From The New West Blog
Gas Prices and Suburbia
By Alaina Abbott, 6-26-08
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As suburbanites pay $4 a gallon for gas to make their long commutes to work, they are realizing how much it adds up and migrating back into the cities to cut costs.
Peter S. Goodman of The New York Times has a story about how this trend is playing out in Denver.
“Before it was ‘we spend too much time driving.’ Now, it’s ‘we spend too much time and money driving,’” says one man reconsidering his aversion to city life.
Across the nation, the realization is taking hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a change with lasting consequences. The shift to costlier fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs.
Denver, Colo., has revived its Lower Downtown around Coors Field, the Colorado Rockies’ baseball stadium, with restaurants, microbreweries and new condos. And for four years, the city has been constructing a commuter rail system downtown, which substitutes for cars and draws in homebuyers.
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