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JOHN BROWN is the editor of theslowhome.com and the founder of the Slow Home Movement. He is a registered architect, real estate broker and Professor of Architecture at the University of Calgary.
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End of the Road for Suburban Sprawl?
Oct 10, 2008
From Marketwatch
Will rising gas prices and the burgeoning credit crunch kill the American Dream?
Blueprint America, from Thirteen/WNET New York, tackles this and other questions in a series of hard-hitting reports that will appear online and on-air beginning October 10th with the premiere of "Driven To Despair," an examination of the crisis facing Southern California suburbanites who are being forced to choose between paying for gas or paying their mortgage.
In this debut report on Friday's edition of NOW on PBS, host David Brancaccio visits Robert Schleigh of Hemet, CA, who leaves his wife and children every morning in the pre-dawn darkness to make the 72-mile trek to his job as a telecommunications technician in San Diego. Even though he gets on the road by 4 a.m. to avoid traffic and commutes in an energy-efficient Prius, over the last two years the family's transportation costs have skyrocketed to over $1600 per month. They have given up eating out, taking vacations, and visiting friends, but still can't make ends meet. Their credit card bills are mounting and their adjustable rate mortgage is about to jump more than $600 a month.
The problems they face are not unique. Millions of Americans are being affected by rising gas prices along with a host of transportation issues - from jammed airports to sprawling new developments to crowded ports -- that are rising to the surface as America's infrastructure ages. No comprehensive plan has been put in place to tackle how we will build and grow an effective future.
Read the rest of the article
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We believe that our homes and neighborhoods should be healthy, vibrant places that uplift the spirit and gracefully fit our needs. We call for an end to poor construction, bad design, misleading marketing, unfair lending practices and environmental neglect in the housing industry. We acknowledge our collective responsibility to create CLOSE, SIMPLE, LIGHT places to live that leave a positive legacy for future generations.
provides design focused information that homeowners can use to improve the quality of how and where they live. It takes its name from the slow food movement which arose as a reaction to the processed food industry. The sprawl of cookie cutter housing that surrounds us is like fast food - standardized, homogenous, and wasteful. It contributes to a too fast life that is bad for us, our cities, and the environment. In the same way that slow food raises awareness of the food we eat and how these choices affect our lives, Slow Home empowers you to take more control of your home and improve the quality of how you live while reducing your environmental impact and futureproofing the long term investment value of your home.
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