Status Quo-oh

My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers.
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     A catastrophe for Iowa farmers will not be just a catastrophe for Midwestern Americans. In the Iowa floods, we'll see more evidence of how the problems of weird weather (climate change) combine and ramify the problems associated with peak oil. In this particular case they lead to an inflection point sometime around the 2008 harvest season, which will also be our time of political harvest.
     These are not your daddy's or granddaddy's floods. These are 500-year floods, events not seen before non-Indian people starting living out on that stretch of the North American prairie. The vast majority of home-owners in Eastern Iowa did not have flood insurance because the likelihood of being affected above the 500-year-line was so miniscule -- their insurance agents actually advised them against getting it. The personal ruin out there will be comprehensive and profound, a wet version of the 1930s Dust Bowl, with families facing total loss and perhaps migrating elsewhere in the nation because they have no home to go back to.
     Iowa in 2008 will be an even slower-motion disaster than Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Beyond the troubles of 25,000 people who have lost all their material possessions is a world whose grain reserves stand at record lows. The crop losses in Iowa will aggravate what is already a pretty dire situation. So far, the US Public has experienced the world grain situation mainly in higher supermarket prices. Cheap corn is behind the magic of the American processed food industry -- all those pizza pockets and juicy-juice boxes that frantic Americans resort to because they have no time between two jobs and family-chauffeur duties to actually cook (note: reheating is not cooking).
      Behind that magic is an agribusiness model of farming cranked up on the steroids of cheap oil and cheap natural-gas-based fertilizer. Both of these "inputs" have recently entered the realm of the non-cheap. Oil-and-gas-based farming had already reached a crisis stage before the flood of Iowa. Diesel fuel is a dollar-a-gallon higher than gasoline. Natural gas prices have doubled over the past year, sending fertilizer prices way up. American farmers are poorly positioned to reform their practices. All that cheap fossil fuel masks a tremendous decay of skill in husbandry. The farming of the decades ahead will be a lot more complicated than just buying x-amount of "inputs" (on credit) to be dumped on a sterile soil growth medium and spread around with giant diesel-powered machines.
     Like a lot of other activities in American life these days, agribusiness is unreformable along its current lines. It will take a convulsion to change it, and in that convulsion it will be dragged kicking-and-screaming into a new reality. As that occurs, the US public will have to contend with more than just higher taco chip prices. We're heading into the Vale of Malthus -- Thomas Robert Malthus, the British economist-philosopher who introduced the notion that eventually world population would overtake world food production capacity. Malthus has been scorned and ridiculed in recent decades, as fossil fuel-cranked farming allowed the global population to go vertical. Techno-triumphalist observers who should have known better attributed this to the "green revolution" of bio-engineering. Malthus is back now, along with his outriders: famine, pestilence, and war.
     We're headed, it seems, toward a fall "crunch time," and that crunching sound will not be of cheez doodles and taco chips consumed on the sofas of America. I think we're heading into a season of hoarding. As the presidential campaign moves into its final round, Americans may be hard-up for both food and gasoline. On the oil scene, the next event on the horizon is not just higher prices but shortages. Chances are, they will occur first in the Southeast states because oil exports from Mexico and Venezuela feeding the Gulf of Mexico refineries are down more than 30 percent over 2007.
     Perhaps more ominous is the discontent on the trucking scene. Truckers are going broke in droves, unable to carry on their business while getting paid $2000 for loads that cost them $3000 to deliver. In Europe last week, enraged truckers paralyzed the food distribution networks of Spain and Portugal. The passivity of US truckers so far has been a striking feature of the general zombification of American life. They might continue to just crawl off one-by-one and die. But it's also possible that, at some point, they'll mount a Night-of-the-Living-Dead offensive and take their vengeance out on "the system" that has brought them to ruin. America has only about a three-day supply of food in any of its supermarkets.
     The yet-more-ominous thing here is that shortages of food and oil are two fiascos that are pretty clearly predictable for the second half of the year. That's bad enough without figuring in the "unknowns" that could kick up American hardship a few more notches.The hurricane season just got underway -- obscured for the moment by the bigger weather story in Iowa. The fate of the banks is a train wreck still waiting to happen. As it occurs -- also heading into the high political and hurricane seasons -- we could find ourselves not only a nation wet, hungry, and out-of-gas, but also completely broke. I'm sorry that Tim Russert will not be here to talk us through it all.

Comments

[Movenonup]

When JHK is not here to talk us all through it, then we know we are screwed.

[redterror]

Nice to see Jim channeling Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, Wes Jackson, Gene Logsdon. It won't be easy, but the "food system" can (and will) be changed. The first good thing to do would be to cut off the subsidies to all those corn and soybean farmers (sic) in Iowa and neighboring states.

[Farmgal]

Until now for the most part, Americans have been able to ignore much of what has happened be it weather related crop failures or whatever as there has always been another source to obtain it from. When crop failures hit although the individual affected farmers were hit hard, the general public didn't notice as the shelves were still full. It might start to be different this year and I am wondering how people will react.

Same with gas- the prices at the pump are climbing but it is still there to purchase-if we start to experience spot shortages it could get interesting.

BTW, I believe that the truckers in France are doing a slow-down today. What I don't understand about the truckers, as well as the airlines is why they don't just charge what is needed to cover their fuel costs and make the public eat it?

[Riddick]

"I'm sorry that Tim Russert will not be here to talk us through it all."

I would imagine that even Tim would have a hard time "splaining" PO and the confluence of the Perfect Storm of Climate Change and economic implosion even on his white board. He'd probably just scribble, throw up his hands in disgust and know we are all so scre@ed!

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

Speaking of Tim Russert, I don't quite get the huge grief-gasm this weekend. Seems like he pretty much swallowed and followed the party line, hook and sinker for his corporate masters. I sure don't remember him as any great beacon of courageous journalism say, on the 2000 selections, or the 03 foreplay to warplay. I'm not saying that Satan threw another log on the fire or anything this weekend, but just not seeing it as that big of a deal.

[TroutBum]

Go google "tent cities" and watch some of the recently shot video. Coming soon to your neighborhood!!

[Mr. Rabbit]

France has a long history of small groups of citizens forcing its will upon the French government. Farmers, truckers, teachers, metro drivers etc.

Apart from the special situation in France, the truckers in Europe cannot simply raise their prices - there is an oversupply of truckers from eastern european countries who are willing to work for extremely low wages.

[asoka]

In all the years I have been reading this blog it seems the predictions of doom are always out a quarter or two. Just around the corner, TSHTF.

Now the shit will hit the fan in fall 2008, our "harvest" season. Then in the fall it will be (again) the winter cold is going to cause the shit to hit the fan. Then in Winter it will be (again) more spring floods or whatnot (again). Then in Spring it will be the intense summer heat (again) that will cause the shit to hit the fan.

So far no shit. Unless you consider lots and lots of doom and gloom talk to be shit.

These are the best of times and the worst of times, as Dickens said. Choose doom and gloom at your own risk.

This week I am feeling like a "techno-triumhalist". The laws of physics are temporary inconveniences but not deal breakers.

Cheers!

[bud4wiser]

JK,

Iowa is the only farm area hurting. Over the weekend I surveyed over 100 miles of back roads along the flood plains of the lower Mississippi.

There are "puddles" everywhere. The kind that rot corn stalk roots.

Meanwhile, at the local snack-shack, rurburb SUV owners continue to let their vehicles run while obtaining a fresh supply of fags and burp suds and cheeze-dod-dads. Yes its true.

People are continuing to idle their vehicles while shopping in rural America - even at $3.90 a gallon!

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

The folks leaving-the-car-running thing, I suspect that's mostly a mything from the bad old days before fuel injection, and turning the car off and restarting it did use more gas than just letting it idle.

[Mr. Rabbit]

New intraday oil price record: $139.89

[Zack S]

For anyone interested there are a number of links here about "tent cities".

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/06/tent-city-usa.html

[Laura Louzader]

This week's column is one of the most ominous and frightening ever, because it reminds us that a whole lot more rides on our fading cheap-fuel regime than just our ability to get around in cars.

You could lose the cars, but food for 300 million people is another matter. You can accumulate a year's supply of basic foodstuffs, but as this plays out over the next ten years, there's no way that we are not going to suffer greatly.

As for the truckers who must lower their rates to compete- why bother to do that when it means paying $3 to collect $2? The field will have to narrow substantially, and I hope the truck drivers will get work as railroad engineers- a better job than trucking in any case.

If indeed there is anything left for anybody 10 years down the road.

[Tangurena]

Do be prepared for an influx of wingnuts claiming that Iowans are "better prepared than the Katrina folks" or some such fuddle duddle. I'm sure they'll carefully ignore the bits about the police in areas adjacent to NOLA turning pedestrians back at gunpoint, and that they'll forget that much of the egress routes required walking across about 40 miles of bridges to get to dry land.

[DanaJ]

"France has a long history of small groups of citizens forcing its will upon the French government. Farmers, truckers, teachers, metro drivers etc." And French leaders still have vivid memories of the guillotine. Some times I wish our leaders had such memories, they might behave better.
And the drivers idling the SUV are just doing it to keep the air conditioning going. Thats right, so they can waddle back out to a nice, cool car, no other reason.
I think Jim may have a better chance of being right about the SHTF this time around, so far we have lucked out the past few hurricane seasons, but all it will take is another nice #5 going thru the Gulf into Texass this year and we will see $6/gl gas real fast.

[Iconoclast421]

"So far no shit. Unless you consider lots and lots of doom and gloom talk to be shit."

Wow asoka that is a very astute observation. But the shit really has been hitting the fan. Repeatedly, over the years. You're obviously just too stupid to see it. I guess it's because none of the shit has splattered on you yet.

[CarlostheObscure]

Kunster writes: "Like a lot of other activities in American life these days, agribusiness is unreformable along its current lines..." How true. Look at the hospital industry and it symbiont health insurance (or is it the other way around) or city and urban planning...the local paper in my midwestern capital hometown ran a Sunday front page article quoting local developers and regional planning officials saying that the buildout of McMansions on 5 acre lots in the far exurbs is going to continue for the next 30 years no matter what! - the article ended with a flack from the regional planning commission saying that irregardless of the price of gas people just expect to have a large house on five acres out in the country as a sign of having "made it". Consensus trance, indeed.

[asoka]

astute is as astute does.

[asoka]

"But the shit really has been hitting the fan. Repeatedly, over the years."

Just like Dickens said, eh?

[Zack S]

Both of the following articles are related to some degree in subject.

I bet that JHK would be very amused by both of these stories.

This is the most interesting quote from the first article.

“Nationwide, home prices in neighborhoods with long commutes and no public transportation are falling faster than prices in communities closer to cities, according to a study by Joseph Cortright, an economist at Impresa Consulting in Portland, Ore.”

BTW I live in one of the core suburbs of Detroit (Royal Oak) and have noticed that there are not that near as many houses for sale in our city compared to outlying ones.

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http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080615/BUSINESS07/806150577/1020

Americans watching their wealth slip away

High gas prices having ripple effects

BY RICH MILLER and MATTHEW BENJAMIN • BLOOMBERG NEWS • June 15, 2008

Sky-high gasoline prices aren't just raising the cost of Eugene Marino's 120-mile round-trip to his job in the Washington area. They're reducing his wealth, too.
House prices in his rural subdivision beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains in Charles Town, W. Va., have plunged as commuting expenses have soared. A four-bedroom home down the street from his is listed for $239,000, after selling new for $360,000 five years ago.

Homeowners in the exurbs aren't the only ones whose assets have taken a hit because of the surge in energy costs. Companies such as General Motors Corp. and UAL Corp. are writing off billions of dollars in plants and equipment that are no longer viable in an age of dearer oil. The destruction of wealth and capital will weigh on U.S. growth for years to come.

"Our whole economy reflects the relative costs of energy: the cars we drive, the houses we occupy, the kinds of factories we have and the equipment in them," says Dana Johnson, chief economist at Comerica Bank in Dallas. "I'm expecting relatively large changes in all of these things."

The loss of wealth could be a double whammy for the U.S. economy. In the short run, it depresses demand as homeowners save more and spend less, and companies fire workers. In the long run, it curbs productivity growth, as firms shift their focus from increasing worker efficiency to reducing energy costs.

Lifestyle casualty
The national average price of regular gasoline topped $4 a gallon for the first time, AAA, the largest U.S. motoring club, reported June 8.

The lifestyle of the exurban commuter may be one casualty.
Emerging suburbs and exurbs -- commuter towns that lie beyond cities and their traditional suburbs -- grew about 15% from 2000 to 2006, nearly three times as fast as the U.S. population, as Americans moved farther out in search of more affordable houses or bigger ones.

"It was drive until you qualify" for a mortgage, says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, Va. "You can't do that anymore. Your cost of transportation will spike too much."

The 38-year-old Marino, an archeologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is among those feeling the pinch. "Eating out and discretionary income are a thing of the past for us," he says.

He says he thinks he once could have sold his 2,700-square-foot, four-bedroom house for around $450,000, based on the value of other homes in the neighborhood. Now he figures it's worth about $330,000. Gasoline prices have doubled his commuting costs since he bought his home in 2003, he says.

Nationwide, home prices in neighborhoods with long commutes and no public transportation are falling faster than prices in communities closer to cities, according to a study by Joseph Cortright, an economist at Impresa Consulting in Portland, Ore.

Automakers, airlines regroup
Americans are trying to cope by switching from gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs to more energy-efficient cars. Asian automakers outsold the Detroit Three in the United States for the first time last month as buyers left GM and Ford Motor Co. trucks on dealer lots in favor of Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas.

"This is a fundamental change," Ford CEO Alan Mulally told reporters last month. The company plans to temporarily idle its Wayne SUV plant and cut production at its Louisville, Ky., pickup facility.

GM is taking more drastic steps. It plans to close four North American pickup and SUV factories, cutting capacity by 700,000 trucks a year.
Dennis Virag, president of the Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor, says U.S. vehicle manufacturers will find it cheaper to shut factories than retool them.

"Domestic automakers ... built factories and tooled factories just to build trucks and SUVs" like the Ford Explorer, the Chevrolet Suburban and the Ford F-150, Virag says. "So it's very likely you're going to see more plant closings."

Airlines are also retrenching. More than a dozen have collapsed in the last six months, including Columbus, Ohio-based Skybus Airlines Inc. and Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc. of Denver.
"Skyrocketing oil prices are changing everything," Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive officer of the International Air Transport Association, told the group's annual meeting June 2. "The situation is desperate."
The association, whose members account for 93% of international traffic, forecasts that airlines may report combined losses of $6.1 billion this year, the worst since 2003.

Economy inhibited or adaptable?
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com in West Chester, Pa., says permanently higher fuel costs will depress productivity growth during the next three to five years as companies retool to boost energy efficiency.

That's what happened in the 1970s, as successive oil shocks, coupled with increased environmental regulation and other factors, led to a sharp slowdown in productivity growth.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in a June 4 speech at Harvard University that he doesn't see a return of 1970s-style stagflation, in part because the economy is more flexible and adaptable than it was then.
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http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080613/OPINION02/806130330/1068/OPINION

Closer becomes better

Rising gas prices make first-ring communities more attractive

BY STEVE DUCHANE city manager of Lincoln Park•
June 13, 2008

Popping open the gas cap, swiping the credit card, and watching the numbers roll to previously unimaginable totals, it's hard to believe anything good could come from the gas prices we've seen lately. But in reality, our misery at the pump could be a blessing for many of Michigan's mature communities.

As driving becomes more expensive, Americans are considering not only more fuel-efficient vehicles, but also more fuel-efficient commutes. For many, that means rethinking not only where we work, but also where we live. And suddenly, first-ring suburban cities have new luster. Finally, 60 years after sprawl began driving home buyers farther and farther from population centers, Americans are turning around their SUVs in search of shorter commutes.

The sprawl reversal is already benefiting many smaller cities in Michigan. For example, now more than ever before, home buyers are taking note that Lincoln Park is less than 10 miles from the headquarters of Ford, GM, Visteon and Masco, and close to other major employers in Dearborn, downtown Detroit and Downriver.

There is nothing new about our proximity to I-75, I-94 and the Southfield Freeway -- except the attention that access is suddenly generating.

Lincoln Park isn't alone; the prime location of other mature cities in southeast Michigan and across the country is earning them a fresh look as well.

In addition to the high cost of gas, our growing spirit of environmentalism is also fueling the trend. Home owners recognize the irony of recycling bottles and cans while discarding entire cities -- neighborhoods, schools, offices, stores, factories, streets and sewers. As more of us go green, we're reconsidering the re-use potential of large and small cities, many of which were cast aside with enormous promise still untapped.

Likewise, farther suburbs are re-evaluating the real cost of large-lot suburban developments that sacrifice forests or farmland, and big homes on big lots that require more resources to heat, cool and landscape.

But there is another reason to rethink city living. Cities inherently provide a natural connectivity that sprawling suburbs can't fabricate. City dwellers experience a connection with the physical environment and with one another that often isn't available in farther suburbs.
Much of that city connection comes from "walkability." The lack of sidewalks in some suburbs prevents even next-door neighbors from getting to know each other. But even suburban communities with sidewalks often lack places to go on foot. Suburban subdivisions are often secluded from stores, offices, restaurants and parks. Daily life requires the constant use of a car and leaves little room for interaction -- with the physical environment or with each other.
Cities, on the other hand, offer both the means and the motivation for walking. City sidewalks and streetscapes invite strolling, while neighborhood stores, parks, dry cleaners, restaurants and pubs provide interesting and relevant destinations.

In Lincoln Park, for example, tree-lined neighborhoods are just steps from Starbucks, Walgreens and dozens of locally owned bookstores, music shops and watering holes. Residents can walk to Chesley's Bar and Grill for a burger or the Calder Dairy for ice cream. Royal Oak, Birmingham, Ferndale, Northville, Mt. Clemens and Wyandotte all offer their own unique, interesting and walkable destinations for residents who want to get out of the house without getting into a car.

This year, Money magazine named Lincoln Park one of America's 10 most affordable places to live. Great location certainly helps make it and other close-in suburban cities an economical choice. What may attract even more home buyers in the future is the promise of safe, convenient city living where daily life is a constant connection with the community -- not an endless series of car errands, fueled by increasingly expensive gasoline.

STEVE DUCHANE is the city manager of Lincoln Park. Write to him in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226 or at oped@freepress.com.

[bruiserbob]

the comment about suburbanites driving their kids around is so true. If you go to a party in suburbia, the parents talk about nothing but their kids AP classes, kickboxing lessons, soccer matches, piano recitals. God what a life for these kids. The parents have no life of their own, they live through their kids. Of course working 50 hours a week and heating up hot pockets in the evening pretty much leaves no time for them to live their life. I had the displeasure of attending a saturday soccer game with parents of kids in the match. The parents in the stands were screaming at their kids like it was the super bowl. It's a kids game for Christ's sake. The outcome of the game is about as interesting as an ant hill. These parents though, are good people; they just got sucked into a trance and don't know how to get out of it.

[Dave]

New intraday oil price record: $139.89

ya, must be due to that extra half million bpd that the saudis are pumping.

you related to bunnbunn by any chance? you look kinda the same.

[Dave]

anyhoo, i'm surprised that jhk didn't mention the fact that all that sprawl, "development" and extra paving increases runoff thereby enhancing flood conditions. areas that would normally absorb some of the precipitation, and slow it travel to the rivers, now just dump it into the river basins, quickly.

maybe some of that shit will get washed away.

what goes around comes around, i guess, karma and shit like that.

[theroachman1]

@ LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown

Tim Russert was better than average. Of course compared to Fox News it really is not that hard to be better than average.

@ bruiserbob

As a parant myself I am in complete agreance of the over driving of kids to every event. My kids get two drive time activitys

1:
Karate The benifits are worth it and the kids love it!

2: And summer free movies and a park all day afterword that is super far to go to or hiking in the mountains also far away. That way the can experance life for themsleves with out me living my life through them.

And oil almost to 140! Them Saudies clearly have really started to pump more oil.

[Zack S]

Here is another heartwarming story on the housing nightmare.

This is my favourite quote from the following story.

Yet Nelson also estimates that in 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes that will not be left vacant in a suburban wasteland but instead occupied by lower classes who have been driven out of their once affordable inner-city apartments and houses.
The so-called McMansion, he said, will become the new multi-family home for the poor.
"What is going to happen is lower and lower-middle income families squeezed out of downtown and glamorous suburban locations are going to be pushed economically into these McMansions at the suburban fringe," said Nelson. "There will probably be ten people living in one house."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/16/suburb.city/index.html

Is America's suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare?

By Lara Farrar

For CNN
June 16, 2008

LONDON, England (CNN) -- When Shaun Yandell proposed to his long-time girlfriend Gina Marasco on the doorstep of their new home in the sunny suburb of Elk Grove, California, four years ago, he never imagined things would get this bad. But they did, and it happened almost overnight.
"It is going to be heartbreak," Yandell told CNN. "But we are hanging on."

Yandell's marriage isn't falling apart: his neighborhood is.
Devastated by the subprime mortgage crisis, hundreds of homes have been foreclosed and thousands of residents have been forced to move, leaving in their wake a not-so-pleasant path of empty houses, unkempt lawns, vacant strip malls, graffiti-sprayed desolate sidewalks and even increased crime.

In Elk Grove, some homeowners not only cut their own grass but also trim the yards of vacant homes on their streets, hoping to deter gangs and criminals from moving in.

Other residents discovered that with some of the empty houses, it wasn't what was growing outside that was the problem. Susan McDonald, president of a local neighborhood association aimed at saving the lost suburban paradise, told CNN that around her culdesac, federal agents recently busted several pot homes with vast crops of marijuana growing from floor to ceiling.
And only a couple of weeks ago, Yandell said he overheard a group of teenagers gathered on the street outside his back patio, talking about a robbery they had just committed.

When they lit a street sign on fire, Yandell called the cops.
"This is not like a rare thing anymore," he said. "I get big congregations of people cussing -- stuff I can't even fathom doing when I was a kid."

For Yandell, his wife and many other residents trying to stick it out, the white picket fence of an American dream has faded into a seemingly hopeless suburban nightmare. "The forecast is gloomy," he told CNN.

While the foreclosure epidemic has left communities across the United States overrun with unoccupied houses and overgrown grass, underneath the chaos another trend is quietly emerging that, over the next several decades, could change the face of suburban American life as we know it.

This trend, according to Christopher Leinberger, an urban planning professor at the University of Michigan and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, stems not only from changing demographics but also from a major shift in the way an increasing number of Americans -- especially younger generations -- want to live and work.

"The American dream is absolutely changing," he told CNN.
This change can be witnessed in places like Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, and Dallas, Texas, said Leinberger, where once rundown downtowns are being revitalized by well-educated, young professionals who have no desire to live in a detached single family home typical of a suburbia where life is often centered around long commutes and cars.

Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls "walkable urbanism" -- both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything -- from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.

The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls "drivable sub-urbanism" -- a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the Second World War and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.

Thirty-five percent of the nation's wealth, according to Leinberger, has been invested in constructing this drivable sub-urban landscape.

But now, Leinberger told CNN, it appears the pendulum is beginning to swing back in favor for the type of walkable community that existed long before the advent of the once fashionable suburbs in the 1940s. He says it is being driven by generations moulded by television shows like "Seinfeld" and "Friends," where city life is shown as being cool again -- a thing to flock to, rather than flee.

"The image of the city was once something to be left behind," said Leinberger.

Changing demographics are also fueling new demands as the number of households with children continues to decline. By the end of the next decade, the number of single-person households in the United States will amost equal those with kids, Leinberger said.
And aging baby boomers are looking for a more urban lifestyle as they downsize from large homes in the suburbs to more compact town houses in more densely built locations.
Recent market research indicates that up to 40 percent of households surveyed in selected metropolitan areas want to live in walkable urban areas, said Leinberger. The desire is also substantiated by real estate prices for urban residential space, which are 40 to 200 percent higher than in traditional suburban neighborhoods -- this price variation can be found both in cities and small communities equipped with walkable infrastructure, he said.

The result is an oversupply of depreciating suburban housing and a pent-up demand for walkable urban space, which is unlikely to be met for a number of years. That's mainly, according to Leinberger, because the built environment changes very slowly; and also because governmental policies and zoning laws are largely prohibitive to the construction of complicated high-density developments.

But as the market catches up to the demand for more mixed use communities, the United States could see a notable structural transformation in the way its population lives -- Arthur C. Nelson, director of Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute, estimates, for example, that half of the real-estate development built by 2025 will not have existed in 2000.

Yet Nelson also estimates that in 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes that will not be left vacant in a suburban wasteland but instead occupied by lower classes who have been driven out of their once affordable inner-city apartments and houses.

The so-called McMansion, he said, will become the new multi-family home for the poor.

"What is going to happen is lower and lower-middle income families squeezed out of downtown and glamorous suburban locations are going to be pushed economically into these McMansions at the suburban fringe," said Nelson. "There will probably be ten people living in one house."

In Shaun Yandell's neighborhood, this has already started to happen. Houses once filled with single families are now rented out by low-income tenants.

Yandell speculates that they're coming from nearby Sacramento, where the downtown is undergoing substantial gentrification, or perhaps from some other area where prices have gotten too high. He isn't really sure.

But one thing Yandell is sure about is that he isn't going to leave his sunny suburban neighborhood unless he has to, and if that happens, he says he would only want to move to another one just like it.
"It's the American dream, you know," he said. "The American dream."