, public transport has a hard time precisely because things aren't laid out in grids, but are riddled with cul de sacs and streets that dead end onto parks and such. To catch the bus from any point on the interior of your average suburban cluster always entails a walk that turns out to be much farther than those which people in "walking" transport friendly cities usually have to make.
People don't like taking the hard way when there is an easy way to go. Having a car in suburbia is the simple obvious choice. Take the car away from the list of choices and the next easiest options offer what, far fewer obese people?

[AgentR11]

I lived urban, right on the edge of downtown; closest grocery store was a 0.5 miles away; in the closed off suburb, it was 1.5 miles, in my current town, 1.0 miles. People generally went to those stores the same way though, by car in each instance. The difficulty is not the reality, it is the perception. Fortunately, high cost has a way of breaking incorrect perceptions.

OTOH.. the downtown was Houston; people there power up the car to cross the street. Not kidding.

Still, I think people over-estimate the difficulty because they believe behavior won't adapt even when it must adapt.

[Pops]

From the mainstream:

Many young people are choosing to live at home for a longer period of time instead of buying. Moreover, would-be homebuyers are settling into modern apartments and condominiums, further hindering a housing rally. Shiller says the shift toward renting and city living could mean “that we will never in our lifetime see a rebound in these prices in the suburbs.”

Thats the Shiller of Case-Shiller. http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2012/03 ... erica.html
h/t: http://ckm3.blogspot.com/

The "Drive till you qualify" days seem to be over although its surely below Mr. Shillers station to mention the cost of the commute.

[evilgenius]

The "Drive till you qualify" days seem to be over although its surely below Mr. Shillers station to mention the cost of the commute.

While this is a trend I don't think it has a definite point of equilibrium associated with it. Lately I've been noticing that a great many of the higher mileage cars are being used to offset the predicament of distance and the impact that high gas prices have on that. You know, there are even SUVs out there that get 35mpg. The market for them is not the inner city driver. I think, at least in the minds of some in the burbs, their predicament is well understood, but not answered with a sense of capitulation.