What's Going Down(town)

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Major US City Preparedness For an Oil Crisis
Which Cities and Metro Areas are Best Prepared for $4 a Gallon Gas and Beyond?
Link (Common Current – PDF, 15pg)

“The cities with highest overall ranking in “Major US Cities Preparedness for an Oil Crisis” were as follows:

1. San Francisco
2. New York
3. Chicago
4. Washington, DC
5. Seattle
6. Portland, OR
7. Boston
8. Philadelphia
9. Oakland, CA
10. Denver

“Ranking highest were cities with strong public transit system ridership, well-organized and dense city centers, a high degree of mixed real estate uses (retail, commercial, residential), and medium to high population density. Some cities, such as Honolulu, were reduced in the overall ranking by their use of oil for electricity, while Boston and New York were slightly reduced in their ranking because of their use of oil for heating.

The highest-scoring cities had strong public transit ridership commute-to-work rates both by their city residents and by those within their metro area.”

[...]

“Sprawl, which is defined by factors including density, mixed real-estate uses, street
connectivity and city centeredness, was ranked relatively low in the highest-ranking
metro areas, with the exception of Washington, DC (ranked #39); Oakland (ranked #30)
and Seattle, which ranked #28 of the metro areas studied, and thus had greater than
average sprawl of the cities in the study.”

[...]

“All ten of the lowest ranking cities in this study were based in the South or lower
Midwest. With the exception of Indianapolis, all ten of these cities lie within what has
been called the nation’s Sunbelt. The region experienced tremendous population growth
during the 1960s and 1970s with development that can often be characterized as urban or
exurban sprawl.”