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Suburban flight?

March 17, 2008 12:15 am

ASTRONOMICAL oil prices are causing problems for all Ameri- cans--from higher gas and heating-oil costs to higher food bills. Citizens in suburban locales are more likely to feel the pinch, as their very existence requires motoring. But an answer lies just down the road: cities.

If any good comes from the fossil-fuel crunch, it will appear in increased energy efficiency and a new appreciation of city-centric life. Assuming the economy continues down its current path and oil prices stay elevated, many of the amenities of modern life will become elusive. Suburban-living models could fail, leading to a new golden age for America's cities and towns.

On its face, suburban development has some appeal, but its foundations become shaky in tight financial times. Based on excessive square footage, short home life cycles, and cheap transportation, subdivision development not only renders swaths of land unproductive, it leaves homeowners out on a limb when basic commodity prices rise.

City life offers many advantages over suburban living, not all linked to transportation. Cities provide a more efficient use of space, and dwellings are usually more compact and manageable than their suburban counterparts. In turn, the suburban landscape could be reforested or let revert to farmland.

Economists have long tried to compare the cost of living in the city versus the 'burbs. Answers usually come down to individual needs and preferences, but even in 1987, a New York Times study concluded that city living is equal to or more affordable than suburban living.

Of course, some suburban areas have developed to the point where they are pseudo-towns themselves, with jobs and commercial and industrial development near at hand. Our area is not so fortunate.

The potential collapse of the suburban lifestyle is becoming a popular topic. The Atlantic magazine ran a piece on a future when McMansions become next-generation slums, and social critics such as James Howard Kunstler have been deriding our nation's investment in bedroom communities, highways, and byways as shortsighted and risky.

Apocalyptic visions are unlikely to materialize, but the reasons for skepticism are solid: Suburban living requires a certain type of economic climate whose constancy is not guaranteed. It doesn't take a weatherman to tell that the winds are shifting.

Current trends in real-estate taxes, fuel prices, and home values may swing the pendulum away from bedroom-community living. In much the same way urban decay and crime pushed people out of cities in the '60s and '70s, high commodity prices could force people back into those same areas.

If there is an exodus from suburbia, cities like Fredericksburg need to be ready, willing, and able to once again become the thriving and vibrant hearts of restored communities.