Review: The End of Suburbia

Written and Directed by Gregory Greene

At the closing of the documentary film, The End of Suburbia, author James Howard Kunstler offers some final thoughts on the future of America: “Irony was the ethos of the late twentieth century,” he says,

“but as we move into the twenty-first century, we’re going to discover that irony is a luxury we can’t afford anymore. Our lives are going to depend on whether we have an environment that . . . can actually support the project of civilization. We’re not going to be able to sit back and make fun of it and enjoy it ironically. That part of our history is over. It’s time to get serious.”

Of course, if our energy-depleted future unfolds as Kunslter and the other subjects of the film predict, the result will be ironic—though more in the manner of Greek tragedy than of the Simpsons.

Nontheless, Kunslter’s point is well taken. As he points out in the film, even many people who live in the suburbs these days find it easy to mock them—which itself says something about what we have all been conditioned to accept from our physical environments and culture, and which makes the film’s final scene, a 1950s film clip celebrating consumerism and suburban life, especially jarring. Directly juxtaposed with Kunslter’s comment, and coming after much similar footage, the intended message of yet another campy scene is on a first take unclear. Does Kunstler’s point indict the film? Or does the film indict its viewers?

It is easy, after all, to watch a film like The End of Suburbia—especially the first half, which makes liberal use of earnest 1950s film clips to lay out the history of the suburbs—with mild, perhaps even affectionate amusement. Today we pretend to be removed from that bygone era—more sophisticated, more knowing, but we have been trained to look back with at least some nostalgia at that time of lost innocence.

What the old footage really illustrates, though, is that suburbia itself is the product of the immense, top-down conformity of the era in which it was started, and inasmuch as we perpetuate that model today, we are still living in the 1950s. The fact that our physical environments have failed almost entirely to evolve beyond the sterile conformism of that time would seem itself to be a sign of a serious cultural stagnation. No matter how hip or liberated we pretend to be, we still live someplace, and the kind of place that is matters—energy issues aside.

Most of the narration in the first half of The End of Suburbia comes from interviews with Kunstler (our most famous and most caustic suburban critic) and Peter Calthorpe (who is, with Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, one of the three most influential New Urbanist neighborhood planners), with some other commentary Richard Heinberg and others.

In the second half of the film, The End of Suburbia delves into the facts of peak oil and how energy depletion will soon bring our current way of life to an end. Casting the suburbs as both villain and soon-to-be victim in the peak oil grand narrative may seem like an obvious choice for anyone who has been introduced to the subject through the work of Kunstler; but there are certainly other ways to approach it.

In fact, other than Kunstler, none of the energy commentators in the movie (Deffeyes, Campbell, Ruppert, Heinberg, Simmons, Darley, Klare, Bakhtiari—to the director’s credit, almost all the famous peak oil experts make appearances) is particularly focused on the issue of suburbia per se, though most would probably agree that the suburban project as it stands is doomed. None of their comments will surprise anyone who is already versed in the issue of energy depletion; but The End of Suburbia does an excellent job of making the concise, powerful case for peak oil. To have that case presented not by one but by many experts, including petroleum geologists and an energy investment banker, gives weight to the film. It is hard to visually dramatize the threat of energy depletion, but Green manages to do it.

If there is one weakness in the film it is that Green presents no peak oil skeptics—even to refute them. Many people who watch the film will therefore come away unconvinced, clinging to the common (if fallacious) arguments that the market and high technology will save us.

One also occasionally gets the impression that Green is quoting his experts selectively to emphasize his own point: not just that we about to hit an energy crisis, but that that crisis is best understood in the context of the suburbs. It is a point somewhat undermined by his own experts; Calthorpe, for instance, while eminently knowledgeable about the history of suburban development, comes off as less than convinced about the significance of peak oil, saying at one point that there are many reasons to retool the suburbs in addition to energy depletion and that we shouldn’t just focus on one. Kunstler—long an advocate of New Urbanism—is pessimistic about the feasibility of rebuilding our society in time.

In another way though, Green’s choice to focus on suburbia is a bold one. The connection between the design of human habitats and the use of energy may not be the only frame for the peak oil story, but it is one of the most convincing. Figuring out how to make use of oil and gas has allowed our civilization to do things in the last hundred years that would have been be utterly unimaginable to previous generations. Explaining in the starkest terms how those things (particularly the car culture and the affluence it created) are threatened is perhaps the best way to make the point that energy depletion is more than just a serious issue, it is a crisis. That we squandered our fossil fuel inheritance building a shallow culture of consumerism and cheap sprawl is almost beside the point now. The question now is, how do we learn to live without it?

Comments

[Barry Silverthorn; editor of The End of Suburbia]

Congratulations! You're the first - if not the only - reviewer to "get it". There are 48.7 ironic moments in the documentary. The End of Suburbia is ALL about irony.

[Domenic Vitiello]

I love _The End of Suburbia_ and enjoyed your review. The film has sparked many wonderful discussions and some great creative design work in the urban studies and planning courses I teach at the University of Pennsylvania.

There's only one big point where my take on the urban and suburban implications of peak oil diverges from Kunstler's.

I believe the sprawling sitcom suburbs and exurbs on the metropolitan fringe will suffer for all the reasons cited in the film and more (while denser urban and suburban places well served by transit will fare better in many ways).

However, the average North American McMansion dweller in the sprawling suburbs seems in a far better position to adapt to shifts in global and local energy, economies, and food supply than many, if not most people in the continent's cities.

Most McMansion dwellers have enough assets to pay for solar, geothermal, insulation and other existing technologies to take their homes off the grid.

Of course, McMansion dwellers would seem best off if they have professional services jobs that can be done from home.

And if one's McMansion happens to be in a region with a decent growing season and the household can get its act together to grow some of its food, then it can address at least part of its food supply challenge. If the front yard faces south, by all means replace the grass with vegetables and fruit - tell the teenagers organic gardening is hip and getting hipper.

Meanwhile, the people who will be worst off, as always, will be the poor who lack access to capital, land, and jobs close to home.

This past winter, low income heating and energy assistance programs expanded throughout the nation. They will need to expand a great deal more - if not be totally revolutionized or reinvented - to meet the challenges of the near future.

As the poor are pushed off of "vacant" lots and community gardens in Los Angeles, New York, and other cities, low-wealth inner-city communities' capacity to address the food supply issues of peak oil diminishes. (The rural poor may fare much better in this regard.)

Energy justice promises to become the next great issue of social, economic, and environmental justice.

Adding futher irony to the end of metropolitan life as we know it, poor people living in the Bronx, South Chicago, East St. Louis, North Philadelphia, and Oakland will continue to live in dense neighborhoods well served by transit, often in the vicinity of vacant lots... yet their communities are the least prepared and worst positioned to cope with the urban and economic impacts of peak oil.

[Lakis]

Hi Domenic,

Thanks for your response.

"Meanwhile, the people who will be worst off, as always, will be the poor who lack access to capital, land, and jobs close to home."

I couldn't agree more with this statement.

As far as it goes, Kunstler is almost as pessimistic about big cities as he is about the suburbs, especially those which have a preponderance of skyscrapers. I asked him about this in an interview I did with him for The Believer Magazine last November; his response was that you can’t exactly heat those buildings with space heaters.

On the other hand, I wonder if you underestimate the strain that very high oil prices will put on even wealth exurban communities. Certainly there are many high-income people there, but how many of them are so highly leveraged that they cannot afford to lose their jobs and keep their homes, even for a short time? Take the recent sharp rise in foreclosure rates as an example. So much seems to depend on economic factors. People are fond of believing that telecommuting service jobs will provide an advantage, but how many of those jobs will continue to exist? And if someone can telecommute from the suburbs, why not pay someone a fifth the salary to do the same job in India?

As for the rural poor, Toby Hemmenway has some interesting reflections on this (http://www.patternliteracy.com/urban.html) subject. He points out that during the Great Depression, urban dwellers did better than rural farmers.

None of this is to argue that the urban poor will be in great shape either. In fact, even if cities do end up being more viable places to live, it’s not hard to see an pattern of intensifying gentrification with the poor pushed into less viable living situations.

Kunstler believes that small towns with nearby agriculture will be the most viable, and he may be right. There may also be significant regional factors to consider as well . . .

Congratulations on your work teaching and writing about urban planning; I would be very interested in reading some of your work and corresponding with you in the future.

Lakis