Gas prices and real estate

Finally – something to distract from all the talk about a possible real estate bubble (no longer available) – gas prices that may reach four, even five dollars a gallon. These current and projected increases raise at least a couple of questions –

Have you changed your daily habits due to the increases? Are companies and their employees going to (have to?) embrace more rapidly telecommuting?

What impact will rising prices have on development patterns? Brian Wheeler has an excellent summary of the (almost incomprehensibly large) Biscuit Run development, focusing on the potential location of the elementary school.

Several members of the Planning Commission and County planning staff have encouraged a site in a more central location to both preserve the rural areas and to create a school that can easily be walked and bicycled to from nearby homes …

Biscuit Run is the type of development we say we want – located close to town and a fairly dense project that will help minimize sprawl. The more people that are able to bike to work or walk to the store, the better the development will be, at least theoretically.

Finally, and this probably deserves its own post – if you were designing a city today, what would it look like?