The Nuclear City

And no I am not talking about nuking a city. We are on the verge of being forced once again into a city centered, high density, community. The days of far flung subdivisions where people could live twenty miles or more from their job are coming to an end. Tree huggers have been talking this way for a while now so nobody, until fairly recently was inclined to worry too much.

Now gas prices are hovering at or above $3.60 a gallon. That means if you own a little car that gets 40 miles per gallon, something that most people do not own, and you travel 12,000 miles in a year in your car, something that most people do, it will cost you $1,080 a year to drive you little eco-car. Of course the average American has a car that gets about 24 miles per gallon, so they get to pay almost $2,000 a year for gas.

Now the for the "fun" future. Americans will eventually be paying about $7 per gallon. This is still about $2 per gallon less than everyone else in the world pays right now.

At $7 per gallon that little eco car will cost you $2160 a year in gas. Remember too that this equation I am using is for a person that has puts 1000 miles a month on their car. How many of you really do that?

For suburbanites some people are putting 100 mile round trips on their cars. At that level, at $7gal., they will be paying out a wopping $7600 bucks for gas a year just to drive to work and back.

So the era of long commutes from the country to jobs in the city is almost over. If you want to live in the country, fine, just make sure you have a job in the country. Another telltale sign of the times is that housing prices are falling, pretty much, only in the outlying areas. City housing has not really been touched by the so called housing slump.

Adam Smiths invisible economic hand will push people back to the city, kicking a screaming at times, but will drag them back all the same.