There are plenty of resources. There are too many people. Most of them live in cities, where they spend their time gazing at their navels.

It must run on the collective intelligence of Greens and hippies.

About how this is all going to turn out. Lots of folks talking about doom & gloom, including me, but regardless of whether or not that's a done deal I tend to be curious about what happens next.

Specifically, let's say just for giggles that peak oil is true (and ignore climate change for a moment since it's an equally tough nut). Thinking about reading in Jared Diamond's "Collapse", I got the idea that we're going to move towards something like Australia... kinda. That is, folks in cities because - as noticed - there is an efficiency there. You don't have to spend as much energy heating your domicile if 2 or more of it's sides are shared with neighbors. Public transport becomes more predictable due to larger numbers. Etc etc etc...

But then you have farmlands, and you need to be able to that food places obviously. You won't have people stacked like cordwood out there.

He semi-suggested Australia as a model, with a lot less emphasis on suburbs than we have. In their case I believe water is more of an cause for this than oil, although undoubtedly that isn't far behind.

Even without people like Kunstler saying so, that model seems a lot more logical.

Most useful - if frightening - thing I've seen on Salon in ages. The Transportation as a % of Income map for Las Vegas is startling.

lets see the same map with real estate prices measured in dollars per square foot. I'm sitting at $187 per square foot in suburbia for the house. If you include the yard, it drops to $8.6 per square foot. Is a low-carbon existence worth spending $347 or higher per square foot for living space? in such a world I expect you'll not be able to buy property but instead will be at the mercy of a landlord as you watch your living space degrade around you because a landlord won't spend a penny that isn't necessary to fix your apartment.

Yeah, I know people own urban property. But either it's tiny, really crap quality, in an unsafe neighborhood, or they've been able to flip multiple properties over the past couple decades to where they can afford something nice.

I do wish people would stop drawing conclusions from simplistic models like this map. The entire model should take into account cost of real estate, number of jobs versus number of people in an area, room for business expansion (i.e. more jobs), infrastructure for transporting goods to and from businesses, number of food sources, vulnerability of food sources and food reserves (how may days can you survive without any food deliveries to the city assuming 1800 calories per person per day.)

Additional issues to consider our evacuation in case of disaster (Katrina type disasters can happen anywhere). If your only transport is a train, how many rail lines and more importantly, how many cars are available? Do the math to figure out how long it would take to evacuate your city. we saw how bad things screwed up with Katrina and learned a lot about how automobile transportation systems fail in the disaster. Think ahead about how mass transit systems will fail in the disaster and how many people will be stranded in the city without food and possibly without water.

how is your transportation system fragile? rail-based transport is incredibly fragile and very difficult to repair. Remember, only takes a couple of people to completely disrupt a rail line. I can think of at least half a dozen ways using nothing more than tools found in garden shops or metal shops. repairing track damage after there's been an accident, is a multi-day effort at the best of times. automobile-based transit systems are much harder to screw up in some ways. They never stop as long as there is some surface for the vehicles to run over. Even major multicar accidents never completely stop a highway.

when you add up all the numbers and add that hard to quantify personal safety and quality of life I argue it's no longer clear that urban living is worth the cost even if you do have a low carbon footprint.

So Andrew, I beg of you. Do a little more sophisticated modeling because your incomplete analysis is not helping anyone. At the very least, please, please, please start looking at other issues around urban infrastructure such as those I've raised here. Look at the amount of energy it takes to keep New York City water flowing. Look at the number of people, reservoirs, feed lines, excavation, and leakage tolerated. That in itself is a fascinating story.

I know personally I'm on pace to decrease my driving by 4000 miles this year over '07. And '07 was 1000 miles less than '06.

I hope the oil companies know how well they've shot themselves in the foot, because within about 5 years US consumers are going to significantly decrease their gasoline consumption, and big oil they won't have a leg to stand on.

I do wish people would stop drawing conclusions from simplistic models like this map. The entire model should take into account cost of real estate

They do have maps, at that site, which show the combined cost of housing and transportation expenses. Suburbia looks just as bad even then.

Is a low-carbon existence worth spending $347 or higher per square foot for living space?

It is if the increased cost of housing is offset by decreased transportation expenses (and/or decreased transit time - time is money).

Yeah, I know people own urban property. But either it's tiny, really crap quality, in an unsafe neighborhood

And this is different from suburban property these days HOW exactly?

how may days can you survive without any food deliveries to the city assuming 1800 calories per person per day.

How many days will suburbia last without any food deliveries? And where's the big money concentrated to buy food in the first place? Oh yeah, the city. Food - like most goods and services - tends to be attracted toward money.

Additional issues to consider our evacuation in case of disaster

Road and transit lines converge in big cities. My guess is you'd stand a better chance getting out of a big city than you would getting out of suburbia - especially if your evacuation route out of suburbia crosses thru other suburbs or, worse, the city itself.

we saw how bad things screwed up with Katrina

People who were formerly clueless saw how bad off you are if you're really poor in this country. The rest of us knew it all along.

Think ahead about how mass transit systems will fail in the disaster and how many people will be stranded in the city without food and possibly without water.

And you think suburbia would be any better off? What happens if the freeways go down and/or the utilities are cut and/or you don't have enough gas in your car to get anywhere? At least in the city you can walk from area to area looking for resources. Good luck walking around suburbia.

rail-based transport is incredibly fragile and very difficult to repair. Remember, only takes a couple of people to completely disrupt a rail line.

Yeah, and roads are less fragile how exactly? You could cripple Los Angeles traffic (even worse than it is already) by knocking out a single key interchange. Bridges also present a major vulnerability for suburban traffic, where applicable. Rail lines can also be quickly repaired - roads aren't so easy to fix. And without gasoline your roads are useless. What happens to suburbia if there's a major blackout, everyone's stuck in crippling traffic trying to evacuate and people start to run out of gas (no electricity = no gas pumps)? People in suburbia are far more vulnerable to disruptions due to retail fuel shortages than people in the city, who have alternatives.