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The End of Suburbia is a rabidly biased documentary that takes another perspective on why the suburbs will fail, the cost of oil: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0

The End of Suburbia is a rabidly biased documentary that takes another perspective on why the suburbs will fail, the cost of oil: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446320/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446320/ And in free as in beer, glorious 240p: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug It's entertaining and, IMO, well worth watching even if you disagree with some of the people they interview or prefer your documentaries balanced and dispassionate. You're sure to come away from the movie feeling you know more about the history of the relationship between the automobile and the suburbs.

jseliger 15y ago
"The End of Suburbia is a rabidly biased documentary that takes another perspective on why the suburbs will fail, the cost of oil:" I dislike the suburbs as much as the next wannabe new urbanist type, but a) given development patterns of the last 70 years, it's hard to see anything happening to suburbs save on the same timescale and b) hybrid and/or electric cars will replace gas-powered ones if the price of oil rises high enough. Sure, the (current) higher stick price of hybrid / electric cars means that cities will become more attractive at the margin, but given how easy the substitutes are, I think electric cars (and the infrastructure necessary to run them) are now advanced enough to ensure that oil prices alone won't damn suburbs.
- raganwald 15y ago
  There's actually a section in the movie on the subject of electricity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug&t=16m15s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug&t=16m15s And later on they discuss hybrids and electric cars specifically. But to be clear, I don't recommend the movie because it's right, but because it asks interesting questions and leads you to think about interesting possibilities. We use a lot of energy. If we're going to replace the energy from fossil fuels with energy from electricity, we are going to need a lot more capacity than we have today. And as you can see from recent news, doubling or trebling our capacity is no small feat.

jseliger 15y ago

"The End of Suburbia is a rabidly biased documentary that takes another perspective on why the suburbs will fail, the cost of oil:" I dislike the suburbs as much as the next wannabe new urbanist type, but a) given development patterns of the last 70 years, it's hard to see anything happening to suburbs save on the same timescale and b) hybrid and/or electric cars will replace gas-powered ones if the price of oil rises high enough. Sure, the (current) higher stick price of hybrid / electric cars means that cities will become more attractive at the margin, but given how easy the substitutes are, I think electric cars (and the infrastructure necessary to run them) are now advanced enough to ensure that oil prices alone won't damn suburbs.

raganwald 15y ago
There's actually a section in the movie on the subject of electricity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug&t=16m15s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug&t=16m15s And later on they discuss hybrids and electric cars specifically. But to be clear, I don't recommend the movie because it's right, but because it asks interesting questions and leads you to think about interesting possibilities. We use a lot of energy. If we're going to replace the energy from fossil fuels with energy from electricity, we are going to need a lot more capacity than we have today. And as you can see from recent news, doubling or trebling our capacity is no small feat.