The National Public Radio interview was with James Howard Kunstler, author and frequent critic of what we might call the suburban idyll — the notion that we can all have our quarter-acre of paradise with the wrought iron and two-story foyers, half a state away from where we actually work.
That idyll, and the resulting suburban "sprawl," has been under assault for years — first from environmentalists and preservationists who worry about its impact on formerly rural communities. But now, in the era of high energy prices, the logic behind the suburban idyll seems inoperative, even twisted. The cost of commuting, let alone heating that two-story foyer, has risen dramatically. The question is, what effect does this have on the suburbanization of America? Are the suburbs doomed?
Kunstler thinks so. The scattershot nature of suburbia — fast-food restaurants and strip malls fanning out from the urban core; the idea that you have to drive everywhere you go — was itself a product of cheap energy. But the age of what he calls the "$3,000 mile Caesar salad" — products, especially food, that must be shipped long distances to get to our far-flung communities — is at an end.
"Places that will be successful in the future," he told NPR, are places with "some kind of meaningful relationship to food production, because we're going to have to grow a lot more of our food locally."
And as I thought about that, I realized that Kunstler was talking about Lancaster County, and places like it.
We obviously have a "meaningful relationship to food production" in our sheer proximity to it. On several occasions in this space, I've extolled the virtue of buying locally. I don't do so for hippy-dippy reasons, because mega-corporations like Wal-Mart are evil or because this is somehow morally superior. Rather, the decision to buy locally is one borne of rationality: If fuel prices keep rising, dragging food prices in their wake, those of us near where the food is actually produced might have greater access to it, and at lower prices. The producers themselves, buoyed by local demand, will continue to produce.
Bottom line, in this dystopian future, we in Lancaster County are going to have a good deal. What I hadn't considered was how other people might want in on that deal; how our "relationship with food production" might become an even bigger draw than our bucolic vistas and low home prices are now.
Indeed, while the suburban era may be ebbing nationwide, there's reason to believe that growth here could continue, even intensify. And won't that impact the amount of land dedicated to the production of food? How are we going to handle this?
Shall we somehow build a gate around Lancaster County, somehow "stopping" development? There's no shortage of people who would like to do this. Or perhaps we continue the pattern of suburbanization we've seen here for the past few decades: quarter-acres for everybody! Except there
aren't quarter-acres for everybody; that's how you pave over all your farmland.
Or do we develop in denser fashion, more homes on less land, the type of "traditional neighborhoods" that so many suburbanites seem to detest?
We've already had these discussions, sometimes at fever pitch. They could get even louder and angrier if the pressure intensifies. For while it's often said that Lancaster County is behind the curve, that if something is happening in Los Angeles or New York it'll be here in about 10 years, this is one trend where we might be on the leading edge.
I just wonder if we're ready for it.
Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817. 
