Gas Costs May Be the Tipping Point

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In 2000 Malcolm Gladwell wrote about The Tipping Point -- it's about the way things change and the point at which things that have been shifting slowly start to change quickly and dramatically.

$4 and above gasoline may just be the tipping point needed to shift the way communities are built, as well as shift the decisions Americans make. Two recent articles in the New York Times caught our attention.

Mayors Advocate for Better Transit Systems
At the recent meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors, 88% of the mayors, representing a total of 132 cities, said that public transportation ridership was increasing. The rising cost of gas is hitting City Hall's budget the same way it is hitting citizens' budgets--city budgets were created with fuel costs forecasted at $2/gallon, not $4/gallon. As a result, 90% of the mayors were actively working to reduce the amount of gas guzzled by city vehicles, including encouraging city employees to do more walking and altering the operations of city departments to increase efficiency: less trips and better route planning. As much as we hope our elected officials will proactively be champions of walkability and bikeability, it seems that strained city budgets may, in fact, be the tipping point. Call your mayor and ask them what they are doing to address this issue locally. Read the full NYT story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/us/21mayors.html

Rethinking the Suburbs and Exurbs
Up until this point, cheap oil has made it possible for people to live 30, 40, even 60 miles from their workplace. Most long distance commuters complain about the time they spend in their cars, stuck in traffic, and away from family. They don't like it, yet they tolerate it. As a matter of fact, cheap oil combined with Americans' willingness to tolerate such long commutes has facilitated decades of terrible urban planning and urban sprawl. First came suburbs. Then more suburbs beyond those suburbs. Then even more suburbs. Finally, the suburbs were so far away that they couldn't be called suburbs anymore and were coined "exurbs". As a result, urban areas throughout the country rapidly lost population, leaving behind virtual ghost towns. Gas prices may be the straw that breaks the camels back, draws people back into higher density urban areas, and re-invigorates good urban planning. Read the full NYT story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/business/25exurbs.html