[PRCo] Re: Beyond the Motor City ~ Video: Preview | Blueprint America

[Derrick Brashear]

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Schneider Fred
<fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
> About a year ago, perhaps more Dennis, and the rest of you, I
> suggested to a friend of mine that the future held the wealthy moving
> back into the cities and evicting the poor.   The poor would then
> move to the suburbs.   My friend (I would prefer to keep him nameless
> other than to state that he has earned his living as a transportation
> consultant in about six nations over the last 40 years) added the
> punch line:   "And the poor will be breaking up the furniture to feed
> the fireplaces in the suburbs to keep warm."
>
> This is a rather dim outlook but my personal prediction holds that
> the price of motor fuels will go back up to $4.00 or more a gallon
> when this global recession is over.   That might be enough to trigger
> the next recession.   Perhaps after two or three of them in a row, we
> will finally understand that it is us driving the price of oil
> because we are running out.   Maybe then we will do something about
> alternatives.
>
> But if we are looking at five year cycles ... twenty years from now
> many of us on this list will not be here to see if Fred's prediction
> was correct or not.

Moving close to the jobs can, but doesn't necessarily, mean moving
back into the cities.

Downtown Pittsburgh still has companies but not like it did.
Cranberry's office parks are lower density but there are potentially
jobs there you could live close to.

The question becomes whether low density makes e.g. bus service
sufficiently slow or annoying if you get to the point where you *must*
provide it because there's no fuel that *then* the jobs move again.