'The End of Suburbia?' If Only!

"For the sake of suburbanites alone, the end of suburbia would be a blessing. But that's not happening. To the extent we understand suburbia as a single place, wherever it occurs -- an uncomfortably definitive mould, a collection of syndromes masquerading as a lifestyle -- it is all too robust. We made our bed over the past half-century, shaping increasingly homogeneous, car-dependent, overconsuming, overworked, socially exclusive suburbs, and now we must lie in it."

"It may well be that suburbia 'ends' in a great postoil apocalypse. Or it may be brought to crisis by some other aspect of its manifold overconsumption -- of land, for instance. It may be, however, that the suburbia we all love to hate is simply no longer historical, something that will change and perhaps improve in time, but anthropological: a big mistake made permanent."