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Paul Krugman makes two points in his column today that are worth echoing, and maybe even repeating in less pithy, surefooted prose. Good point the first:
Changing the geography of American metropolitan areas will be hard. For one thing, houses last a lot longer than cars. Long after today’s S.U.V.’s have become antique collectors’ items, millions of people will still be living in subdivisions built when gas was $1.50 or less a gallon.Infrastructure is another problem. Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access.It's convenient to live in a city with smart urban planning and a strong public transit infrastructure and convenient to live in a suburb with a good road system. As such, lots of people live in well-planned cities, and lots of people live in suburbs with cars. But there aren't very many cities fitting that description, and because there are relatively few of them, property rices in those cities are quite high, and much of the population growth is getting pushed back into outer-ring communities that aren't all that convenient.
