As oil becomes ever more expensive, the peak oil theory is making our car-centric suburbs look like more of a burden than a blessing. Urban planners like Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander have been criticizing suburbs for decades, though mostly for social rather than economic reasons. I personally couldn’t imagine myself living in a cookie-cutter house in the suburbs, or living in a place that was more than a few minutes walk to a park, café, community centre, bakery, subway, restaurants, and grocery store.

This is a photo I snapped out the window of the plane as we were landing in Frankfurt, Germany. It’s a suburb, but it isn’t suburban in the North American sense. It’s small enough to easily walk across, yet large enough to have a station on the regional commuter rail line (and trust me, there isn’t much that the Germans seem to love more than their trains).

Tags: Long Term Thinking, Transport, Urban