The end of the suburbs?

The Atlantic has posed that very question in this piece.

In the years following World War II, the United States experienced an unprecedented consumption boom. Anything you could measure was growing. A Rhode Island-sized chunk of land was bulldozed to make new suburbs every single year for decades. America rounded into its present-day shape.

Along the way, there were three inexorable trends at the base of the societal pyramid. First, we plowed more energy into our homes each and every year. We cooled and heated our houses more (sometimes wastefully, sometimes not), brought in more and more appliances, added televisions and computers and phones. Per capita electricity shot up from about 4,000 kilowatt-hours per US resident to over 13,000 kilowatt-hours by the 2000s. Second, we needed more electricity because our houses got huge. The median home size shot up from about 1,500 square feet in the early 1970s to more than 2,200 square feet in the mid-200s. Third, we drove more and more miles every year to get around and between our sprawled-out cities. Back in 1960, Americans drove 0.72 trillion miles. By 2000, that number had reached 2.75 trillion miles. In 2007, vehicle miles traveled hit 3.02 trillion.

Now, though, the relentless growth in those figures is coming to an end. The AP's Jonathan Fahey reported last week that the utility company research consortium, the Electric Power Research Institute, projected that residential electricity demand would drop over the next ten years. ...

Meanwhile, the number of miles that Americans drive fell in 2008 and 2009 -- even as gas prices fell off their highs. In 2010, Americans drove a little more, but so far in 2011, we're driving less. In other words, the growth in total vehicle miles traveled has stalled. And if you look at vehicle miles traveled per person, the picture is even more clear. On a per capita basis, people have been driving less for almost a decade. Now, with gas prices creeping back toward record high territory, we can expect the new downward trends to continue.

Taken together, the end of growth in residential electricity consumption and vehicle miles traveled form a momentous signal. The United States we all grew up with is changing, or rather, it's changed and the numbers are beginning to reflect that. The growth in housing size, electricity demand and miles traveled were the hallmarks of the suburban/exurban era. They were the statistics of sprawl -- but also of economic growth. ...

For what it's worth, I think there was a movement "back" to more compact living before the Recession.

Nonetheless, we have touched on that concept in the past (or, at the very least, the idea of people moving back to cities). As much as the facts show that MORE people are moving to cities and that more and more areas are becoming "urban" in nature, I do think there is an inherent American "pioneer" spirit that results in probably seven out of every 10 Americans pining for wide open spaces. It's not for me, so to speak, but for the majority of my friends, they like the idea of at least an acre of land and a two-car garage with a bonus room. It's not for me, but I don't fault them for it. To each his own.