Cities like Detroit exist because they occupy important sites. In the case of Detroit, it sits on a river between two great lakes - very important and strategic.

In the decades to come, the successful places will tend to be the smaller traditional towns and cities with viable farming hinterlands.

Anyone who studies the energy predicament understands its connection with the operations of capital - and by this I do not mean capitalism as an ideology, I mean the behavior of acquired wealth and its deployment for productive purpose. (A lot of educated idiots don't understand this, and we waste a lot of time blathering about capitalism.)

The living arrangements American now think of as normal are bankrupting us economically, socially, ecologically and spiritually.

The industrial age is over. What follows will be life lived on a much smaller and finer scale.

We're not going to reform our moronic land-use laws, which mandate suburban sprawl one way or another. They're simply going to be ignored when it becomes self-evident that we cannot build stuff that way anymore.

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