When a society is stressed, when it comes up against things that are hard to understand, you get a lot of delusional thinking.

The suburban cycle which began a hundred years ago is nearly over. We are in for a period of contraction and economic hardship.

We will have to make new arrangements, or revive bygone ones. We may, for another example, see the return of the boarding house.

We are in for a fiesta of default, repossession, and distress selling of suburban property, much of which will lose its presumed usefulness and monetary value in an energy-scarce economy.

Community is not something you have, like pizza. Now is it something you can buy. It's a living organism based on a web of interdependencies- which is to say, a local economy. It expresses itself physically as connectedness, as buildings actively relating to each other, and to whatever public space exists, be it the street, or the courthouse or the village green.

I think the deeper truth is that the Kyoto Protocols will not be followed by anyone really and that, in effect, nothing will be done to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions.

For instance, the most common type of "affordable housing" in the world comes in the form of apartments over stores.