ABSTRACT
The suburban landscape in the United States and other parts of the developed world is composed of a repeating mix of shopping centers, parking lots, single-and multiple-family homes, lawns, asphalt streets, parks, golf courses, and office and industrial buildings. Except for the occasional backyard garden, agricultural land use is conspicuously absent in the suburban landscape. Municipal governments generate and maintain a highly discrete suburban land use arrangement through zoning ordinances. These segregated land use zones are connected by roads constructed exclusively for convenient automobile and truck conveyance. Movement and transport within and throughout the American suburban landscape is highly dependent on gasoline and diesel fuel. Without liquid fuel the current suburban system with its abject reliance on automobile and truck transport would cease to function. American suburban dwellers commute an average of 32 miles per day (Langer 2005), compounding their dependence on automobile transport. Such long daily automobile commutes to and from work will likely become increasingly difficult due to unabated traffic congestion, the rising cost of liquid fuel, and impending climate change legislation to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Walking as a mode of transport has been so heavily discounted that suburban communities are often constructed entirely without sidewalks.
