What is the future of suburbia?

Could we have known in the 50s that suburbia would have no future? Could we have lived without suburbia?

“If we don’t change the patterns, we’re in for a long and slow and arduous collapse.”
--Dominick Ranieri

What will U.S. suburbs look like in 40 years?

“The suburbs have three destinies, none of them exclusive: as materials salvage, as slums, and as ruins.”
"Having poured a half-century of our national wealth into a living arrangement with no future — and linked our very identity with it — we have provoked a powerful psychology of previous investment that will make it difficult for us to let go, change our behavior, and make other arrangements."
--James Kunstler

In the end, the very things that make suburban life attractive — the lush lawns, spacious houses and three-car garages — also disproportionally contribute to global warming. Suburban life, these environmentalists argue, is simply not sustainable.
-Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You

Longtime suburban residents might wonder how they suddenly became environmentally incorrect. People who moved to the suburbs in the ’50’s and ’60’s thought they were being green just by doing so, said Robert Beauregard, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University.
--Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You

Then, green “just meant open space and privacy,” Professor Beauregard said. “Those Levittowns were ‘green’ because they had lawns.”

You'd Be Proud, Celeste.
A Changing American Dream
Can We Uninvent Suburbia?