By: Liz Farmer

In today’s story about urban development and author James Howard Kunstler’s comments on the future of American cities, the outlook seems a little grim. Kunstler, who’s good at being dramatic for effect, says an oil shortage will lead to the downfall of suburbs, airplane travel will become obsolete and petrol-based materials used to maintain massive skyscrapers will become too expensive.

Tuesday afternoon I sat in on a roundtable lunch with Kunstler and about 15 businesspeople who make their livelihood in downtown real estate (whether it’s building it or selling it) and it was fun to watch the debate play out.

Bryce Turner, an architect with Brown Craig Turner, took issue in particular with Kunstler’s argument that modern skyscrapers would become obsolete because the materials to repair and maintain them would become too expensive. f Kunstler’s prediction that more people will move back to cities holds true, Turner said, then that would increase skyscrapers’ property value.

He also doesn’t agree that the materials to maintain these buildings will disappear — and who says we need to use petroleum-based products, anyway?

“There’s nothing that says you can’t use wood and masonry and other materials as well for some of these buildings and I think we’re going to find a way to do that,” Turner said.

And, he added, there’s something to be said for being creative with architecture if a building is becoming obsolete for the current generation.

“I think we’re going to find ways to remake them — in some cases combining floors to make higher ceilings because that’s a big issue with some. Or add balconies,” Turner said. “I think there are a lot of opportunities to get fresh air into these buildings.”

And what about Kunslter’s suggestion that we return to buildings that are more modest and perhaps styled after ones built 100 years ago? Magda Westerhout, an architect with Marks Thomas & Associates, said bricks-and-mortar towers (examples around downtown Baltimore include the B&O Building or the Fidelity Insurance building, both on N. Charles Street) can be tricky.

“I think we don’t do it [now] partially because the foundations would have to be bigger because it’s heavier,” she said. “And if you’re designing against earthquakes you’d have to reinforce the bricks. … So yeah, I think it would be more expensive to build that way.”

Not everything Kunstler said was met with an argument. His point that suburbia is overblown and the population in mid-sized cities in key locations like Baltimore will increase was met with a lot of nods yesterday.

And it only takes a trip down I-66 outside Washington, D.C., — and seeing the foreclosed-upon McMansions or massive housing developments that are still largely unsold — to come to that conclusion for yourself.

“It’s true that in the suburbs there are some very difficult master plans that simply include lots of individual cookie-cutter houses where it’s very difficult to walk anywhere and the connection to commercial districts have made it very awkward,” said Turner.

Cookie-cutter housing developments could potentially solve that problem by building a connection to nearby commerce (or creating its own “Main Street” as many condo communities are doing). But “the McMansion that’s sitting out in the middle of nowhere is really going to struggle,” Turner added.