Suburbs and Cars in Retreat

Two stories on the same day in The New York Times last month highlighted the retreat of both cars and suburbs.

Cars and suburbs go hand-in-hand.  You can't have one without the other.  We will soon have much less of both.

Story One: "Retailers' Idea: Think Smaller in Urban Push," by Stephanie Clifford
   How Wal-Mart, Target, and Office Depot (you can also include Best Buy in the list) are experimenting like crazy to find the key to smaller city stores to replace the big box suburban stores.

Story Two: "Europe's Automotive Pain. A Day of Reckoning for an Industry in Distress," by Jack Ewing and Bill Vlasic.
   With sales plunging, "For European carmakers, the day of reckoning may finally be at hand." And that includes the survival of GM's Opel unit.

Nine Shift predicted it all nine years ago.  We'll be celebrating our tenth anniversary of accurately predicting the 21st century next year in San Francisco.