ABSTRACT
The preindustrial city is an energy-poor city, a city lacking the energy base to sustain an industrial order. Within the energy-poor city, life is limited to what one finds within walking distance, and those options, especially for persons of limited means, are not plentiful. Of all the tenets of recent American life, none seems more unshakeable than the belief in the infinite availability of energy sources to provide mobility, heating and cooling, and industrial power. Against the voices of energy plenitude, an increasing chorus has suggested the possibility of energy shortfall. More likely than such a drift toward shortfall is the continuation of present energy trends, in which consumers move with slow but steady force toward reduced use of nonrenewable energy sources and gradually make increased use of the cost-saving benefits of conservation and renewable energy sources.
