Eduardo M. Penalver’s article, Beginning of the End for Sprawl? is a little more optimistic than I am about how soon people might return to sensible, urban dwelling, but he hits on the issues.

Here’s the thing– so many people will defend their way of life, even if it makes no sense. I’ll hear people say how they love the fresh air of the suburbs, without any irony in their voices. Suburban living, at least in the United States, is defined by sprawl. That means having strip malls about every five miles. These developments encroach on wetlands and other parts of the ecosystem.  I also hear a lot of noise about “the problems of the city,” most of which are either rumors or things that could be solved by increasing the tax base. If the schools suck, do you think it might have something to do with funding? But it’s not just funding alone. Inadequate schools are also representative of how racism manifests itself in our society. I’m not getting into all this on a Sunday afternoon, but it’s something to just think about. Another thing I hear about is the desire to be away from violence.

I know plenty of people who grew up in suburbs who experienced violence. Violence does not always take the form of drive-by shootings. Violence happens frequently behind closed doors. I know too many females who were sexually assaulted in the suburbs. They might be still alive, but they’ve experienced significant trauma. While a bullet might kill someone, she’s more likely to be sexually assaulted than shot. Again, it’s a Sunday afternoon, and I’m not going to get into all of the reasons for violence or why it’s misrepresented.

In Penalver’s piece, he ends on a hopeful note:

Although the end of sprawl will require painful changes, it will also provide a badly needed opportunity to take stock of the car-dependent, privatized society that has evolved over the past 60 years and to begin imagining different ways of living and governing. We may discover that it’s not so bad living closer to work, in transit- and pedestrian-friendly, diverse neighborhoods where we run into friends and neighbors as we walk to the store, school or the office.

We may even find that we don’t miss our cars and commutes, and the culture they created, nearly as much as we feared we would.