Undoubtedly you’ve been following, more or less, the economic crisis that energy scarcity and the mortgage debacle has largely precipitated. Depending on where you live, you’ve probably also noticed over the past few years the shopping centers, office, and industrial parks popping up continuing the urban sprawl toward the exurbs. While these new bright and shiny, luxuriously landscaped pods of energy waste are well lighted, manicured, and maintained now, all you have to do to see where they will be once they’ve been abandoned for the next wave of urban development is to reverse direction.
Take a look at the abandoned commercial area just inside this brand new one. There you will see, based on past trends, where its future lies. That’s where the abandoned or underutilized shopping centers lie with crabgrass growing up through an empty, crumbling parking lot. An odd lots store is the only remaining anchor where there previously was a Wal-Mart or K-Mart. Cruise the strip and you will see the curiously distinctive roofline of a Pizza Hut but the franchise has long ago moved on having been replaced by Help-u-Save Pawn Shop.
But with the economic threat growing and the price of petroleum skyrocketing, we might see an acceleration of abandonment of these suburban commercial centers. Instead of the newest, shiniest, and brightest being at the far periphery, these areas may be the next in line for abandonment, just like the far suburbs of Los Angeles. These new developments, located in the Inland Empire and Central Valley long known for supplying the nations industrial agricultural crop, were instead a new crop of mushrooming housing projects designed to serve as the affordable housing for LA commuters. Yet someone forgot about the cost of commuting. Developers, bankers, insurers, or homebuyers….someone didn’t realize the a slight upturn in fuel prices made these developments inviable for commuting.
The likelihood of cheap fuel enabling the continuation of sprawl as a viable model is nil for the future. This means that suburban and exurban glitz and glamor will assuredly be either abandoned real estate or (according to Kunstler) our future slums. Towns and cities that don’t put a stop right now to further peripheral expansion and the suburban pattern are acting carelessly and perhaps immorally.
