One of the ‘big’ issues for those of us interested in travel and transport is the relationship with land use – clearly crucial but hard to understand.   The credit crunch is having an impact on land use patterns in the US which is beginning to be reported.  Recent long articles in The New Yorker (The Ponzi State) and The Atlantic (How the Crash will Reshape America) are illuminating.  The essence is roughly as follows.

Extensive suburbs of lost cost housing have been built in Florida in recent years, bought by people moving south or locals wanting to move further out from the cities in which they worked – hence a growth-fuelled real estate boom dependent on the auto.   But much of this new housing is now not occupied, building plots have been abandoned, and prices have fallen substantially from peak values.  Florida’s economy depends almost entirely on growth, on new arrivals and the wealth they generate in construction and real estate, plus tourism and sunshine.  Now that the boom has turned to bust, the Florida economy is in trouble.  There is talk of a light-rail system for Tampa, a city of 3m and after Detroit the largest metropolitan area without one – an economic stimulus which would lure people back to the city.

Has the historic phase of suburbanization come to end?  As the economy moves on from making and moving things to generating and transporting ideas, perhaps the population will shift back to the town and city centres.  This would have helpful implications for sustainability but would go against the grain of a belief in wealth for all from property development and no state income tax.