There are some, such as James Kunstler, who argue that we are reaching "peak oil" (i.e. the maximum world oil production) and that we are going to see broad economic contraction as oil and other fossil fuels become more scarce and expensive and drive up the cost of pretty much everything. If he's right—or even close to being right—then we ought to be thinking of how to orient our lives around local economies. This means not just being close to public transport but being close to where food and other resources are actually available. Here are some quotes from his article Making Other Arrangements.

In general, the circumstances we face with energy and climate change will require us to live much more locally, probably profoundly and intensely so. We have to grow more of our food locally, on a smaller scale than we do now, with fewer artificial "inputs," and probably with more human and animal labor. Farming may come closer to the center of our national economic life than it has been within the memory of anyone alive now. These changes are also likely to revive a menu of social and class conflicts that we also thought we had left behind.

We’ll have to reorganize retail trade by rebuilding networks of local economic interdependence. The rise of national chain retail business was an emergent, self-organizing response to the conditions of the late twentieth century. Those conditions are now coming to an end.... We will have to resume making some things for ourselves again, and moving them through smaller-scale trade networks. We may have fewer things to buy overall. The retail frenzy of recent decades will subside as we struggle to produce things of value and necessarily consume less.

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We have to inhabit the terrain of North America differently, meaning a return to traditional cities, towns, neighborhoods, and a productive rural landscape that is more than just strictly scenic or recreational. We will probably see a reversal of the two-hundred-year-long trend of people moving from the country and small towns to the big cities. In fact, our big cities will probably contract substantially, even while they re-densify at their centers and along their waterfronts.

UPDATE: Right after posting this, this article "Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization" from the NY Times hit my Google home page. Hmmm....

The expectation that everyone is entitled to "the good life" will go by the wayside, sooner or later. As a Christian, this shouldn't bother me because I know that this life isn't meant to be "the good life" anyway.

Incidentally, despite seeing evidence of the housing downturn around Denver, we are actually doing pretty well compared to many other markets. See the following graph from CalculatedRISK blog. (Get raw data here.)