Book Review: The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome

Author John F. Wasik’s The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome serves up a double-dose of economic pathology. First, it offers a postmortem on the gruesome death of The Housing Bubble, finding a cadaver covered in fingerprints – the whorls of Wall Street and Washington elites – and inside the carcass, the toxic bile of hideous mortgage products and manic borrowers. Second, it prescribes a course of action for a smarter, cleaner and more sustainable way of life.

As a columnist for Bloomberg News since 2001, Wasik paid close attention to the rise and fall of the American housing market and he does a fine job of detailing what went wrong, all the while naming names, including Alan Greenspan, who as late as 2006 was advising Americans to get adjustable-rate mortgages. Wasik races through this well-worn narrative to get to his larger point – that the urban sprawl at the heart of this crisis was untenable even without the mortgage meltdown.

Focusing on what he calls “Spurbs,” those sprawling developments that lie out beyond traditional suburbs (think California’s Inland Empire, Florida’s I-75 corridor, and the Las Vegas/Phoenix desert corridor), Wasik details a grotesque mutation of the American Dream. These projects would have been nipped on the drawing board had planners considered the inevitability of rising energy costs, the scarcity of water, infrastructure demands and the human cost of moms and dads spending several hours a day in their cars – all in the name of more square footage and bigger lawns that they seldom get to enjoy in the light of day.

Wasik offers a way out, calling for a re-imagining of the American Dream and endorsing model zoning codes, energy efficient homes, smart electrical grids, upgraded public transportation, and investment in green jobs. The reader might challenge the government subsidies Wasik calls for on the grounds that they will, like all public subsidies, be misused and abused. The reader might also note that a “green” house, in the hands of an irresponsible owner, is just as susceptible to foreclosure as an old stick built shanty. Yet The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome remains a stimulating read that will appeal to forward thinkers, those who still believe in that most American of ideals: Progress.

Amazon link: Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream