Posted on 08/15/2006 9:32:24 AM PDT by LouAvul
Rising fuel costs are being blamed for everything from soaring utility costs to lower retail sales and higher airline tickets. And now, experts say high gas prices could reshape U.S. cities.
"Most analysts believe that crude oil prices in the $50s and $60s will be with us for some time," says Stuart Gabriel, director of the Lusk Center, a think tank at the University of Southern California devoted to studying real estate forces and trends. There's even talk of crude hitting $100 per barrel -- or 10 times what it sold for in the summer of 2005.
Once the realization soaks into the American consciousness that high-cost gas is here to stay, Gabriel predicts, those high commute prices will pull more homeowners -- even young families -- to live in central cities and create a push for more public transportation.
(Excerpt) Read more at realestate.msn.com ...
I knew commuters in California who would spend one to two hours, one way, going to work. They could make more where they worked but buy affordable homes elsewhere.
If prices stay high and unstable, it will eventually effect the burbs. First though, the prices will affect what we drive, how we commute, what time of day we commute, etc.
What an amazing conclusion!
The most productive citizens live in the suburbs. They will move their work there.
The socialist cities will be annihilated.
Telecommuting
The price of gasoline won't matter at all. Trips might be thought out a little more but gasoline is still cheap.
Oil was only $10.00 a barrel in 2005? Who Knew.
well families are NOT going to move into the jungle urban homes unless they are protected by gun toting security forces like homeowner in the philipines
It has zero to do with why energy prices are high.
Gas is down 13cents a gallon here to 2.99. Hardly a disaster....
I dont know about that...you move companys to the suburbs and people will just move again...hense the reason suburns were created in the first place
That's what I did. Get a job in the suburb close to my house. I'd be willing to pay $20 a gallon for gas just to avoid living in a city.
I'm in the process of setting this up for myself. I've determined that buying DSL will allow me to telecommute 1 day/week and save money, based on my gasoline costs.
Current projections by the UN's Population Division, based on the 2004 revision of the World Population Prospects database [3], are as follows.
Year Population (billions)
2010 6.8
2020 7.6
2030 8.2
2040 8.7
2050 8.9
Other projections of population growth predict that the world's population will eventually crest, though it is uncertain exactly when or how. In some scenarios, the population will crest as early as the mid-21st century at under 10 billion, due to gradually decreasing birth rates.
9 billion does seem to be somewhat of a consensus for the topping off of the population.
"What an amazing conclusion!"
Nah, just the fantasies of "sustainable urban planners". ;)The same ones they've had for the last 30 years or so. ;)
I'll *never* move back to town. There's plenty of other ways to cut down on both my gas consumption and my spending. :)
I'm one of those commuters. I work in West LA and live in Santa Clarita. It has to do with more than affordable homes though; the politics in West LA are almost communist, while Santa Clarita is a conservative haven.
"Telecommuting..."
Many of us are there or headed that way.
Good for making money and spending money.
We can shop on the internet for lots of stuff.
First time homebuyer builders in the smalttown outlying bedroom communities of my area taking a huge hit since Katrina. Several I've talked to blame it on the high cost of gas.
It will end up reshaping the political leadership long before it significantly impacts suburban appeal in any significant way.
If someone can telecommute from thirty or forty miles away, why not just hire a guy in India for about 1/10 the salary and have him telecommute?
Nah - who wants to live in filthy cities with noise, pollution, no grass, worse-than-poor schools, high taxes, high housing prices, and high general cost of living ?
Gas will have to get pretty expensive before people with kids would move into cities. Heck, they won't even live in the inner suburbs anymore because of Section 8 and high property taxes.
Besides the money thing you have to consider the terrible toll that a 5 hour drive(total both ways)takes on a person. I would never do it again, and I think we will see more people actually commuting less because the money spent on gas will take the difference in income. Why put up with the drive if you can earn less but clear the same money working closer to home?
The alternative of course would be to move to the Bay Area, but then a lot of people simply don't want to live in that hell hole and the cost of living there is very high, that is why the pay is so good. So, they will get jobs closer to where they live instead of moving, JMO.
I believe you are misinformed.
Population is not decreasing. The rate of increase is slowing in a few developed countries but the number of people on the planet continues to increase, just as it is in the US.
This has everything to do with supply and demand and the price of oil and the price of any other resource in limited supply. We do not have an unlimited supply of cheap oil or even expensive oli.
And what is the price in Lichtenstein?
Very, very few people commute that far. Soaring gas prices could concievably affect people that drive that much, but for the vast majority of Americans, saving one hundred dollars a month in extra energy costs isn't enough to warrant moving from somewhere they like to somewhere they don't.
I'm sitting in my home 52 miles away from the office freeping/working. The trend should increase.
Lefty urban types wish that gas prices would reverse the flight to the suburbs but it will never happen.
The vast majority of people will simply take a sack lunch or stop sucking up social justice coffee to offset the increase. The downsides of inner city life are just too huge to be attractive.
There are fewer and fewer reasons to set up businesses in large cities today (aside from retail operations, I mean).
Do a quick survey among the professional class in your town and find out where their kids are living. That's the trend.
Port St. Lucie, Fl., about an hour north of West Palm Beach, hour and half north of Ft. Lauderdale and 2 north of Miami had been getting many folks buying here to get out of the crime and rat race down there.
Sales have been droping due to gas prices.
That does happen.
Hopefully, we bring special skills or training. Which is why we should encourage the next generation to get skills in school that have a market value.
We can also telecommute part of the week and visit clients at their jobs sites as needed, which they can not always easily do from India.
My generation is living in the city now. My wife and I (we're both 24) bought our house last year in the city. 4 couples we are good friends with did the same. All mention gas prices as one of the reasons.
Thought we'd been in that process for the last few decades.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but you can still find nice homes and neighborhoods within the city limits, it's not like the whole place is run-down and crime infested. And actually I prefer an older almost antique home with some character in the city close to everything over the typical cookie cutter boring homes in the suburbs. I know it all depends on the city and places like Detroit or Baltimore are out.
I telecommute right now, and the reason is there isn't anybody in India who can do what I do, as well as I do it, for 1/10 the salary, or even for the same salary or more.
A longtime leftist wet dream, with its political implications of growing Democratic power.
But it's not going to happen. People will put sails or windmills on their cars before they subject their children to the inner cities of America.
My husband spends around $18 a day for gasoline. If he could work 4 ten hour days a week or telecommute for one day, we could use the difference to up the speed on our internet AND save wear and tear on the car.
Employees should start asking and negotiating for more flexible work schedules, if they're possible. Just by altering their rush hour times by as little as an hour, a lot of gas could be saved (not to mention aggravation during construction season!)
OTOH, the "death of the suburbs" would create pressure for housing "close to work," and thus house prices would increase to the point where incremental gas costs are preferable to living closer in.
The net result, probably, is not the death of the suburbs, but rather an economic downturn stemming from people being forced to cut back on non-essentials due to lack of ready cash.
I see it as an extremely dangerous situation in the long run. In the short run, it may re-arrange the family structure to multi-generational extended families making more efficient use of suburban homes and expenses.
But like I've said before on threads, I've seen a definite trend of the professional class of small towns and rural communities and bedroom communities basically sending their kids into cities -- the seven or eight major markets after college.
I remember when PCs first came out. They didn't do much and cost a lot. They reached a cost/benefit point in the mid-90's where they gave enough bang for the buck that they became as ubiquitus as the tv in the family room. Technology, price, performance merged to make them as necessary as indoor plumbing to many americans.
The gas prices could ramp up the same set of events for telecommuting. And on a side note, with flying becoming more and more of a hassle (Imagine having to check laptops only to find the TSA people stole them), teleconferencing could make a comeback in a big way as well. In a new iteration it would be MUCH more effective than in the 90's.
I guess we'll see.
I am thinking the Micropolis envisioned by Dr. Robert Prehoda back in 1979 could actually come to pass.
I telecommute right now, and the reason is there isn't anybody in India who can do what I do, as well as I do it, for 1/10 the salary, or even for the same salary or more.
You're lucky.
Actually, this thread covers some possibilities:
http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1638755/posts
I'm not moving, but I am buying a small car for commuting that gets 36 mpg. I like my big house, big yard, and great schools. Houses in my neighborhood are selling about as fast as they were a year ago. I am more affected by the high cost of natural gas in the winter than by the cost of gasoline.
I think you are absolutly right.
This will destroy the cities not the 'burbs.
The most productive people will find a way to move the best parts of their lives OUT of the cities.
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