Oh Well! Suburbs Were Great While They Lasted

In a piece so mercilessly grim and certain of its premises that it's worth a read, Paul Harris of England's newspaper The Observer explains that the jig is up for "America's Eden." Harris leans heavily on doomsayer James Howard Kunstler, author of the "Long Emergency," who, Harris points out, "postulates the end of suburbia." In drawing up his schedule of catastrophy, Harris exhibits a natural way with hyperbole, suggesting that the bump in oil prices "threatens a way of life where pavements [sidewalks] are rare and everyone moves by car." This, and the much-prognosticated collapse of home prices, inspire language once reserved for nuclear holocaust and Soviet world domination. "Those warning of a coming crisis believe suburbia's economic collapse would force a rethink of the fundamentals of the American way of life."

Near the end of his piece, Harris hedges his bets. Before introducing "Sprawl" author and suburb defender Robert Bruegmann, Harris sportingly admits, "Most Americans have still chosen to live [in the suburbs], which leads some to believe predictions of a crisis are overblown." But that's not half as fun a story as postulating the end of suburbia.