The End of Suburbia - 52 minute documentary on peak oil
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended in threads on suburbs, energy and urbanism as an entertaining, if biased, case for suburbia's dependence on cheap oil.
What it is
A 52-minute short version of the documentary The End of Suburbia, about peak oil and the end of cheap energy. It argues that American suburbs depend on cheap oil and may become the slums of the future.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2011 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Recommends gnosis · 2011-03 · on “Dramatic escalation in Japan (Fukushima Nuke Plant)”
Jobs would necessarily have to be much closer to home. The onset of global warming and the oil peak are starting to prove that building economies around suburbs, highways, and long commutes is unsustainable anyway. See this great documentary, "The End of Suburbia": [this video]
Recommends raganwald · 2011-06 · on “The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme”
The End of Suburbia is a rabidly biased documentary that takes another perspective on why the suburbs will fail, the cost of oil: [LINK] And in free as in beer, glorious 240p: [this video] It's entertaining and, IMO, well worth watching even if you disagree with some of the people they interview or prefer your documentaries balanced and dispassionate. You're sure to come away from the movie feeling you know more about the history of the relationship between the automobile and the suburbs.
Recommends raganwald · 2011-06 · on “The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme”
There's actually a section in the movie on the subject of electricity: [this video] And later on they discuss hybrids and electric cars specifically. But to be clear, I don't recommend the movie because it's right , but because it asks interesting questions and leads you to think about interesting possibilities. We use a lot of energy. If we're going to replace the energy from fossil fuels with energy from electricity, we are going to need a lot more capacity than we have today. And as you can see from recent news, doubling or trebling our capacity is no small feat.
Recommends pmoriarty · 2016-12 · on “Why a Post-Nuclear World Would Look Nothing Like “Mad Max””
"It's hard to believe that people would panic if the oil price went high, or even sky high. It wouldn't be pretty, sure, probably several industry sectors would die, but I don't see how it would end our world." You might be interested in watching "The End of Suburbia" : [this video]
Recommends pmoriarty · 2017-03 · on “The line is blurring between city and suburb”
There's a great documentary on this called The End of Suburbia ,[1][2] though the causes for such a collapse are very different in the documentary vs this article. [1] - [LINK] [2] - [this video]
Recommends pmoriarty · 2019-07 · on “American Suburbs Swell Again as a New Generation Escapes the City”
This might be a good time to mention a documentary called The End of Suburbia [1], which lays out the case for the existence of the suburbs being fueled and sustained by the easy availability of cheap oil and then goes on to forecast the death of the suburbs as cheap oil stops being so easily available. [1] - [this video]
Cites pmoriarty · 2021-05 · on “Working from Home for Some Threatens Mass Transit for All”
Another option is transforming our communities to build workspaces closer to where people live instead of requiring long commutes to get to work. The documentary "The End of Suburbia" talked about this possibility: [this video]