As families build resilience, what happens to the fixtures of suburban living?

A traveler stops to ask a farmer the way to Marley. The farmer thinks about it, looks both ways down the road, scratches his head, and says, “If I was aimin’ for Marley, I wouldn’t start from here.”

If we are aiming to position ourselves favorably for the predicted threats of the next ten years, many of us are in the wrong place today.

My friend Don was bemoaning the automobile-centric attitude of our local planners, and I responded, “Agreed. So what do we do?”  He replied,

“Me?  I’m skipping town. Condo is on the market and we are developing plans to build a super insulated, air tight home, solar panels for electricity and hot water on a south facing roof, on a small lot featuring xeriscaping.”

Sounds like Don is leaving town not just to find a building lot but to escape the local attitude toward energy conservation.

Adaptation and Resiliency made easyMoving is not hard for Americans.  On average, every 5 years about 75% of us move. My friend Ciji Ware makes it even easier with her advice on the process and her empathy for the stress. The traditional motives she writes about – graduation, marriage, divorce, job transfers, retirement – are being supplemented with new reasons:

–  finding an energy-efficient home, which often means downsizing,
–  living where the jobs are more plentiful and secure,
–  finding a town where walking and biking will reduce gas costs,
–  retreating from sea-level rise and its tremendous local tax costs,
–  moving away from areas of predicted drought,
–  getting closer to food sources, whether commercial or community,

and, in Don’s case, finding a place where the municipal attitudes on sustainability are more in line with his.

If more of us are moving into smaller homes, what’s going to happen to all that big-house, die-with-the-most-toys, good-life stuff? Ciji, the ‘Rightsizing Queen’ can tell you.

Oh, and think about buying stock in Public Storage, U-Store-It, and their ilk. Any other ideas?