Gas Prices, and Building on a Human Scale
July 3rd, 2008, by Jeremy Krygsman
Starting with Hurricane Katrina’s ravaging of New Orleans three years ago in 2005, gas prices have continued their steady summer climb. Oil prices hit $145 U.S. Dollars a barrel today, which really has not come as a surprise to anyone. In fact, the price of oil barely makes the news anymore.
What does fill the headlines, however, are regular announcements of manufacturing plant closures, airline cutbacks, and the like. Here in Ontario the auto industry, which is an economic mainstay, exports over 90% of its product south of the border to the United States. Needless to say, people in the U.S. currently don’t have a very large appetite for automobiles right now. At the same time, the U.S. housing/mortgage crisis, which was at first expected to quickly dissipate, has continued with vigour, forcing many out of their sprawling suburban homes.
Thousands of Americans can no longer afford to live in the suburbs on their quarter acre lots and mazes of cul-de-sacs and repetitive miles of collector and arterial roads. They can’t afford their big cars, and they can’t afford their big houses. The price of fuel is one of the main reasons for this, along with the fact that cheap mansions combined with easy mortgages has simply resulted in way to many houses spread over far too much land.
Houses aren’t the only things that are taking up way to much space though. At the crossroads between any six lane suburban arterial road likely lies a huge expanse of paved open space, like this example in Mesa, Arizona.
This ridiculous arrangement is a result of cheap oil and suburban sprawl, it is unsustainable, and like the rest of suburban American, it is not built at a human scale. Therefore, such developments should be discontinued for good.
There are several economic reasons to stop this kind of development from happening in the future, especially in this time of turmoil. But the real fault of this lack of planning is that it is not really built for humans. It is built for the sole purpose of selling stuff, and does not enhance our lives in any way (besides allowing us to get lots of cheap stuff).
A place that is built on a human scale should be walkable, and a pleasurable environment: somewhere you might actually want to enjoy time in. It should be not only accessible, but pleasurable, to access the area by something other than an automobile. A giant, bare parking lot with giant big box stores on its fringes is not such an environment. We can do better, but it won’t come easy – but the good news is, we won’t necessarily have to demolish everything and start over. I’ll share some of my ideas and research on the subject in my next post!
More items related to The Walmart Effect
Where did you get your blog layout from? I’d like to get one like it for my blog.
It’s a highly modified version of Natural Essence by Viktor Persson
You make an interesting point of large corporate structures, especially malls and shopping centers, not being made to a human scale. I’m rather interested in seeing what you have in mind on the subject. How can a place that is made to “sell stuff” be made to a human scale? Should I be imagining something like an open market? I’ll keep an eye on this blog.
I’m sorry, Jeremy, but as someone who invests heavily in the oil industry I just couldn’t let that first statement go unchallenged. “Starting with Hurricane Katrina’s ravaging of New Orleans three years ago in 2005, gas prices have continued their steady summer climb.” In fact, on the day Katrina hit New Orleans, August 23, 2005, Oil closed at $65.81 USD. It rose a bit more in the following 3 weeks but once it became apparent that the supply would not be significantly interrupted in any long-term way, it quickly fell back to pre-Katrina levels. Since then, the lowest price in the past 3 years was Jan 17, 2007, at $51.71. The biggest significant event to happen aroung that time in the oil market was the turnover of the US Senate and House of Representatives to the Democrat majority. The entire rise in oil prices, which Democrats are presently blaming on President Bush, have instead taken place during this Democrat Congress. Coincidence? Not when you consider that Congress has steadfastly maintained policies that restrict domestic supplies of oil, which keep oil prices high. Don’t blame Katrina; Don’t blame Bush. Blame Democrats.
Prices are for Light Sweet Crude per barrel. See http://futures.tradingcharts.com/old_hist_CO.html and http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060718113843AActJ2A for sources.
Rex
Take a look at this graph from GasBuddy.com (edited by me) here:
http://www.adigitalcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/summer-gas-spikes.gif
(click for fullsize)
It shows that starting after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, a series of summer price spikes has culminated in this year’s (again) record shattering numbers. I’m not blaming Bush, and I’m not blaming Democrats either.
From what I’ve read (see this article in Macleans), it’s becoming harder for crude production to continue to meet rising demand growth around the world. Combined with a lack of refining capacity, prices are going through the roof.
In any case, we should be using these price shocks as a wake up call to start changing stupidly wasteful and inefficient land use policies, especially in the United States, but in Canada as well.