Are suburbs becoming obsolete?
mood: 
thoughtful
thoughtfulmusic: Save Paradise and put up a parking lot
http://www.crosscut.com/mossback/16796/
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We have two kinds of suburbs here in Albuquerque--farmland that has been rezoned residential and houses up on the mesa.
The rezoned farmland only needs the proper economic motivation to become productive again. Probably in the form of something like victory gardens.
The mesa, on the other hand, is marginal land, even for grazing animals. It is hard to think of any economic use for the land *other* than building houses on it. Those are the places I most worry about as gas continues to get more expensive.
Albuquerque, I assume like many other areas, has been experiencing a rebuilding of the city center. We have all sorts of infill construction and investment in commercial and residential spaces inside the city.
Nothing on the scale to affect any sort of migration from the mesa into the valley. Also as is extremely typical, most of our major politicians own land around the city, and infrastructure to nowhere gets approved at what would be an astonishing rate were it not so typical.
I was concerned, myself, in thinking that I was moving to the suburbs to live at sunflower river. Certainly we're quite a ways out of town, but it only feels that way when you're talking about biking or walking. The scale of the whole thing doesn't feel the same as Phoenix or Denver.
Most American towns were settled before national and international transportation was readily available, so the surrounding area was capable of providing the necessary potable water, foodstuffs and raw materials (or the town did not succeed). Now towns are so big, they are consuming the available agricultural lands for residential and commercial development. Where do people think their foods will come from? Truck it, fly it, ship it from far away may soon become too expensive.
The article I referenced talks of the need for existing small communities to reestablish the small farms, and pedestrian and bike paths to make the communities liveable and sustainable in the coming decades as fuel becomes scarce and prohibitively expensive, i.e., more sunflower rivers. visionary? realistic? yes to both.