"Can we also drive less? Yes — but getting there will be a lot harder. There have been many news stories in recent weeks about Americans who are changing their behavior in response to expensive gasoline — they’re trying to shop locally, they’re canceling vacations that involve a lot of driving, and they’re switching to public transit. But none of it amounts to much...Any serious reduction in American driving will require more than this — it will mean changing how and where many of us live. To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping. It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars...Infrastructure is another problem. Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access...Still, if we’re heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives."
Boy. You could just tell, couldn't you, that Krugman wanted to advocate for the government to somehow take a bigger role in forcing Americans to do this--to live in inner cities, much closer to where they worked. After all, he thinks, it's so the right thing to do! But even Paul Krugman doesn't go that far. Fundamental: we conservatives need to keep reminding Krugman that if he thinks living in more densely populated areas is the right thing to do, it's fine if he advocates for it, and it's fine if individual Americans choose to do so. But it must be something we choose voluntarily. That's the right way for this kind of change to happen, if it ever does.
