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

We could do some household and neighborhood or town wind energy. But even this will run up eventually against the problem of needing an underlying fossil fuel economy to fabricate the hardware. Same with photovoltaic (solar) energy. We're going to be disappointed by what these things can do for us.

The two elements of the suburban pattern that cause the greatest problems are the extreme separation of uses and the vast distances between things

I'm serenely convinced that we are heading into what will amount to a time out from technological progress as we know it.

The salient fact about the decades ahead is that we are entering a permanent global energy crisis and it will change everything about how we live.

Consider how badly-built suburbia is. Many business buildings are not designed to outlast their tax depreciation periods, and the McHouses are made of particle board, vinyl siding, and stapled-on trim. A lot of suburbia will simply become the slums of the future. Most of the rest will be salvage or ruins.

Suburbia is not going to run on biodiesel. The easy-motoring tourist industry is not going to run on biodiesel, wind power and solar fuel.