BIKE: No gas, new city

[rcbaker]

Due to the increasingly unfavorable economics of car-centric urban design,
TxDOT is effectively broke -- and is being forced to issue huge amounts of bond debt 
plus to try to turn existing state highways into toll roads to raise more cash. All 
symptoms of a serious addiction.

Incidently, RMAs or regional mobility authorities may be viewed as legal firewalls 
to shield TxDOT from the problems the debt and environmental problems of toll roads 
while still controlling them. After issuing billions in debt for SH 130 and associated toll
roads without any need for an RMA, TxDOT has now gotten cold feet and wants local
governments to take over the same craziness -- to keep issuing debt in such a way that 
TxDOT keeps control, but while putting the risks on local governments. -- Roger

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http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2003/11/06/local/iq_2522664.txt


No gas, new city
By David Steinkraus

RACINE - It doesn't matter whether you like or dislike the ideas that form the New 
Urbanism, said author Jim Kunstler. The reality is that this will be your life.

Kunstler, the author of several books on the future of cities, will speak Monday at the 
next installment of the Sustainable Community Series.

"I'm going to talk about the mess that we're making of the United States," Kunstler said 
in a telephone interview on Monday from his home in upstate New York. "I'm also going 
to be talking about our prospects for continuing the cheap oil fiesta that we've been 
enjoying for the better part of a century."

This is where reality intersects vision. Modern city life with its skyscrapers and suburban 
expanses of large homes, he said, has been built on the cheap fuel that runs the 
buildings and powers commuters' automobiles. When the era of cheap fuel comes to an 
end, so will that lifestyle, he said. 	
		
"It's not as if we're going to run out of oil, but we are entering the downside of the 
depletion arc." From 1900 to 1970, Kunstler said, the United States was the world's 
main oil producer. Thirty years later, we're still using oil at a great rate, depend on oil 
imports from places where we're strongly disliked, and may have to compete for 
remaining fossil fuels with China or Europe, he said.

The possibility of a hydrogen economy has been oversold, he said. We may build more 
nuclear power plants, because they will be the only alternative to burning coal to 
generate electricity, and wind power or solar power may only help, he said. "The 
unhappy truth of the situation is that no combination of alternative fuels will allow us to 
run what we are running the way we are currently running it."

Every activity, from agriculture to manufacturing, will have to be adapted to using less 
fuel, which also implies being done much closer to consumers, he said. For city dwellers 
and suburbanites, more expensive fuel dictates more compact cities, walking to stores, 
driving much less than we do now, and living in a nation that is less affluent than it is 
now.

Cities are also destined to have shorter buildings because the costs of running 
skyscrapers will become prohibitive, Kunstler said.

"The fact of the mater is that in European cities generally you do not have skyscrapers, 
but you get a very high level of cosmopolitanism and dynamic urban mixes of activities 
without getting overcrowding. You know, people don't come back from Paris on vacation 
complaining that it was overcrowded."

Neighborhood stores and local industries will have the advantage because they don't 
depend on large quantities of fuel to bring in customers and goods, he said. Giant chain 
stores in strip malls depend on a steady flow of goods from overseas factories, he said, 
made possible by inexpensive fuel to run ships and trucks.

"The temporary set of economic relations that we call globalism is not a permanent 
institution. It was a transient product of a certain set of historical circumstances, namely 
a century of cheap oil and natural gas. And as that comes to an end we're going to see 
globalism in reverse."

"National chain retailing is going to tank out in a spectacular way, and we're not 
prepared for that. It doesn't help that we systematically destroyed our local commercial 
networks - the family owned, locally owned businesses of all kinds. It doesn't help that 
we systematically destroyed those things in order to save $7 on a hair dryer at Wal-
Mart."

Kunstler's recipe for rebuilding urban life, and preparing for the coming societal stress, 
has four parts: * Changing zoning ordinances to encourage mixed use, higher density 
redevelopment, "refraining from building any future parking infrastructure, which I 
consider a waste of municipal money."

* Resisting the big box retailers, which will only be a liability in 10 years.

* Working on the beginning of some form of public transit, however modest.

* Taking a view of development outside town that allows for future farming, "that takes 
seriously that we're going to need that land for agriculture rather than discounting it 
completely and valuing it solely for its suburban development value."