Shut down all non-essential-to-life fossil-fueled high-energy industry, including the automobile industry.

In other words, it's not going to happen until Mother Nature crushes this world's bizarre and unsustainable economic ideology in much less pleasant ways.

I disagree with the author about most urbanization. Urban and the denser suburban areas can be restructured into low energy, walkable communities. Rural resettlement of the "forty acres and a mule" sort would require extensive high energy redevelopment, and relocating existing communities in a voluntary and agreeable manner is not a trivial task.

Even existing urban "slums" can be turned into comfortable, safe places by installing proper sewer, water, and electrical systems, and establishing some sort of property rights to families who are now simply regarded as squatters on land they do not own, subject to eviction and the destruction of their homes, all at the whims of big money developers and by force of law.

Breaking up existing communities and scattering the people is something only totalitarian governments and oligarchs do. Case in point, New Orleans: Big Money is all too happy to turn New Orleans into some kind of Venice or Disneyland, just as lower income communities are taken by eminent domain, and the people scattered to build things like football stadiums and shopping centers.

I happen to live in a largely rural area, and the nearest town to us is 6 miles away.

How do suggest we sync a shutdown of the automobile industry with a revitalization of rural communities, given transportation requirements? Personally, the idea of walking to town in a Minnesota winter is incredibly terrifying.

I don't present the arguments above as doable in any way, shape or form. They are intended to illustrate the unbridgeable gap that has opened between the necessary and the possible.

My Grandfather remembered a time before the “Model T.” Yet, somehow, he lived.

The “safety bicycle” isn’t even 150 years old.

Honestly, a 6 mile walk isn’t that far… even in a Minnesota Winter.

And while I enjoy having a coop with a half-dozen chickens, and maybe I'll get a goat or two someday, I don't think I could feed and house a horse to pull a buggy like my great-grandfather had, on my 1.5 acres of land.

And if we seriously plan on re-ruralizing the countryside, those new farmers will need transportation to get their goods to market, and walking miles with bushels of produce, or biking through a foot of snow to get to work, probably won't cut it.

On the other hand, I didn’t think much of walking the 4 miles between home and school. (Most of the time I rode the bus or my bike, but… yeah, 4 miles really isn’t that bad, even in an upstate New York Winter.)

I grew up in a village with a “general store.” When two car households became the norm, the “general store” was put out of business by the “super markets” which you could only get to by driving.

The rural North East (at least) is still full of little hamlets, many of them with closed “general stores.” (It really wasn’t all that long ago…)

How will farmers transport their produce? Oh, I expect they will use trucks of some sort.

I don’t subscribe to GliderGuider’s radical vision. The question to me is, do you need to drive a car to go half a mile?

Were they taken out and shot? Or, were their needs addressed by others?

What did a mother with two sick children do?

Can anyone live today without their very own automobile?

Seriously, why do we think cars are so vitally important to life? In the US, we have almost a 1:1 ratio of cars to people. How do the Indians survive with so few cars? (At the time of this analysis, India had a ratio of 56.3 people to every car.)

http://wardsauto.com/ar/world_vehicle_population_110815

... all mechanical forms of transportation except for human powered vehicles and emergency response vehicles, are limited to 35 mph.

That's a different sort of vehicle than the current automobile "standard" but fine for your semi-rural purposes.

It also means you take a train or ship on long trips, still 35 mph, but you're not driving, so you get to look out the windows, walk around, meet new people, watch movies, and generally have a relaxing trip while getting to know the true size of the earth on a human scale.

Of course I can't force anyone to live in my utopia, but I do think we could provide everyone with safe, comfortable, low energy housing, creating communities where cars are unnecessary, and even considered undesirable by most people.

In "developed" nations these communities could be created by the modification of existing infrastructure, rather than typical high energy tear down and rebuild construction.

I also think for the most basic guaranteed forms of housing that people ought to be able to "own" their home in some sense, secure in the knowledge they can't be evicted unless they become a terrible nuisance or danger to themselves or others; that they can paint the walls inside and out any color they want, install whatever flooring they like, and generally modify their living space in any way that's not harmful to the neighbors and structural integrity of the building.

Our U.S.A. society discourages the formation of true communities in many ways. We are isolated in our automobiles, we are isolated and insecure in the place we inhabit.

I think that makes it easier for the oligarchy to manipulate us, to sell us the "consumer" lifestyle, to keep us in a corrosive fog of lies, insecurity, fear, and passivity.

Call it Re-connection World. It's a damned fine daydream, I would love to see it happen.