Check out this story in today’s NYT by Rick Lyman. It’s all about those Brooks-a-riffic “exurbs” we heard so much about after the last electionthat mysterious land of big-box American stores, big-box American homes, big-box American cars, and the resulting big-box American butts. These places are far from city centers and first-generation ring suburbs, and they couldn’t exist without the car or the miserable eight-lane-plus roads that get the folks who choose to live in these soulless shitholes to their jobswhich are usually in city centers and those first-generation ring suburbs.

“In one sense, these exurbs are just suburbs that take a longer time to drive to,” said John Husing, a political and economic consultant in California. “With these, white flight has nothing to do with it. It’s all housing prices. The makeup of these communities is a reflection of who’s migrating, and that’s people who have enough money to be middle class.”

While it’s nice to know that the exurbs aren’t about white flight, all I could think about was the coming oil crunch. Exurbaniteswhatever their colorare yowling today about $3 a gallon gas. I wonder how they’re going to feel about $10 or $15 dollar a gallon gas in five, ten or twenty years. Unless we find an alternate energy source, these exurbs are going to be the ghost towns by the end of the century. I hope I live long enough to see itwhich I may not. Today on my bike ride to work, I was almost run over by some dumb asshole in an SUV. She was drinking coffee and talking on her cell phone, which didn’t leave a hand free for her turn signal.