Todays Business Week reveals a gloomy outlook for folks living in the suburban world brought to you by Howard James Kunstler. Within the interview, James shares his very pointed views (in fact given commentary about his blog and books, some would say self loathing pessimisim) on where American society is going thanks to years of rabid consumption, dissappearing oil supplies, and the resulting inflation from everything to food products, commuter costs and housing.

Far be it for me to preach too much on this subject, given I’m part of the marketing consumer culture machine.  No self loathing here, as long as I am able to work with responsible brands, and in an innovative/transparent culture. Regardless, I’ve always shared a degree of James’ pessimism. Suburban life and it’s extreme consumption is something of a phobia of mine, not the concept of big space and family life rather the utter blandness and “bigness” of it all.   And clearly this is not just a trapping of the 80′s american suburban family, it appears to be thoroughly ingrained in the youngest of the working generations.

For me, years of being shoeboxed into a Manhattan apartment, has contained my need for a McMansion, and most of all that keeping up with the Jones stuff. (except for all the techgadgets of course).

But if you do live the life of a well intentioned (if not overly consumed) suburban worker, what happens when the world around you becomes entirely to expensive for car culture?   No matter how much you regard the life in the burbs, what happens when your fancy imported or diesel hauled food get’s out of arms length due transport costs and you can’t afford the nanny, or the one income parenting? The weekly 45 minute excursions to Walmart, Best Buy and Home Depot big boxes don’t seem so necessary?

My guess is you do what us free-agents tend to do. You buy less and consume smarter. You save money on gas by working from home. You avoid the car whenever you can (alien to most of America, but I’m sure that we’ll see a shift –albeit small– in no-brainer car use in future). Foregoing these 3 hours trains, planes and automobile trips become a huge savings in terms of time and money. It gives you more time to shop local, eat local and be there for your kids. In my world it doesn’t mean isolation, in fact the opposite is true. It clears my car off the highway for at least 2/3rds of the week and I’m enormously more productive in my work and my life.. except of course when I ramble off on a blog post. I’m able to collaborate with people through IM, iChat Video, blog commentary, social media sites, and of course the phone.

Yes, yes, we’ve heard this before. Sounds like “new economy” bullshit right? I’m not so sure. We’ve seen this ebb and flow of remote working for years. IBM, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, dot.coms, and startups have experimented for it since the 90s. It appears remote work continues to rise. There’s obvious pluses and minuses and frankly some employers HATE the concept.  Some of their employees are simply not wired for it.

I won’t go as far as to say that a nodal/loose network of remote employees will become the only solution, but isn’t inevitably a better idea in an inflation ridden, high cost of transportation economy and a better way to work?

You tell me.