In kind of the spirit of (e:metalpeter) 's last post I have my own thoughts on the issue, but more so from the transportation side of things. This was influenced by listening to On Point this morning during my drive in to work. It was titled, The End of Affordable Air Travel?

It really reinforced some major points to me, the one being that at some point we are going to go back to flying as a luxury as it was back before regulation. Flights will be sparse and some cities will lose their service all together. The effect on tourism and even say grandparents visiting their kids and grandchildren are going to be major issues. So if someone is really family oriented taking that job down in the Southeast or Southwest may not happen, unless their family moves down with them. Who knows it may lead to someone taking a lower paying job in WNY just so they may see their family often instead of once every 10 years. Yea, you can make the point of keeping in touch with iChat, but really does it make up for a real hug or your grandma's fresh baked goodies?

What really gets me is that with airfare going through the roof taking that trip elsewhere may not be cost effective anymore. If it is going to cost $400 to fly to a city that you can drive to within 8 hours flying will lose out in the end. Going through the B.S at the airport just isn't worth it.

That's where I hope we may have a resurgence with train travel. I remember seeing a special on PBS about the (WIKIPEDIA - Pioneer_Zephyr) and realized what we could have had if train travel wasn't squashed by cheap oil for decades. It would really come in handy now wouldn't it? Could you imagine the Central Terminal if it wasn't piecemealed off 28 years ago? Especially if we had real "High Speed Rail" like they do in Europe & Japan? Not that "higher than the freight train thingy we have now between NYC & DC" Laying the track for a rain system is costly, but once is set up it is a kick ass way of moving people around efficiently in regards to a carbon footprint.

So in the end I think people are going to eventually fall back into the cities by circumstance not by choice (e:metalpeter) We will be like the French, in where the Rich live in the inner city & the poor live in the 'burbs. Some of the sprawl had to deal with people chasing "the best & newest." So where do you build a new house? Out where there is space, especially since you're going to build a McMansion with a 3 car garage & a storage place for that 40' "Dick Boat" and the R.V. You won't fit 3 cars, a camper, boat and jetski in that city lot. So you destroy a forest and build on a swamp so you can squeeze all of those toys in your property. Because you are chasing the next "best of the best" product like the newest line of spring fashion or the newest best high tech device. You wouldn't believe the amount of peices of furniture, rooms and kitchens that are bought and remodeled just so people can show them off to their neighbors. It got beyond utilitarian living & just became a pissing contest of "I have a Ralph Lauren ______ 2005 edition Blah. When it would get to be 2015, time to remodel & change everything even though everything works & is still functional. It's funny as I remember when my older generation of my family all died off they still had most of the same stuff they had when they first moved in to the houses they had. My mom hustled my great uncle's 1950's kitchen table & chairs along with the old school oven. The only reason why he got rid of the 'suffocation death trap" white latch refrigerator was it broke in the 80's & parts were not available any longer. My point is the stuff they had worked just fine & they never felt the need to remodel. Ironically when they passed the stuff they had was extremely valuable, since it was authentic & should have never survived our consumerism culture.

It was brought to my attention last night as I was leaving the R.E.M show. There weren't too many suckers like myself that parked & paid $20 to drive home. Most of the people were crossing the bridge on Lakeshore Blvd to catch the Go Train or the TTC. Yea, that was a good time last night :-) but seriously I wish I could afford to live in Toronto and ditch the car, but that is another post sometime...