Say Goodbye tothe Suburbs.

Have you noticed that we are in the middle of another almighty shift in human movement? We all learned in school about the Industrial Revolution, and how it forced the end of the Agrarian way of life for Millions in the West. You got the vision of millions of people being herded in never ending bedraggled columns toward the ‘dark, satanic mills’ of the soot-covered cities. The City where I was born was like that. Prior to the 1850’s, it was a few canal locks on top of a hill whose only claim to fame was that the valleys to its west used to be a country hunting estate for Henry VIII.

Of course, once factories started to require freight, canals became the preferred method of transportation, and this small town became a city in a matter of months, apparently.Growing up, I knew I lived in an automobile manufacturing city close to Europe’s largest Freeway exchange, with a large ‘green belt’ around it, just a few miles outside the suburbs where my family moved to – an actual 20 minute bus ride from downtown, how exotic!

These days I live in a city that has shrugged off it’s Lumber past for the most part, and has become part of what the more modern thinkers amongst us describe as a global cyber-network, more attached to a city down the coast in a different country than it is to it’s own nation’s capital. Among the most exciting real estate developments in recent years has been the transformation of a run down warehouse district (A relic of the port city we always were, but that has now moved to a more easily managed part of town), into a hip, young, cyber-entrepreneur type of clichéd downtown ghetto: Restaurants and bars that are way too expensive for what they sell, a Starbucks every ninety feet – that kind of thing.

This major shift in the migration habits of the current generation is due to the Internet. Now, kids are learning how to navigate spaces much bigger than the direct world they will graduate into. They are then using this knowledge to run their own businesses from a laptop and a cell phone, so they don’t need space to make money. With post-boom generations becoming smaller, there is no pressure to marry and have their own children, so the entire edifice of satellite cities, bedroom communities and the daily commute will be over in the next decade. Our current view of 2-up, 2-down semis in the suburbs will be the same as we now look at 4 story, 5 bedroom, and 4 bath Victorian mansions. OK for some, but way over the needs of most of us. As oil prices go up, and the automobile becomes too expensive to run, what will happen to the suburbs?

Of course, if they become too expensive to run by their city councils, eventually they will be swallowed up by their nearest cities – the very ones that birthed them in the 70’s. Whole neighbourhoods will be bulldozed to cut down on costs, and to save them from criminal activity. Eventually, they will be returned to farmland to promote local produce manufacture in the new, warmer climate.

In other words, the entire suburb culture in the 2040’s, could well look very much like it did in the 1950’s: A One-Century experiment in growth for one generation that was shown to work, but with many flaws that greed alone couldn’t answer.

Happy Half Century ?

This year is my 50^th birthday, and I have been gathering other 50 year facts to see what has happened in my life, and how it could affect my future.

17 African nations celebrate their 50^th anniversaries of freedom from the yolk of Colonialism this year. The Cold war was fought for the most part on this continent, mainly for the mineral wealth under their mountains. Aid began in earnest in the 1970’s, and it is the children of this time that are now mature adults looking to lead their nations. While we in the West are about to enjoy an inverse pyramid of population, with more people collecting our own version of lifelong aid, Africa is bottom heavy with youth. – hundreds of millions of them are under the age of 30, on a continent wealthy beyond dreams in mineral wealth on a continent where you could drop the western nations, and emerging economies, and lose them with room to spare.

Meanwhile, China and India (Two nations that haven’t been fighting endless wars for half a century) are now proving to us that they are more than simply ‘worker farms’. They are now taking industrial and management techniques to a whole new way of doing business. They have taken mass production to a while new level: $2000 Cars, $300 computers, and $30 cell phones. 40% of the World’s growth are going to come from these two nations over the next few years. Who is leading them? Not us. 5 million Chinese and 3 Million Indians graduate from their universities every year. 75,000 of these Chinese degree holders are in Computer science or engineering, and 60,000 in India.

Emerging markets share of global GDP increased from 36% to 45% in 30 years, and will be over 50% in les than 5 more, and they are outspending Americans. In the last quarter of 2009, Thailand grew at 15%, and Taiwan at 18%. Chinese and Indian companies are buying Western businesses and names: Tata industries in India own the names of Land Rover and Jaguar. Productivity rose in China last year by 8.2% The US grew by 1%, and the UK dropped by almost 3%.

These markets are now stretching what the Japanese taught the US about auto construction in the 1970’s further. After all, they weren’t going to stay as serfs for very long. That’s why they taught the Koreans to do the ‘grunt’ labour, and now look at what Kia has become. When these emerging economies finally ‘emerge’, the African nations are ready, willing and able to overcome their last 50 years and join in with the rest of the World.

Co-incidentally, it is also the 50^th anniversary of The Pill being given the green light by the FDA, over here. In these contexts, it appears that we have been doing our best to stop producing, cut the amount of children there are around, and funding massive war machines. What a waste of half a century.