For Lewis Mumford

This is for Lewis Mumford.....(look him up)

An interesting read and critical to our survival as a species...that's right, where we live and how we live is becoming a critical choice due to the ravages of global climate change AND peak oil.

We cannot keep running to the suburbs in the conventional sense.  The 40 mile one way commute, which is expanding around the Bay Area to a full hour and one half one way, is simply not sustainable.  The congestion of the future is a one way ticket to disaster.  Moreover, fleeing the cities and moving further and further into the countryside is a recipe for disaster!

We need to follow the instincts of this article.  In Sacramento the downtown is seeing a real revitalization, as millenials move downtown and rennonvate aging residential communities with supporting amenities (small businesses and restaurants that are alive with young professionals who love living downtown).  We live in Campus Commons, an older development that was an alternative to the suburan sprawl of the 70s and 80s and is amazing in its continuing revitalization....it is close to everything and is built to encourage interactions and socialization.  And we are seeing younger people moving in and again, reaching out to each other in a quest for community.  Why live in the suburbs when downtown is becoming more the place to be!

Suburbs have often become expensive traps, where people spend hours commuting to work from, living in the house for  a minimum of time, and for sure isolating themselves from everyone in the neighborhood.  These expensive traps  exist surrounding Sacramento right now, with inhabitants painfully becoming aware of the loneliness of life in a huge house, with a pool and nobody to share it with.  Drive a new suburb sometimes, look at all the houses which are closed off by fences from one another, empty fortresses of lonliness.  And all of them, hopelessly expensive...People are not there because they are driving back and forth to work everyday....100 plus miles one way...

Community has always been the strentgth of mankind.  And the era of suburbs has shown itself to be a failure of simply being human.

It all started going bad when we all built fences around our houses.

The young people and us old baby boomers are figuring it out finally.

Let us hope it is not too late.  We need to 1. Move closer in to downtown; revitalize as we go.  2.  Demand efficient and usable public transportation.  3.  Demand more efficient cars that are supported by a smart transportation grid.  4.  Demand a smarter and more inclusive wireless network (and more accessible to everyone).  5.  And finally, demand an end to the pure automobile driven commuter economy....and become human again....