Are suburban communities viable post crunch? To many, the answer is a resounding NO! under any and all circumstances. They see them, ala James Kunstler, as a gross misallocation of societal resources, that will inevitably devolve into a vast blight upon the national landscape as high energy prices and economic collapse run their course. Given this preordained failure, the question these people (see the comments here for a sense of the sentiment) ask is: how do we repurpose all of these broken suburbs (or in a moralistic tone: how do we provide salvation to suburbia's damned soul)?
So, given this starting point, it's little wonder that efforts to answer this question (like Reburbia) dive headfirst into the fantastical -- from the conversion of ex-homes into purification systems for city waste water to the use of homes as business offices for start-up companies.
I start with the view that a suburban town is a community and not just a type of architecture. People/families live their lives in these towns. So, as a community, its ability to survive/thrive is a function of its adaptability. If the future is going to be as tough as we think it is, then the question of suburbia really becomes: are suburban communities adaptable enough to thrive in the future (as in: becoming resilient communities). Given the advantages of the suburban landscape (land, surface area, security, etc.) has over rural/urban in many revival scenarios (post crunch), the only existential threat to these communities appears to be the from the global financial system -- aka a foreclosure tsunami that decimates communities faster than they can reconfigure/change. I think that problem is solvable.
What do you think?