Blue_Nose Blue_Nose:
I hope it does run out soon - it will inspire new technology that relies on alternative sources, and hopefully reduce the tendency for people to live outside urban centres and commute.
It would be a positive change that would reduce pollution and urban sprawl - two very real and apparent problems of today that don't need sketchy models to be realized.
People live outside of urban centres mostly for the principle reasons of safety. The large cities are generally unsafe and with the concentrated social services attracting the dregs of humanity most decent people don't want to raise their families in such an environment. Thus they flee the centres to the suburbs.
Here in California an example of two cities that are turning things around would be West Sacramento and Rancho Cordova. Both are relatively new cities but have been urbanized and unincorporated for over 100 years.
Both cities were dumping grounds where the counties dumped undesirables such as drug addicts, sex offenders, parolees, and etc.
Both cities incorporated to gain local control over their neighborhoods.
West Sacramento went from being a ghetto in 1987 to now being a promising and developing city with some of the region's most desireable real estate.
Rancho Cordova, which only incorporated in 2003 has made rapid progress in cleaning out the halfway houses, prostitution, and all sorts of other problems that were tolerated by the county in the city prior to incorporation - consequently, property values are increasing as the area becomes safer.
In contrast, the City of Sacramento has had a series of housing developments fail because no one wants to live in areas frequented by drunks, drug addicts, the mentally ill, prostitutes, and etc.
My point is that the key to ending sprawl is to stop giving people valid reasons to flee the urban centres. And the most important reason to flee is personal safety and the ambience of a city.
CKA Uber 
