A Crude Awakening - Film

[andr2eea]

There were many interesting points in this film, but one that really stood out was the design of American towns/cities.

Not enough is being done to prevent a crash in energy source due to the dependence on oil for transportation (something like 98% is fueled by oil) so we might have to start using other transportation such as buses/trains or even horseback which was mentioned in the film.

Europe might not have such a problem since most of the large towns/cities were built hundreds of years ago with travel being short in mind, while America's large towns/cities have huge suburbs and many employees travel 50/60 miles a day to their jobs apparently.

Would that mean in the future that a lot of Americans would have to rehome or possibly have whole towns redesigned so that transportation wouldn't be too much of an issue?

[UndercoverElephant]

There were many interesting points in this film, but one that really stood out was the design of American towns/cities.

Not enough is being done to prevent a crash in energy source due to the dependence on oil for transportation (something like 98% is fueled by oil) so we might have to start using other transportation such as buses/trains or even horseback which was mentioned in the film.

Europe might not have such a problem since most of the large towns/cities were built hundreds of years ago with travel being short in mind, while America's large towns/cities have huge suburbs and many employees travel 50/60 miles a day to their jobs apparently.

Yes, the United States is in a uniquely bad position for exactly the reasons you've described. The UK, for example, still has a network of market towns and outlying villages that would go back to their old way of doing things post-crash. The one big exception to this is London, not because of its distance from other settlements, but because it is bloated and utterly un-self-sustainable (i.e. it is totally dependent on all sorts of resources being imported from far away).

Would that mean in the future that a lot of Americans would have to rehome or possibly have whole towns redesigned so that transportation wouldn't be too much of an issue?

Absolutely. In some cases it will mean the suburbs will end up as ghost towns, but the US has a much bigger problem in that major cities are so far away from each other. The US is dependent on internal commercial aviation in a way that no other country is, and will have to rebuild its rail network in a post-crash era. It also has another major problem in that the entire south-west is naturally an (almost) uninhabitable desert. Las Vegas will eventually be abandoned. Stupid place to build a city.

[andr2eea]

Can suburbs be transformed into their own cities, such as having farms around the area and supermarkets that grow locally so that others won't have to travel so far to buy food etc? Businesses could be relocated and business buildings in cities could be converted to apartments. There could be a compromise.

However with large cities such as London, or condensed countries such as Japan, it would be difficult to create extra travel such as trains since those trains are incredibly full all the time already. Would train tracks have to be built underground or overground, seeing more railroads in the future?

[UndercoverElephant]

Can suburbs be transformed into their own cities, such as having farms around the area and supermarkets that grow locally so that others won't have to travel so far to buy food etc? Businesses could be relocated and business buildings in cities could be converted to apartments.

That might be possible in areas where the right resources are present, yes. I suspect the biggest problems in much of the United States will be cultural rather than practical.

However with large cities such as London, or condensed countries such as Japan, it would be difficult to create extra travel such as trains since those trains are incredibly full all the time already. Would train tracks have to be built underground or overground, seeing more railroads in the future?

London has the oldest underground railway in the world. I don't think burying a few more outlying lines will help. I suspect cities like London and Tokyo will simply have to shrink in the longer term future. They are fundamentally unsustainable in a post-crash world.