03-15-2017, 04:10 PM
Quote:If we become more urban, doesn't that mean that many suburban areas will have to embrace the denser housing patterns they have so far rejected in order to make public transit for feasible and reduce dependency on the private auto. On the old forum I had a thread titled "Will We Ever Reduce Auto Dependency" and got a mixture of respondents. Many seemed to think that we don't as yet have the will to do so, and I tend to agree more and more. The wild card is whether the Millennials, once they began to start families, will continue to embrace urban living or will they follow in the footsteps of previous gens and head for the car dependent suburbs.
I am uncertain that consumer preferences are the sole determining factor. The Great Recession had a serious impact on fuel consumption (already slowing previously due to rising prices) and miles driven. Rising in resource consumption in the erstwhile "Third World" will affect prices even more going forward, to which we an add any future action on CO2 emission. Fossil Fuels are a non-renewable resource, and average earnings are not exactly growing gangbusters, and neither is credit consumption. I personally suspect that we have essentially passed the peak of that particular lifestyle, although unlike, say, Kunstler I don't expect it to all evaporate in the next few years (which he has been claiming for at least a decade now).