Atlanta at $20 per gallon of gas
July 22, 2009 at 10:32 am by Thomas Wheatley in News
In the new book $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better, Christopher Steiner predicts that the roller coaster ride of petrol prices will eventually become one long, cash-gobbling incline. (If this premise sounds eerily familiar, then you might have listened to Marketplace last night. Steiner was a guest.)
The change will be painful, he says. Big-box stores that rely on inexpensive goods shipped from afar will lose their grip on the marketplace. Residents will return to live in dense cities, turning the suburbs into what the cities were during white flight. Regional air travel? Too expensive and inefficient. Interstates will…well, who knows. I remember hearing something like “will become overgrown with weeds,” but I think that’s already happening.
But growing pains and another economic collapse aside, the shift won’t be all that bad. Fuel prices will become so unbearable, Steiner writes, that we’ll walk and bike more, plan more dense communities, and know our neighbors. We’ll be healthier and happier and live in a cleaner environment.
Forbes Magazine has adapted some chapters of the book. After the jump, some excerpts I noticed about Atlanta.
Steiner writes that big-box stores, such as Wal-Mart and Atlanta-based Home Depot, will be hit the hardest. Cheap materials shipped from China and other countries will simply become too expensive. Those companies, he says, best become more sustainable and develop relationships with local producers.
Here’s some bad news for the world’s busiest airport, especially one that’s in the middle of building a proposed $1 billion international terminal:
Airports now are far too big for a future of higher oil prices. Giant airports in Denver, Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta and Houston will shut down more than half of their gates. (Empty Skies)
Good news for cops and shoemakers:
Police have taken to the sidewalks once again, much like they did a century ago on America’s tight and dense city avenues. The modest police department in Suwanee, Ga., budgeted $60,000 for gasoline in fiscal year 2008. Its 2009 budget ramped up its gasoline allowance to $163,000. Michael Jones, chief of the Suwanee Police Department, which has 36 officers, says rising gas prices have enabled him to change the way Suwanee is patrolled for the better. “When my father had his beat fifty years ago in Rome, Ga., he walked it. Everybody knew him. He got Christmas gifts from just about every person in his patrol area…[they] gave him gifts because he was part of the community and he was their friend. That’s the kind of thing we want to get back to here,” Jones says in his Southern-soaked drawl. (A Skinnier, Safer America)
Decatur police officers will be fine. But hopefully the rest of metro Atlanta will have more pedestrian- and officer-friendly streetscapes by this point. Buford Highway is not very conducive to long, leisurely walks.
If all this turns out to be true, then I’m sure it’s far in the future. But it’s best to start planning ahead.
(Totally fake sign generated by Atom Smasher’s Gas Station Sign Generator)
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