Death of America's Suburbs Is Greatly Exaggerated (Joe Mysak)

  June 20 (Bloomberg) -- Don't write off the American suburbs just yet.

  With gasoline at $4-plus a gallon, lots of thinking people see the U.S. undergoing a vast demographic shift, with millions of people moving back to cities. The suburbs, and those places beyond the suburbs, the exurbs, will dry up and blow away.

  The notion appeals especially to people who like to think they'll be in charge after the revolution. They would apparently love nothing more than for the population to be confined to Soviet-style concrete-block high-rises and be forced to take state-run streetcars to their little jobs at the mill.

  Or something like that. It would all be so much more convenient, so much more environmentally friendly, too, according to these master planners.

  I went to a wedding in Vermont last weekend, and driving to the reception, out in the woods and down a long road that became a dirt road, I thought that all the people who lived out there were in a fine pickle. My language was a bit more salty.

  People who live out there have to carry out every transaction, even the smallest, with an automobile. Gasoline at $4-plus a gallon hurts.

  It's easy to become hysterical and call for the end of the world as we know it. Wail: What's going to happen because of the high price of gasoline?

  No Catastrophe

  People will pay more to drive their cars.

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