Americans threw away their communities in order to save a few dollars on hair dryers and plastic food storage tubs, never stopping to reflect on what they were destroying.

Suburbia is the insidious cartoon of the country house in a cartoon of the country.

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

In my view, suburbia in general has very poor prospects. I think it will only become devalued and probably more dangerous. It's chief characteristic was that it represented a living arrangement with no future - and that future is now here.

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

Peak oil is already upon us. It is destroying our banking system, that is, our system for marshalling capital, and that is about to put us out of business-as-usual. So, we have to carry on with business-not-so-usual. This could mean anything from your children finding careers in farming (rather than show biz or plastic surgery) to reorganizing households differently to traveling from New York to Boston by boat.

At the heart of our misunderstanding and infantile behavior is the wish for a miracle cure.