Ecomunicipality.com

We all know the story (or should): post World War II, lots of baby-boom families getting started, Leavittown, New York, cheap land, cookie-cutter homes, safe sub-divisions, a lot of road-building, new schools, new municipal governments. A whole new American Dream with profits galore.

Welcome to America's suburb. Land of enchantment, of dreams, of the perfect American experience. Clean. Ordered. Safe. Affluent.

I've never had the pleasure to live in one, though I did, as a teacher, work in one for a decade.

Well, the suburb has come in for a lot of criticism over the last several decades. From the atomizing effects of its single unit, single lot, single family approach to housing, to its consumption of massive amounts of land and habitat, to its wasteful dependence upon fossil fuel as a premise for its existence.

Now the question becomes is the suburb a thing of the past? New studies and new thinking suggest that it is.

We know that Americans are overweight. We know they need more exercise. We know they don't always eat well. And we also know that their cars are too big and consume too much fuel.

And, most of us, understand that Americans have too much square-footage in their homes.

But, check out this article in the NYTimes. Not only does too much house cost us money, consume fossil fuels and electricity and contribute to green-house gas emissions, living alone in a palace can actually contribute to an early death: