Back in 2003, a group of suburban experts got together and created a little documentary called The End of Suburbia. Like any movie with the word “End” in the title, it’s your typical doomsday call, suggesting the forthcoming oil peak will cause the end of the American way of life. Normally I avoid these types of movies due to their depressing subject lines and the lack of solutions they set forth. This movie does not break the doomsday mold at all, but the information it does give, from historians and authors that take up a significant portion of my bookshelf, makes it worth seeing. And besides, I do believe that discussing the cause can lead to better solutions.

The movie is basically a history lesson. It follows the rise of the suburbs as a movement to get away from industrialized factory cities, and its heavy subsidization by an energy industry looking to increase its product demand. The film then skips to the future, and the looming problem of what happens when the cheapest and most plentiful energy source- oil- runs out. This is an issue made all the more pressing, as their experts point out, by the expected world peak around 2010. There is no known source of alternative energy that can be produced cheaply on the scale that our lifestyles require in such a short amount of time, and most still rely upon oil in some way for their production. In other words, as we are already maxing out on our oil, we have no choice to curb our energy usage with the forthcoming drop in supply. And, as the experts in the documentary so blatantly pointed out, few people know or understand the chaos this will cause, and even less have prepared for it.

In the five years since this documentary appeared, more people may be aware of the oil peak, but very little preparation has been occurring. And now, the issue is compounded with a mismanaged financial sector, potentially leaving no excess in which to build our way out of the looming energy crisis. The doomsday sentimentality of the documentary may not be far off, as our lifestyles are already showing the toll of rising energy costs, and the dark future the movie predicts is looming ever closer.

It would have been nice for the documentary to offer some hope for the future as far as some sort of solution. The experts do touch lightly but unenthusiastically upon the ideas of New Urbanism and its emphasis of small, self-supporting clustered development- sort of like the old main street style of life as a solution. However, in general the film concentrates too much upon the movement’s dismissal as being “too historical” for modern life. Instead the last few minutes of the film focus upon a portrayal of the complete abandonment of the suburbs. If this were to happen, if people literally left the suburbs to rot in the countryside and all moved back to the city, we would have complete and utter chaos. Like the rise of the industrial city, the surge of the masses to the post-oil city would cause massive infrastructure and humanitarian problems. Slums and crime would skyrocket. There also becomes an issue of food production- cities have very, very large footprints, and cost profound amounts of energy in order to sustain them. Abandoning the suburbs entirely is a very catastrophic idea, one that would cost us more than it is worth.

The best solution is that of the walkable neighborhoods promoted by New Urbanism. Perhaps it is a historical model, but historically our energy use was much lower and these sorts of local clusters proved successful networks within those times. It would be quite easy to retrofit many existing suburban neighborhoods with such a center, and then use mass transit to connect the centers together.

Successful cities already work in this way. Cities are essentially many clusters within close proximity of each other- a downtown district, employment hubs, university districts, bordering housing districts- each with the ability to function independently but through cohabitation, these clusters increase their potential. Granted, the distances covered by suburbs are much greater, but if we simply convert our suburbs to independent infrastructures centered around mass transit hubs that allow for easy travel inbetween, we can somewhat “save” our way of life by simply weaving them into a more successful version of the metropolises that they already strive to be. We may not be able to convert each and every suburb, but we can strategically choose places that will be beneficial for everyone in the long run, and allow for an easier transition into the America of the future.

The End of Suburbia is a fantastic movie in the respect that it acts as a wake-up call to the pending problem of the oil peak and the effect it will have on our American lifestyles. However, it could have done itself some good by proposing some more concrete solutions for its convertees to use in working towards a better future. I have hope that some of the thoughts upon solutions that I offered here are covered in the documentary’s sequel- “Escape from Suburbia,” which was released last year. I’ll have to watch and find out. In the meantime, I do encourage people to sit and watch this 52 minute documentary- just remember to take it with a grain of salt.

Trackback this Post | Feed on comments to this Post