Via Atrios, more news of the death of suburbia:

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.

Hard to tell what effect this might have in a place like Lancaster County; are we considered the outer ring of Philadelphia’s suburbs? We probably should be, though as we saw yesterday, some claim that county home prices are still rising (which, having watched several homes for sale in my neighborhood sit and sit, I don’t believe for a moment); and at the very least, we haven’t been as affected by the housing crisis as some other areas.

In any event, not everyone’s predicting the end of the suburban idyll, though many expert say that if the high cost of energy isn’t merely a blip on the historical radar screen but a lasting condition, the suburbs may indeed wither away - though gradually:

“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.”

Now’s the time, in other word, for urban revitalization. But that’s going to cause a whole new raft of arguments, isn’t it? For revitalization may very well lead to gentrification; if home prices in the city rise, that’s going to exert a whole new set of forces on city residents, not the least of which will be higher taxes. I can see the TalkBack threads now…