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Title: The End of Suburbia Director: Gregory Greene Date: 2004

**What is the central argument or narrative of the film?** The main narrative of this film is that the 'American way of life' is an unsustainable way of life. That the idea of everyone having their own home in the suburbs should be just that, an idea. The life in suburbia, according to the film is over due to the limited amount of oil on our planet running out and that suburbia is the main consumer of the oil. We have reached peak oil and need to prepare for the decrease in available energy that is coming our way.

**What sustainability problems does the film draw out?** **The film extensively covers the sustainability problems of the suburbs. It talks about how the way of city life in the late 1800s and later drove people towards the suburbs. Back in the late 1800s cities were not like the cities of today, they were industrial towns based on factories. They were crowded, ridden with illnesses and dirty. The only problem was that only the rich could afford to go live in the suburbs. With the invention of the streetcar more people moved to the suburbs but cities still were dreadful and only the better-off could afford to live in the suburbs. It wasn't until after WWII that people could finally leave the cities and move into the nice country homes that the suburbs were pre-WWII. This idea of the suburbs, the pristine land, a country home, and an independent lifestyle, coupled with the poorly managed cities was the main driving force behind the creation of the suburbs. After WWII when everyone moved out the massive allocation of resources that were put into building the suburbs was a huge sustainability problem. Especially with how temporary the structure of the houses were. Back in the city buildings were made of brick and stone, the suburbs were made out of cheap materials like wood and drywall. Not only does the planet need these materials more than they would need the stone but the buildings would be torn down and rebuild much more often, requiring more resources in the long run. The huge scale of things was a sustainability problem. In the years of 1946-1947 over 1.5 million houses were made for the returning veterans. Cities were gutted, enabling them to go through extensive construction which both made the cities nicer as well as went through many resources. **

**The suburbs may have lost their charm but they still haven't lost their appeal. Nowadays many people drive upwards of 100 miles to get to and from work. The suburbs are extremely spread out requiring increasing amounts of energy to power houses over an ever expanding area. The concept of suburbia relies on cheap energy, it relies on the ability for us to use energy often and easily. That mindset itself helps lead to many sustainability problems. At this point we are very close to consuming the maximum amount of energy that our grid can handle. The movie cites the 2003 blackout in Toronto to show how close we are to not having enough power. We rely on oil extensively for both energy as well as for our food. Without the oil we will not be able to make fertilizer which means that we will either have to implement crop rotation once again, or starve. **

**We are stuck in a cycle of spending where everyone benefits from the cycle staying static. There is no incentive for anyone who can change their ways (besides people who can't do more than change their own habits) to do so. There is so much pressure from the industry to stay the way we are that the government and businesses simply do not want to change. This could lead to one of the greatest times of turmoil in the history of the United States if not the world. **

**What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why?** **One of the statistics that the film threw at it's audience, and really stuck to me was that Americans consume ten times the amount of hydrocarbon calories as they do food calories. This excludes the process of cooking and shipping the food. This is based off of how much oil goes into our fertilizer which then goes into the planting of our food. **

**I was also stuck by how dire the future that the narrator painted for us would be. At first I found this to be a very weak argument and thought it to be scare tactics, but then after pondering on it overnight I realized that it was a very accurate future. Without oil and energy our way of life will be flipped right upside down on us. America is much to oil hungry for its own good. 15% of our natural gas energy comes from Canada, although it doesn't seem like much, it is in fact 50% of Canada's total natural gas output, eh. **

**The argument that we had already reached (or are right on the brink of) peak oil production also was very compelling to me. If the film had not shown how Dr. King Hubbard's prediction for the US peak was accurate I would not have even thought of it being soundly based. Unfortunately he predicted that the year the world would reach peak oil was in 1990. As we can tell 20 years later this was not accurate, but he did not predict the oil scare of the 1970s which delayed the peak for another decade or so. **

**What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by?** **Many of the speeches shown throughout the film were in front of a weak audience. There were small audiences and the audience that was there was not well dressed. This, although not presented as an argument still caught my attention and made me wonder how creditable the people cited are. There were also transition scenes within the film that seemed slightly irrelevant and lasted for too long. **

The film made me look up the different ways that people live in other parts in the world. Especially how they live in proximity to each other and to other cities. Germany has a population density of 593 people per square mile  which compares to Americas population density of 81 people  per square mile and China with 360 people per square mile. As you can see from the data I found there is a large discrepancy between the United states and other developed countries. America has so many fewer people per square mile mostly because they had so much space. I only wonder how much longer until America realizes that they are too spread out to continue supporting such a huge economy.
 * What additional information does the film compel you to seek out? **

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**What audiences does the film best address?** **<span style="color: #000000; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">The audience needs to be already aware of many of the issues that the environment is facing, otherwise I think that this movie would be a little too much for them. Especially during the parts where the narrator describes how the future will be. I feel as though those not clued in to our destruction of the environment will either laugh at how silly the description sounds or take it too roughly. Otherwise this film is mostly target to those living in the suburbs so that their children are aware and may consider buying their house in the city instead of following their parents' footsteps. Other audiences could be those who will be effected by peak oil, especially policy makers in the area. **

**What kinds of action or points of intervention are suggested by the film?** **<span style="color: #000000; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">The film proposed that people begin to live more locally and in a less spread out manner. The makers of the film were obvious proponents for a more European life style with main street being a walking way, people living in apartments or other group housing complexes. The movie praised the neo-urbanism movement, saying that more people should move back into the cities so that they didn't have to be transported as far to work. The film suggested companies the opposite of Walmart and Costco that provided local jobs as well as local products and food. The film also called on the media to take part and to help the public become aware of the issue so that the impact would not be as harsh as if we all blindly ran into the problem of running out of oil. Although the film admitted that there was no easy fix they did state that alternate energy, like wind and solar does, to some extent, help. One of the more interesting solutions that the film presented was one that I had already thought about but was not really a solution in other films was to better our rail systems. Compared to those of the rest of the world ours are plain embarrassing compared to how advanced much of our country is. **

What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental education value? <span style="color: #000000; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"> If this film was meant to be about the environmental problems of suburbia, it hit its mark... With a shotgun. I found that there was too much bulk to the film which would have led me to losing focus if I were not taking notes on it. The film also could have been about the history and the development of suburbia or solely about peak oil and done wonderfully. There was probably a half hour that could have been sheared off of the film and not effected it's environmental education value. If anything taking parts out would increase its value due to more people being able to pay attention to all of it. It could also provide some short term solutions because of everything that was offered as points of intervention was long term or required companies to change their ways. This makes people depressed and has them lose hope due to the lack of options that they are presented with.