Cross-posted from Metronauts.ca: Friday's Globe and Mail featured a prediction by Jeffrey Rubin, the CIBC World Markets economist, that damage from Hurricane Gustav and other intense storms this season could cause a sudden spike in gas prices to $1.75 a litre. Every time there is a price spike, the media runs to the local gas station to cover the "pain at the pumps". But does that pain translate into a change in behaviour? How much of an impact do gas prices have on the commuting public in the GTA? Do increasing gas prices cause people to make different personal transportation decisions, or are households just absorbing the extra costs? It appears that gas prices are affecting vehicle purchasing decisions (sorry GM), but are consumers switching from private vehicles to other modes of transportation? I would love to see the research on that. (Perhaps our friends at Metrolinx have some sources they can share? If readers know of recent research on this question, please leave a link in the comments.) Surely demographic factors influence gas price sensitivity and the substitution of one mode of transportation for another. It makes sense that household incomes will affect price sensitivity, with the working poor being hit hardest. At the same time, many service workers need to use private vehicles to get to or perform their work (i.e. not the GO train Bay Street crowd) and have few alternatives. This creates a political problem that will bring calls for action. But I also believe that there is a relationship to a another familiar demographic trend with political and policy implications: Boomer parents versus their Gen Y children. Older upper middle-class car owners who live in the bedroom communities surrounding the City of Toronto and other major urban centres in the 905 will not be terribly affected by increasing gas prices - at least not enough to effect a historic shift to more sustainable modes of transportation. In addition to enjoying relative affluence, my guess is that this group have deep-seated cultural habits and experience systemic barriers that make switching costs relatively high. Meanwhile young, newly urban professionals, creatives and knowledge workers who are repopulating our city centres (like Metronauts writer Adam Schwabe) are moving en masse to enjoy the vibrancy of city life, reduce their carbon footprint and increase the quality of their lives by spending less time in the daily commute. Generation Y workers, the Echo, the Millennials - or whatever you want to call them - are changing the workplace, the urban fabric and the nature of the transportation problem. This is more than a stage of life question - research points to a values-driven shift towards more sustainable choices by young people for environmental and financial reasons:

Workers under the age of 25 in the Toronto region use public transit 30.8 per cent of the time, while a further 9.5 per cent walk and 1.5 per cent use a bike. That's a considerably higher reliance on environmentally friendly means of getting to work than the average commuter in the Toronto region, who commutes by public transit 22.2 per cent of the time, by foot 4.8 per cent of the time and 1.0 per cent by bike.

Which of these two groups receives the lions share of attention in the media and the political conversation that surrounds the work of Metrolinx planners and the development of its Regional Transportation Plan? I don't think anyone should be surprised to see plans and investments that reflect the needs of the suburban Boomer commuter class, but what of Gen-Y and the New Urbanists? Ultimately, and historically in this region, the allocation of scarce funding is a question of politics, not planning. So here's the political question: Should governments dull the pain of those making energy-intensive choices about where they live and work and how they choose to travel, or should governments reward those that make more sustainable choices with the required supporting infrastructure, planning policies and design of dense mixed-use city centres? I believe that the Gen-Y shift to urban life is a generational opportunity to shift behaviour and a leverage point for systemic change, if our planners and politicians can find a way support and embrace it. But can planners and politicians hear their voices? Image by Will Gotshall-Maxon Comments are closed. Please join the conversation at Metronauts.ca.

Cross-posted from Metronauts.ca. The economic conditions that supported the tremendous growth of North American suburbs during the last half of the 20th century - cheap energy and the modern industrial production system - appear to be undergoing a sharp reversal. What do these signals of the future mean for the suburbs and the demands that will be placed on politicians asked to respond to these changes? You don't have to be a peak oil theorist to recognize - as James Smith, CEO of Shell UK has - that "the era of easy oil is over". The reality that we are not going to ever return to an age of cheap oil is just starting to sink into the consciousness of the marketplace, electorate and policy-makers. Scenarios of a serious supply crunch and $200 a barrel oil are no longer on the fringe. The Freakonomics blog at NY Times recently held a quorum inviting a small group of smart and opinionated experts to imagine the future of American suburbia in 40 years time. The responses vary from James Kunstler's "the suburbs have three destinies, none of them exclusive: as materials salvage, as slums, and as ruins" to the more hopeful "Suburbia will be flexible, it will be smarter, and it will be hybrid" of John Archer. What about in the Toronto region? In the Toronto area context Toronto Star writers Christopher Hume and Phinjo Gombu have been considering these same issues in the GTA: Downtown density will prevail over slums of suburbia, A planning headache, 50 years in the making; Reinventing Suburbia.

One of the primary issues facing the suburban electorate and their politicians are the very real economic hardships that expensive oil will bring to the suburbs.

The cost of living is increasing with the cost of transportation. Ontario's industrial economy is being hit hard. The investments necessary to reconfigure how we plan and build and how we move around the sprawling megalopolis are staggering. The required shifts in 50 year-old cultural mindsets and behaviours may be even more difficult to make. The very instruments being suggested to help pay for some of this - road-pricing, congestion charges and other carrots and sticks - are political hot potatoes unpopular to those being asked to pay the price or change their behaviour. There are economic winners and losers, and where the money flows, politics is sure to follow.

Can our politics cope with what is being asked of it? Can we move beyond the us vs. them dynamic across municipal boundaries to a greater sense of shared destiny and community across a vast city-region? Can our institutions adapt? Can we solve the wicked problems that will surface during a period of rapid change and uncertainty? Will our suburbs become slums and ruins or smarter and hybrid?

These are questions that we're looking to our community of readers to help answer. What are the political fault-lines of suburbia's adaptation, re-imagination and renewal?

Photo by Rosanne Haaland.

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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Mark Surman"][/caption] A big congratulations to my friend, collaborator and inspiration Mark Surman on his appointment as Executive Director for the Mozilla Foundation.  This is fantastic news for the future of the open web and a great decision by Mozilla after a gruelling selection process. Mark has been posting some really important ideas about the future of Mozilla beyond the Firefox browser and open source software. Read The Next Million Mozillians and A few concrete things Mozilla Foundation might do to get a sense of Mark's thinking.  I'm excited for what Mark's appointment means for the future direction of Mozilla, the most successful and important open source social enterprise in the world. He was a primary instigator of Open Cities, which he is now following up with Open Everything.  Mark is passionate about the future of the open web, community management practices and taking what we can learn from open source software to apply to peer production in other domains. I should also mention that good friend David Eaves has been very influential in this emerging conversation about Mozilla as a leading part of a social movement and how community management is the core competency of open source. With friends and collaborators like these, I consider myself to be truly blessed.