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...
First of all I'm glad you and (e:Jenks) had a good time, yes parking in Toronto is costly it was $25 for the Blue Jays Game I went to. There is an elevator that takes you up to about 10 feet away from a guy taking tickets that gets you right to your seat.
I guess I have to admit something yes my aunts house is great and so is the pool and the land they have and it is very nice, but I hate the fucking suburbs. I hate that the bills used to play on the east side and they moved out to fucking Orchard Park. A new downtown stadium should have been constructed. Yes I do like some Entertainment about the suburbs movies like The Burbs and American Beauty and then of course Weeds (I love that show) but all of those are about the dark underbelly of the burbs. I hate that people think that because there is crime in the city that the entire city is dangerous (the parts that are bad is because you all moved out and now we have no tax money to fix the bad schools so bad students become criminals). I hate that often times you have to drive to do something simple like you don't have any good snacks or you need something to finish off dinner. I hope people wise up and move into the city like you think they will, I hope that happens.
I will admit I don't know to much about flying. Back in "The Old days" like was rockafeller or Carnige who owned the trains so he didn't have to pay someone else to deliver his stuff. I think the way for the airline industry to make big money is to merge with or to be bought by an oil company. Oil is just part of the buisness if you own it and don't really pay for it. Yes owning say shell would be great but what if you are the company up in Canada or someplace that Sells the oil to other people and you own some planes your advantage could put a lot of other airliners out of business (yeah if you got a monopoly then the feds might try to break it up) But then you just sell your stuff cheap to some company that isn't really any competition to you to stop that from happening.
I do think that you are right that the airline industry is going to collapse. That is unless they figure out how to use a different fuel supply (say grow there own grains and make pure alcohol). As things get to costly people won't pay. I do think that the reason air liners did so good is that we are a very needy society we have to go and get there quickly and for some they would rather spend the money then the time. Maybe this will change and more people will take bus and train trips. I have heard that going to NYC by train through the Adoronics (sleeper car I think) is a great way to go and it gets you right into the middle of the city.
I wish we would have a resurgence in train travel... I've always wanted to take a sleeper train.
(We paid the $20 to park too, ouch. Not to mention $12/beer. Good show though. The nat'l rocked. Wish REM had played a little more older stuff, but I guess that's to be expected when they're touring to promote they're new album.)