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Todays Business Week reveals a gloomy outlook for folks living in the suburban world brought to you by 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 pessamism) on where american society is going thanks to years of rabid consumption, disseappering 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. I’m more than fine with that, 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 Jame’s pessimism. Suburban life, and it’s extreme consumption is something of a phobia of mine, not so much the lifestyle but the utter blandness and “bigness” of it all. And on a side note this culture of “stuff” is surely not just a trapping of the american suburban family, it appears to be throughly ingrained in the youngest of the working generations. For me, years of being shoeboxed into a Manhatten apartment, has contained my need for a McMansion, and most of all that keeping up with the Jones stuff. Well, except for all the techgadgets, but I digress.

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? If your fancy imported food get’s out of arms length due transport costs, if you can’t afford the nanny, or the one income parenting? The daily 45 minute drives to Walmart, Best Buy, and Home Depot big boxes.

My guess is you do what us free-agents tend to do. You work 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. Foregoing the 3 hours trains, planes and automobiles is 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, PriceWaterhouseCooper, 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, and some of their employees are simply not wired for it. Whatever your

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?

You tell me.

Categories: economies · industryisms · rants · social changeTags: