[GJM] Fw: [globalnetnews-summary] Life on the fringes of U.S. suburbia becomes untenable with rising gas costs

[mary rose]

While those leaving the outer urban and suburban areas may save on
gasoline, since food has to be transported into the cities from a great
distance, the price of food will escalate accordingly.  As well, water
resources will not be so easy to gain access to.

I don't think there is any win-win scenario here.  Those in the outlying
areas may be better off to try and rent out rooms in their large homes
in order to cover the extra expense of traveling into the city to work.
But then many more jobs will be disappearing as well as energy costs
make the cost of doing business too expensive to bear. These costs
cannot be passed on to the consumer who is fast cutting back on
expenses as well.

But at least in the suburban areas there is enough yard space to raise
food using permaculture as a means to do so, whereas in crowded
citiies there may not be.

Where there are homes in outer urban and suburban areas, barrels
can be installed to cache rain water for use on edible plants, and other
uses besides drinking.

Swamp coolers, which use less energy than air conditioners may also
be a goodness send in suburban areas.

Shopping results for swamp coolers  Symphony Evaporative Swamp Coolers ... 
$229.95 - Air & Water
AF-330 by NewAir- Portable Evaporative ... $139.95 - Air & Water
Fujitronic FH-797 The Most Powerful ... $119.00 - Brilliantstore.com

Evaporative cooler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  In the United States, 
small-scale evaporative coolers are called swamp coolers .... Evaporative 
coolers are colloquially referred to as swamp coolers in the ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooling - 50k - Cached - Similar pages

Again, people may want to get solar cookers to save on energy as well. These 
can be used on apt. decks if the sun is coming in the right direction. 
Google for information on how to purchase or make your own.

People are going to have to become very creative.  And the government is 
going to be absolutely overwhelmed -- remember that at the present time, gov 
is geared to fight wars not to look out after the well-being of people. And, 
that our economy currently resides in the manufature of weapons and other 
materials geared for use in war.  And, that gov is also corporate owned, 
lock, stock and barrel by the large corporations due to this. So, we can't 
count on them.  And politics is a completely left-brain ideology, which does 
not have the ability to manage reality. So, we-the-people are going to have 
to do this ourselves.  So, let's do this in as kind, and in as loving a 
maner as possible.  Try to grow as much food as is possible in as small a 
space as possible. The Native Americans use to grow enough for five 
famililes around them to ensure that all were fed.

We can do this, but it means getting out of your comfort zone and being kind 
to strangers, helping those who have lost their jobs, sharing food, sharing 
space in your home for those who are needy.  Park your car outside the 
garage and cover it with a car cover --  put up some cots for sleeping 
space, hang some lines where clothing can be hung.  Offer food if possible. 
Most people are looking for a hand up not a hand out.  Let them do chores 
around the house and yard in return for what you offer.  Be firm about no 
drugs, drinking, or smoking.  Help people get medical care when needed.

Drug useage and alcohol useage will increase as those who have lost their 
homes, jobs, and income feel a loss of identity, and try to handle their 
pain. Many in the upper class will turn to drug-dealing in order to continue 
their lifestyle, maintaining their homes, and putting their children through 
school.  Those who make the most money from drugs are not users, only 
dealers.  They will be club joiners, and church goers, people who will "fit 
themselves into the neighborhood" in order to avoid arousing suspicion.

Be kind, be gentle and be understanding.  This can happen to you just as 
easily as the next person. .

with love and gratitude for all that we do together.

mary rose

We must be the change we want to see in our lives.

 Now, here's the article that inspired my rant.
 .

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "GlobalCirclenet" <webmaster at globalcircle.net>
To: <globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net>
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 11:59 AM
Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Life on the fringes of U.S. suburbia 
becomes untenable with rising gas costs


Life on the fringes of U.S. suburbia becomes untenable with rising gas costs
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/24/business/exurbs.php

ELIZABETH, Colorado: Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are 
under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, 
heating and cooling homes on the outer edges of metropolitan areas.

Just off Singing Hills Road, in one of hundreds of two-story homes dotting a 
former cattle ranch beyond the southern fringes of Denver, Phil Boyle and 
his family openly wonder if they will have to move close to town to get some 
relief.

They still revel in the space and quiet that has drawn a steady exodus from 
U.S. cities toward places like this for more than half a century. Their 
living room ceiling soars two stories high. A swing-set sways in the breeze 
in their backyard. Their wrap-around porch looks out over the flat scrub of 
the high plains to the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

But life on the distant fringes of suburbia is beginning to feel untenable. 
Boyle and his wife must drive nearly an hour to their jobs in the high-tech 
corridor of southern Denver. With gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, Boyle 
recently paid $121 to fill his pickup truck with diesel. The price of 
propane to heat their spacious house has more than doubled in recent years.

Though Boyle finds city life unappealing, it's now up for reconsideration.

"Living closer in, in a smaller space, where you don't have that commute," 
he said. "It's definitely something we talk about. Before it was, 'We spend 
too much time driving.' Now, it's, 'We spend too much time and money 
driving."'

As the realization takes hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary 
blip than a restructuring with lasting consequences, the high cost of fuel 
is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while 
exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes 
set far from urban jobs.

In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the 
urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to 
analysis by Moody's Economy.com.

In Denver, housing prices in the urban core rose steadily from 2003 until 
late last year compared with previous years, before dipping nearly 5 percent 
in the past three months of last year, according to Economy.com. But house 
prices in the suburbs began falling earlier, in the middle of 2006, and then 
accelerated, dropping by 7 percent the past three months of the year.

Many factors have propelled the unraveling of U.S. real estate, from the 
mortgage crisis to a staggering excess of home construction, making it hard 
to pinpoint the impact of any single force. But economists and real estate 
agents are growing convinced that the rising cost of energy is a primary 
factor pushing home prices down in the suburbs - particularly in the outer 
rings.

More than three-fourths of prospective homebuyers are more inclined to live 
in an urban area because of fuel prices, according to a recent survey of 903 
real estate agents with Coldwell Banker, a national brokerage.

Some proclaim the unfolding demise of suburbia.

"Many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that 
are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 
1960s and '70s - slums characterized by poverty, crime and decay," said 
Christopher Leinberger, an urban land use expert, in a recent essay in the 
Atlantic Monthly.

Most experts do not share such apocalyptic visions, seeing instead a gradual 
reordering.

"It's like an ebbing of this suburban tide," said Joe Cortright, an 
economist at the consulting group Impresa in Portland, Oregon. "There's 
going to be this kind of reversal of desirability. Typically, Americans have 
felt the periphery was most desirable, and now there's going to be a 
reversion to the center."

In a recent study, Cortright found that house prices in the urban centers of 
Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland and Tampa have fared 
significantly better than those in the suburbs. So-called exurbs - 
communities sprouting on the distant edges of metropolitan areas - have 
suffered worst of all, Cortright found.

Basic household arithmetic appears to be furthering the trend: In 2003, the 
average suburban household spent $1,422 a year on gasoline, according to the 
Bureau of Labor Statistics. By April of this year - when gas prices were 
about $3.60 a gallon - the same household was buying gas at a rate of $3,196 
a year, more than doubling consumption in dollar terms in less than five 
years.

In March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles on public roads than in the 
same month the previous year, a 4.3 percent decrease. It was the sharpest 
one-month drop since the Federal Highway Administration began keeping 
records in 1942.

Long before the recent spike in the price of energy, environmentalists 
decried suburban sprawl as a waste of land, energy, and tax dollars: 
Governments from Virginia to California have in recent decades lavished 
resources on building roads and schools for new subdivisions in the outer 
rings of development while skimping on maintaining facilities closer in. 
Many governments now focus on reviving their downtowns.

In Denver - a classic American city with snarling freeway traffic across a 
vast acreage of strip malls, ranch houses and office parks - the city has 
seen an urban renaissance over the past decade.

A planned $6.1 billion commuter rail system has been going in over the past 
four years, drawing people downtown without cars, while crystallizing swift 
sales of densely clustered condos near stations.

Coors Field, the intimate, brick-fronted baseball stadium for the Colorado 
Rockies, has transformed the surrounding area from a desolate area into 
trendy Lower Downtown, a neighborhood of restaurants and microbreweries in 
restored warehouses. Along the Platte River, new condos set on a park strip 
offer an arresting tableau of glass, steel, and futuristic geometry, 
attracting throngs of buyers at rising prices.

"This is a city where it's fun to be in the center," said Tim Burleigh, 56, 
who sold his house in the suburbs and now walks to Rockies games from his 
downtown condo.

To Denver's Mayor John Hickenlooper, $4 gasoline offers a useful push 
forward on such plans.

"It can be an accelerator," he said during an interview inside the imposing, 
column-fronted City Hall. "It's not going to be the dagger in the heart of 
suburban sprawl, but there's a certain inclination, a certain momentum back 
toward downtown."

Elizabeth is the archetype of a once-rural community sucked into the orbit 
of the expanding metropolis, its ranchlands given over to porches, picket 
fences and two-car garages.

Megan Werner, 39, a mother of three, moved here five years ago from a suburb 
closer to Denver, where the houses were packed together. She and her husband 
bought a home set on a 1.5 acre, or 0.61 hectare, lot in the Deer Creek Farm 
subdivision. The space justified her husband's 40-minute commute.

"We wanted more than a postage stamp," she said, as her 5-year-old daughter 
walked barefoot across the driveway.

It used to cost her about $30 to fill her Honda minivan with gas. Now, it's 
more like $50, and she coordinates her trips - shopping in town, combined 
with dance lessons for her kids. But she has no thoughts of leaving.

"I can open up my door, and my kids can play," Werner said.

For others, though, new math is altering the choice of where to live. Houses 
are sitting on the market longer than years past. "The pool of buyers is 
diminishing," said Jace Glick, a realtor with Re/Max Alliance in Parker, 
next to Elizabeth.

Juanita Johnson and her husband, both retired Denver school teachers, moved 
here last August, after three decades in the city and a few years in the 
mountains. They bought a four-bedroom house for $415,000.

Last winter, they spent $3,000 just on propane to heat the place, she said. 
Suddenly, this seems like a place to flee.

"We'd sell if we could, but we'd lose our shirt," Johnson said. On a recent 
walk, she counted 15 "For Sale" signs. A similar home nearby is listed below 
$400,000.

"I was so glad to get out of the city, the pollution the traffic, the 
crime," she said. Now, the suburbs seem mean. "I wouldn't do this again."