Similarly for “infrastructure” spending touted by the forces of Trump as the coming panacea for economic malaise. I suspect most people assume this means a trillion-dollar stimulus spend on highways and their accessories. Well, that also assumes that we expect another fifty years of Happy Motoring and suburban living. Fuggeddabowdit. We’re in the twilight of motoring anyway you cut it, despite all the chatter about electric cars and “driverless” cars. We won’t have the electric capacity to switch over the Happy Motoring fleet from gasoline. The oil industry itself is already headed for collapse on its sinking energy-return-on-investment. And our problems with money and debt are so severe that the motoring paradigm is more prone to fail on the basis of car loan scarcity and unworthy borrows before the fueling issues even kick in. Every year, fewer Americans can afford to buy any kind of car — the way they’re used to buying them, on installment loans. The industry has gone the limit to help them — seven-year loans for used cars! — but they have no more room to maneuver. The car financing system is broken. Bear in mind the original suburbanization of America back in the 20th century — along with its accessory automobiles — must be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. So, a rebuild of all this stuff would represent more and possibly even greater malinvestment. We could have applied our post-WW2 treasure to building beautiful walkable towns and cities with some capacity for adaptive re-use, but we blew it in order to enjoy life in a one-time demolition derby. Life is tragic. Societies make poor choices sometimes, and then there are consequences.
– Forecast 2017: The Wheels Finally Come Off, by J.H. Kunstler.
Norway has become a suburban wasteland, as the 51st state of the USA. Mountainside, seaside, countryside, cityscape, it’s all filled up with sick suburban typologies, horizontal as well as vertical suburbs. No real urban or rural culture exist anymore. My family farm was quartered for the benefit of subexurban American Edens, my place Kronborgsætergrenda is nothing more now than a subdivision of Los Angeles. Norwegians have vasted their oil fortune on “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world!”
I tried to explain this idiocy for my fellow citizens, and have for this become an object of hatred, the suburbanites, exurbanites and subexurbanites together claiming that I should fall on my knees, to excuse that I have offended their suburban bunkers!
Of course I’ll never do this! It’s they who should fall on their knees, excusing me for having destroyed my country, my culture and my purpose of life.
I’ll anyway go on for replacing a failing way of life with real urbanism and real country living, as these two cannot and shall not be mixed, as in Suburban Hell. Don’t mix the city and countryside!
– Village Towns for Norwegian Countryside
LeveVeg 