The fortunate and successful New Urbanists will be the ones who can find local infill projects in small towns and small cities associated with farming, water transport, (perhaps rail too) and water power. I do not believe personally that we will retrofit much of suburbia in the way many people wish we might. The capital won't be there, and I'm rather convinced that the population is headed down - though this will be a lagging effect, because even starving people have sex.

The "Green" community, the enviro people, are preoccupied with running all the cars differently. Our techno-grandiosity has us gibbering about high-speed rail - which we don't have the capital for anymore - but nobody is interested in repairing the existing rail system, which would be far less costly and hugely beneficial for us. In short, we are acting cluelessly. And life is tragic. The clueless usually suffer.

A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.

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.

Despite the obvious damage now visible in the entropic desolation of every American home town, Wal-Mart managed to install itself in the pantheon of American Dream icons, along with apple pie, motherhood, and Coca Cola.

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

I abhor the word "consumer." Consumers, unlike citizens, have no implicit duties, obligations, or responsibilities to the common good. It's a degrading term. The use of it degrades the public discussion.