Educational Media Reviews Online

The growth of suburbia in the United States and Canada was fueled by fuel, an abundance of cheap energy that allowed people to live farther away from their workplace than ever before. But the traditional fossil fuels used are declining in supply, and, as one speaker says in this video, “It’s going to take progressively more energy to find energy.” Under these circumstances, the way we are living today is not sustainable.

Escape from Suburbia, a Canadian production, looks at the current situation in the U.S. and Canada and offers suggestions to start down a different path. Researchers who have studied the problem of “peak oil” speak about the problem. Peak oil is the point at which over half of the world’s oil supplies available have already been consumed, meaning a continuous, irreversible decline in oil availability for the future. Although some say alternative energy sources can be used to preserve our current way of life, speakers in the video say this is not feasible. In fact, an overreliance on energy sources from natural waste matter or foodstuffs such as corn could drastically alter the agricultural production cycle.

The real answer, says the video, is to “power down.” This is what is really meant by the title; not an escape from the concept of suburbia, but rather suburban life as it exists today, where people drive long distances to work (in the case of Los Angeles suburbs, sometimes a 100 mile roundtrip) and have to use the car to get anywhere because no stores are near their homes.

Community-based living with increased self-sufficiency is advocated. People could grow some of their own food in community gardens. And this could happen not just in suburban and rural areas, but in inner-city areas as well. The video shows examples of neighborhood gardens that operated in the Bronx and South Central Los Angeles.

Cynics may say these proposals are utopian fantasies that will never come to pass. Indeed, some of the gardens in inner-city areas have been plowed under because the city government took back the land the gardens were on and sold the properties to commercial interests.

But as an activist says in the video, “Action encourages optimism.” Escape from Suburbia is recommended for all libraries as a start toward that action.