Via Matt Y., interesting piece over at Ryan Avent’s DC Streestblog on how government policy might actually be bailing out sprawl:
Foreclosures have been concentrated on urban fringes, so federal efforts to modify mortgages and otherwise reduce defaults have tended to direct more aid to exurbs than inner suburbs and city centers. In addition, rates of […]

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Interested in the reaction to the Columbia Avenue crime story last week, particularly the folks who said - hey, I live near there, and it isn’t that bad.
So do I. And yes it is.

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Coming into town along Columbia Avenue or sometimes Marietta Pike, I’m struck by the number of big, stately homes for sale in the School Lane Hills area.
Some of them have been on the market for quite some time. And I don’t know that I attribute that to the general economic downturn, the fact that all […]

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Atrios:
One of the enduring mysteries to me is how so much of our population voluntarily chooses to live in places where walking - or even taking a cab - home from a bar, any bar, really isn’t an option. While I believe there is a shortage of walkable communities in many parts of the country, […]

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Hm. Via Atrios, a story of how Massachusetts teenagers are losing their licenses faster than ever before because of a 2007 state law that suspended teens’ licenses for 90 days after a single speeding ticket; teens must also pay a $500 fee to have the license reinstated.
Draconian? Teens - and their parents - think so:
They complain […]

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Veddy interesting forum over at the NYT’s Freakonomics blog on the future of the American suburb - whether, in the era of high energy prices, it’s destined to collapse, to evolve, or just keep on keeping on.
Perhaps the most interesting response to the question of what our suburbs look like in 40 years comes from […]

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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 […]

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Interesting. Kunstler gives an interview to NPR in which he talks about the “end of surburbia as we know it” - a consistent theme with him - and says this:
Kunstler says that big cities will become more population dense at their centers and along waterfronts, but they’ll essentially contract as people will move to smaller […]

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Via Sullivan, Felix Salmon makes a point about the culture of the long-distance commute:
Over the very long term, I suspect we’ll look back on the era of the 85-mile commute as a historical curiosity. That kind of distance is so enormous compared to any kind of human scaling that it just doesn’t make sense as […]

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The young couple lives outside a major city in a nearby state, and life has been good. They have two young children; he’s a lawyer, and she has stayed at home with the kids these past few years. They lived about 10 minutes from the city, and his job, in a solid older home.
But you know how […]

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Via Matt Y., “The American Dream News” responds to Christopher Leinberger, an academic who (in The Atlantic, among other places) has predicted the death of the suburbs; AmDreamNews ridicules this as (might) be apropos, but goes a little bit too far, I think, in proclaiming that “we will get over the high prices of energy, […]

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An interview last week with a local official connected with this drive to get more people to move into the City of Lancaster. I asked a bunch of questions, and when I was done, he asked one:
So, what would it take to get you to move into the city?
I laughed and dodged the question. Because the answer is: […]

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