In the documentary bearing his surname, illustrator Robert Crumb admits that he copies snapshots of the urban pandemonium of power lines, buildings, streets and other infrastructure in his drawings. “You just can’t possibly make this stuff up,” he says.

It’s true. It takes thousands of people working for decades to make the disastrous mess we call our urban landscape. While some approach with aesthetics in mind, others are just trying to move resources, people and communications down the line on the public’s dime. What we urbanites end up with are areas of impeccable taste, function and order, and also places that are unforgiveable architectural and planning catastrophes. No one with any reasonable talent could ever imagine something as brutal, ugly and commonplace as the modern strip-mall.

Using Portland, Oregon as an example, my neighborhood, Lower Hawthorne, is an enclave rich in density. There are apartments, houses, movie theaters, parks, and cafes all around me. The area south of me, Ladd’s Addition, is built on a European grid, with rose gardens in the intersections and an overwhelming sense of composure.

82^nd Street, on the other side of town, is a polluted wasteland. An endless promenade of used car lots, prostitutes, tweakers, and Wal-Marts is all you will find there. I would not send anyone to 82^nd Street for any reason on earth except to use the drive-thru at Don Pedro’s #9 to get me a carnitas burrito, two crunchy asada tacos and an horchata. Folks in the know have told me that the city of Portland has accepted that 82^nd is a necessary and incurable sacrifice zone; the last place where a CEO can build a Home Depot without facing a mob of angry, educated and organized NIMBYs.

I am trying to find the beauty in these landscapes, but all I see is failure. My theory is that we have been duped by our economic security. Mainly what I am thinking of here is the price of gas. We have spent the past fifty years looking at the world through a windshield. Everywhere we travel our humanity has been jaded by this giant metal box that travels incredible speeds and distance, always gathering and gathering. This device has affected everything in our world, most notably its scale and use of space.

Being the glass-half-full type, I have decided to welcome the advent of $4 a gallon gas. Driving is no longer fun, it is literally taxing. What we cannot miss here is the opportunity presented to us: this is our chance to take back our cities. While the automobile has ushered in the modern age of transportation, it is time for it to become the background of the age of Aesthetic Reason.

Think of all the asphalt we can turn into parks and gardens. Just like during the second World War when people donated metal to make into munitions, we can donate our out-of-date vehicles to be remanufactured into mass transportation, bicycles and sweet Jetsonian metal buildings to house our burgeoning population. Humans have officially given rabbits a bad name. The only place left to go is up. And I’m dying to get my hands on one of those robot maids.

Next time you think about filling up your tank to go out alone and buy some cheap Chinese crap at a bloodsucking capitalist strip-mall, instead think about taking a walk, riding a bike or the bus. Driving too much is a bad habit just like drinking too much, but a little libation never hurt anyone.

The point of is that if you change your habits, the world will change to accommodate them. Look at the drawing the top of this page. I would not want to live in the first panel or the last, but somewhere right in the middle looks like heaven on earth to me.