The rapid spike in energy prices has led politicians, urban theorists and pundits to pontificate about how Americans will be living and working in new ways. A favorite story line is that Americans will start trading in their suburban homes, move back to the city centers and opt to change everything they have wanted for a half-century — from big backyards to quiet streets to privacy — to live a more carbon-lite urban lifestyle.

Yet, there has been little talk about what could be the best way for families and individuals to cut energy use: telecommuting. For more than a decade, the number of telecommuters, both full-time and part-time, has been growing rapidly, gaining more market share than any other form of transportation.

This seems certain to continue with the proliferation of broad-band technology — as well as the effect of high gas prices. By 2006, the expansion of home-based work doubled twice as quickly as in the previous decade, and now is close to nine million, according to the National Highway Travel Survey of the Federal Highway Assn.

Nationwide, according to the Gartner Group, in 2007 13 million workers telecommuted at least one day a week, a 16 percent leap from 2004. That number was expected to reach 14 million this year. In addition, more than 22 million individuals, according to Forrester Research, now run businesses from home.

Last year’s skyrocketing energy prices appears to have pushed employers in this direction. A CDW survey of private sector employers this year found that 76 percent now provide technical support for remote workers, up 27 percent from a year earlier. Federal IT support, however, has lagged at roughly 58 percent.

In some regions, like the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, as many as one in 10 workers are part-time telecommuters. In the Greater Washington Area, more than 450,000 employees telecommuted at least one day a week in 2007, 42.5 percent more than in 2004, according to a survey by Commuter Connections, a regional network of transportation organizations coordinated by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. The percentage of employees who telework surged to 19 percent from 13 percent during that time period.

Not surprisingly, home offices, particularly in upscale homes, have become a necessity for many buyers — demanded ahead of security systems. A recent study by Rockbridge Associates suggests that more than one-quarter of the U.S. workforce could eventually participate full- or part-time in this new work pattern.

The potential energy savings — particularly in terms of vehicle miles traveled — could be enormous. Telecommuters naturally drive less, not only to work but for the numerous stops to and from work. According to the 2005/2006 National Technology Readiness Survey (NTRS), the United States could save about 1.35 billion gallons of fuel if everyone who was able to telecommute did so just 1.6 days per week. That calculation is based on a driving average of 20 miles per day, getting 21 miles per gallon.

A more recent study by Sun Microsytems, which uses telecommuting extensively, found that, by eliminating commuting half the week, an employee saves 5,400 kilowatt hours — even accounting for home office use. They also can save some $1,700 a year in gasoline and wear and tear.

Related technologies, like teleconferencing, according to another survey, could save another 200 million tons of jet fuel, if 10 percent of air travel were reduced over the next 10 years. There are other signs of a shift to substitute the web for the road — some college on-line classes report a 50 percent to 100 percent boost in enrollment over last year.

In comparison, the talk of a huge “surge” in transit riders as a result of rising gas prices, represents a welcome, but relatively minor, trend, since transit still accounts for under 1.5 percent of all travel. The vast majority — perhaps as much as 98 percent —- of the recent reduction in gas consumption came as a result of people simply reducing their driving, not switching to the rails.

Some of this is structural. Most metropolitan regions are simply not set up for efficient public transit; work patterns are increasingly dispersed as opposed to centralized. As a result, the ranks of telecommuters are greater in every metropolitan area in the country outside of the New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston areas.

This trend is particularly marked in growing regions in the South and West. In Portland, the mecca for light rail, there are nine telecommuters for every rail commuter. In 2008 Nustats survey, covering Austin, Dallas-Ft. Worth and El Paso telecommuting (at 12 percent) was cited four times as much as using public transit to reduce gas consumption.

Perhaps even more important, telecommuting and related technologies represent a potential sea change for the future shape of families and communities. Already women are well-represented among telecommuters, in part so they can stay home with their children. In a world with fewer permanent employees and longer hours, telecommuting could help mothers stay in the workplace even while rearing children. A growing number of fathers are also looking to work at home to participate in child-rearing.

In many ways, this represents a return to patterns that existed before the Industrial Revolution. In pre-industrial societies, members frequently worked at home or walked to work. The Industrial Revolution changed all that, with its need for mass standardization — demanding the efficacy of office and factory. Marx, the ultimate chronicler and prophet of the Industrial age, saw how “agglomeration in one shop” was “necessary” for human progress.

Writing a century later, Alvin Toffler foresaw how the rise of the “electronic cottage” would return work to the home — where it had been before. As he put it, “social and technological forces are converging to change the locus of work” — back to the home, neighborhood and village. This is part of what Toffler envisioned in his “Third Wave” society, a breaking away from the “behavioral code” of “second wave” industrialism, where work and family were segregated

These trends will continue as economic relations between business firms become less constrained by proximity. Information inputs can come from any source, and increasingly, any place. Of course, there will be serious constraints to this development. Perhaps, most important, will be the reluctance of managers —both private and public — to allow this dispersed work

There are also interests, like urban office developers and real estate developers, who might find these trends troubling. Many new urbanists and environmentalists, who one would think would favor this energy-saving trend, tend to ignore or downplay the digital frontier — preferring a return to the dense, transit-dependent patterns common a century ago.

Even telecommunications firms, which logically should be pushing this shift, seem unable to tailor their products for home-based work, according to a recent Forrester Research study. Morley Winograd, a former AT&T executive, says these companies have persisted in separating their “consumer and business customers.” As a result, they have been slow to abandon what he calls “the obsolete gene” in their corporate DNA, and target the home-based business

Yet in the future, Winograd, now executive director of the Institute for Communication Technology Management at USC’s Marshall School of Business, says that developers, corporate executives and, presumably, telecommunications companies will be forced to focus more on this growing segment.

Indeed, new suburban developments, like Ladera Ranch in Orange County, have incorporated such mixed usage into their floor plans — with separate entrances for business clients. Suburban historian Tom Martinson, believes that the Ladera plan will “be in the history books in 20 years” because it anticipates “an incredible change in the way we live and work.

Many leading companies also see the potential of full-time and part-time telecommuting. Particularly amenable to this trend are leading technology and business-service firms. At IBM, for example, as much as 40 percent of its workforce operates full-time at home. Other companies, including Siemens, Compaq, Cisco, Merrill Lynch and American Express, have expanded their use of telecommuting, with increased productivity

As more companies let go of their “command and control” approach to management, this practice seems likely to increase. Certainly the employee demand is there; one-third, according to one survey, would choose this option, even if it meant somewhat less pay. Teleworkers also generally show a higher job satisfaction

This is also being adopted in some states and cities. Georgia, for example, approved tax credits this year for creating and expanding telework.

But perhaps the biggest impetus, suggests Winograd, the former telecom executive, is the gradual ascendancy of younger workers. The millennial generation — the subject of his recent book, “Millennial Makeover,” co-written with Mike Hais — “have grown up up with the Internet and stay connected to the world on their laptops or cellphones 24/7” and sees “distinctions between work and life as arbitrary and unnecessary.”

These younger Americans will likely see no reason to spend an hour in a car, bus or train to get from one computer screen to another. Once adopted by employers, this shift may do more to reduce the carbon imprint than all the current calls for largely unwelcome shifts in the daily lifestyles of many American

Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and executive editor of www.newgeography.com

Houston, home to 16 energy firms, has seen job growth while the national economy takes a downward turn.

The steep hike in gas and energy prices has created a national debate about the future of American metropolitan areas — mostly about the reputed decline of suburbs and edge cities dependent on cars. But with all this focus on the troubles of traditional suburbs, one big story is overlooked: the rapid rise of America’s energy-producing metropolitan areas.

In many of the nation’s strongest regional economies, $5 a gallon gas is less a threat than a boon. From Houston and Midland in Texas, to a score of cities across the Great Plains, today’s energy crisis is creating new wealth and new jobs in a way not seen since, well, the energy crisis of the 1970s.

This reflects a global trend that is turning once out-of-the-way places, like Dubai and Alma Alty, into glittering high-rise cities. Other energy- and commodity-rich places are undergoing a similar boom — from Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia, to Calgary and Edmonton in Canada and Perth in Australia.

What all these places have going for them is control of what Kent Briggs, former chief of staff for Utah’s late Gov. Scott Matheson, once called “the testicles of the universe.” These cities base their wealth not on clever financial technology, cultural attributes or university-honed skills but on their position as centers of the global commodities boom.

In the process, there has been a shift in the balance of economic power away from financial and information centers like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. These cities are deeply vulnerable to the national financial and mortage crises. New York, according to David Shulman, former Lehman Brothers managing director, faces upward of 30,000 to 40,000 layoffs in its financial sector. San Francisco in the last quarter gave away a Transamerica Pyramid’s worth of office space.

In contrast, things have never looked better for cities now riding the energy and commodity boom. By far the biggest winner is Houston, whose breakneck growth has been fueled by its role as the world’s premier energy city. As with Dubai, this is less a function of the city’s proximity of actual deposits (though the Gulf of Mexico represents one of the most promising energy finds in North America), than to its premier role as the technical, trading and administrative center of the worldwide industry.

This prominence is, in historic terms, relatively recent. As late as the 1980s “oil bust,” notes historian Joe Feagin, Houston’s energy sector remained “a colony of New York,” where many of key industry corporate and financial decision-makers still lived.

Yet, today, Houston’s national, even global dominance, of the energy business is palpable. With the lure of low-cost office space and housing stock, as well as myriad personal ties among executives and leading engineers, Houston managed to consolidate its position as the predominant center of the oil and gas industry. In 1960, Houston had barely one of the nation’s large energy firms, ranking well behind New York, Los Angeles and even Tulsa; today it has 16, more than all those cities combined.

High wages offered by energy firms — annual salaries for geologists average $132,000 or more; while blue-collar workers make roughly $60,000 — have attracted a new generation of skilled executives and technicians to the region, which also enjoys a far lower cost a living than many other major cities. Areas like River Oaks, Galleria and Energy Corridor are home to well-educated, upwardly mobile workers in their late 20s and 30s. The area is growing at a time when these workers are, according to recent census numbers, leaving places like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Boston.

“People from other areas say that you guys don’t make much down there,“ said Houston executive recruiter Chris Schoettelkotte. “[But] the guys from L.A. make the same amount of money in the same field here. We pull them from Wharton, the Ivy League and Stanford and they get paid through the nose… Houston can get the talent.”

Houston’s status as energy capital is also propelling it into the ranks of first-tier cities. Today, Houston has the third largest representation of consular offices. It ranks behind only Los Angeles and New York, and has outstripped traditional commercial centers like San Francisco and Chicago.

It’s energy, along with the port and growing airport, that makes the Texas city a world capital. “When I go overseas people put Houston with New York and L.A.,” said Houston salvage entrepreneur Charlie Wilson. “In many cases, Houston is considered to be at the top of the world class because of oil. If you’re in China, you’re looking at Houston because of the oil.”

But Houston is not alone in benefiting from the rising price of energy and other commodities. According to the new Inc./Newgeography.com job growth rankings other energy cities include Dallas — home of Exxon Mobil –- as well as smaller Texas burgs like Midland, Odessa and Longview.

This is a dramatic turnaround for places like Midland. Until recently, said Midland oilman Mike Bradford, wildcatters had held back from drilling, because they feared the high oil prices would not last. Now they are convinced that the energy market has broken free of OPEC control and prices will remain high. “We think high [oil and gas] prices are for real — and we’re going nuts,” said Bradford, who also sits on the Midland County Commission.

But you don’t have to be in Texas to be part of an energy boomtown. Bakersfield, Calif., oil capital, is also thriving, despite the hard times throughout the Golden State because of the mortgage crisis. Alaskans, who now receive more than $1,600 per capita from the state’s Permanent Fund Dividend, twice what they received in 2005, are likely to see their wealth increase. If there’s an expansion of drilling there, look for Anchorage and other Alaskan cities to enjoy even flusher times.

Another hot spot is in the Great Plains. Energy production and high commodity prices are pacing the economies of regional centers like Des Moines; Billings, Mont.; Cheyenne, Wy., and Sioux Falls, S.D. In Bismarck, Grand Forks and Fargo, N.D., where incomes are surging, there’s a sense that these are the best of times. One sure sign: The energy boom — coal, oil, wind as well as biofuels — has produced a a billion-dollar state surplus for North Dakota.

The energy and commodity boom is changing the face of these small cities in key ways. Fargo, the butt of sophisticated jokes with the Coen Brothers’ movie, now boasts a first-class arena, fine restaurants, a luxurious boutique hotel and a thriving arts scene.

Grand Forks has a growing condo market. Scores of smaller cities — like Bismarck and Dickinson – are also showing signs of a new quasi-urban sophistication. After decades of demographic stagnation, some of these towns are seeing healthy population gains.

Rising unemployment is not a problem here; a looming labor shortage is. In some markets, there are signing bonuses and $12-an-hour wages at fast-food business.

If energy prices hold firm, and particularly if the nation begins to ramp up energy production, we can see the boomtimes extend to energy-rich Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Louisiana. These can mean more growth in already healthy economies like Albuquerque, Salt Lake City and Denver; but also for long hard-pressed New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities.

Finally there’s another group of potential winners: areas that have been selected to produce the energy-efficient vehicles of the future. Even as Detroit, Flint and Ft. Wayne, Ind.,– producers of SUVs and trucks — suffer, many cities in the mid-South, like Nashville, Huntsville and Chattanooga, Tenn., seem certain to gain as Nissan, Toyota, Volkswagen and other foreign producers ramp up production.

Perhaps the ultimate example of “world turned upside down” by energy prices may end up being Mississippi, long a perennial loser in the economic sweepstakes. But this week, Toyota announced it would start building its popular hybrid Prius in Blue Springs, Miss., in late 2010. That’s just outside Tupelo, Elvis’ birthplace.

We may not see a reappearance of the King — but for many people this resurgence is just as stunning.

None of this, however, suggests that San Francisco, Los Angeles or New York are about to be eclipsed by Houston — much less Fargo or Tupelo. But if the history of cities tells us anything, places well-positioned for growth industries tend to emerge as ever more serious players.

It worked for industrial cities like Chicago, which emerged from obscurity in the late 19th Century; or later for high-tech centers like San Jose, Austin and Boston. If energy and commodity prices stay high for another decade, we may have to get used to a shift in the power of places across the American landscape.

Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and the author of “The City: A Global History.” He is executive editor of the website www.newgeography.com

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)

For many in public-policy organizations, academia and the media, the current mortgage and credit crisis suggests the impending collapse of the American suburban dream. The prevailing image is of a wave of foreclosures inundating the winding culs-de-sac of split-level ranch houses and neo-colonials, built and bought with cheap money and low interest rates.

One prominent New Urbanist, Chris B. Leinberger, writing in The Atlantic, is advancing the theory the mortgage crisis reflects a growing trend toward dense urban living that will leave much of the periphery — both the older, established suburbs and the newer, edge cities — as what he calls “the next slum.” He heralds a “structural change under way in the way Americans work and live,” with people moving back to the central core of cities.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

It turns out, however, that urban centers — particularly those promoting dense condominium developments — are increasingly buckling under the same credit problems now affecting many housing developments on the suburban fringe. In some markets, condo sales, a strong indicator of urban fortunes, are dropping in price more quickly than single-family homes.

Even where prices are dropping less quickly or rising, as in Manhattan, higher prices often reflect the narrowing of the market. As middle class home-buyers have been priced out of elite urban centers, the extreme upper end of the market is increasingly dominating new sales. In New York, this means more and more “pied a terres” owned by foreigners or wealthy Americans with multiple residences. The New York Times recently ran a story about the new multimillion-dollar apartments in The Plaza — many of which are regularly empty, because buyers have their principle residences elsewhere.

But, even in New York, the volume of sales has been dropping, more than 34 percent in the last quarter compared to a year earlier — the steepest drop in 18 years. As the other great bubble, the one on Wall Street, deflates, many major projects, including the $4-billion Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn, designed by Frank O. Gehry, have been substantially scaled back or delayed. Altogether, more than $20 billion in new projects have been put on hold and into mothballs.

In other urban centers — none of which offer the amenities and attractions of New York — sales are falling off, sometimes dramatically. Many condo projects are suffering weak sales, softening prices or have been turned into rentals in once “hot” core cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, Atlanta, Chicago and Washington.

Nor is a turnaround likely in the near future. One corrosive factor may be that, despite the downturn, many markets can expect to see thousands of new condo and multi-family units come on line in the next few years. This is the delayed impact of the easy financing available at the height of the property bubble.

In 2007, the nation had a supply of completed condominiums that would normally absorb 10 months’ demand, and this year more than 20,000 new units are scheduled to be completed in Atlanta, south Florida and San Diego alone. In these and many other once-promising downtown markets, like Los Angeles, prices in the much-ballyhooed central core are falling twice as fast as the surrounding region.

With the continued addition of new product amid falling prices, many, if not most inner city markets, are facing a tough road over the next few years.

If these realities conflict with what you have been reading in the mainstream press, do not be surprised. City revivals, sometimes amounting to a move of a few thousand people to a downtown area, have been promoted relentlessly by civic leaders and echoed with breathless enthusiasm by local developers and realtors.

Rarely reported, however, is the fact that more than 90 percent of all metropolitan growth in this “back to the city” decade has taken place in the periphery. One reason: 80 percent of Americans, according to numerous surveys, want to live in suburbs, small towns or the country. In addition, contrary to the notions of city planners and media cognitive elites, the vast majority of Americans prefer a single-family home to an apartment or condo. For most people, the American dream still means a house with a yard — not a high-rise apartment

Yet such facts seem to mean little to many who write about the future of cities and suburbs. One misleading account ran in the supposedly authoritative Financial Times on Apr. 4. Titled “As Cities revive, America’s poor are forced to the periphery,” the article cited studies which show that older, inner-ring suburbs now are home to more of the working poor than urban cores.

The FT’s basic premise was that while it’s still good times in the urban core, it’s a disaster further out. “It used to be that the poor people lived in cities and the rich lived in suburbs,” Carol Coletta, who runs CEO for Cities, a pro-urban think-tank, was cited in the piece, “Now it’s the reverse.”

Not quite true. Overall, according to the Census, the poverty rate in the suburbs is only half that of the core cities. Moreover, the suburbs have grown at nine times the rate of central cities since 2000, and now have 2.7 times as much population. Given these fact, notes demographer Wendell Cox, it is not surprising they have a larger number of people in poverty.

Yet, the greatest concentrations of poverty in America remain in the country’s inner cities. All 10 of the nation’s poorest places of more than 250,000 people are traditional urban centers, most with nearly one in four persons living in poverty — including Coletta’s hometown of Memphis. In contrast, the 15 counties of more than 250,000 population that have the highest median income are all, well, in the suburbs.

It is also hard to make a case that urban centers are now attracting hordes of the upwardly mobile and well-off aging boomers, as is often suggested. Studies by the Brookings Institution demographer, William H. Frey, and real estate industry experts have found that relatively few well-heeled empty-nesters are deserting their suburban nests for the core. In fact, most are staying close to home, while about as many head further out than move in.

Similarly, middle class residents continue to leave urban centers, particularly as they enter their thirties and start having families. Most major urban school districts face declining enrollments; in Chicago, public school enrollment has declined by 41,000 in the last seven years alone. Despite reports of many more families with strollers in Manhattan, the numbers of urban children traditionally falls dramatically once kids reach school age. If you look at 10-year olds, notes an analysis by Praxis Strategy group, Manhattan’s youth population dwindles to almost half the national average.

Therefore, despite the hype about families or empty-nesters, cities still attract mostly young singles, students and new immigrants. Many of these, once they are settled or reach middle age, often move out to the suburbs or to less expensive regions. Even core urban groups, like gays, may now be heading to the suburbs for more affordable housing and quieter neighborhoods, notes a recent study by UCLA researcher Gary J. Gates.

Costs and comfort may be only part of the reason. Suburbs themselves have become more diverse and welcoming to households that do not fit the traditional “Leave it to Beaver” mold. Some have growing cultural institutions, thriving town centers and excellent ethnic restaurants. Perhaps more compelling, the bulk of economic growth and jobs — including high-end professions— continues to shift away from the core urban areas.This is true even in urban success stories like Portland and Philadelphia.

This may explain why the boosters’ over-hyping of the market for “luxury” condo development in many cities has become so overwrought and economically unsustainable. There is clearly a market for dense urban housing that should expand over time. But given the demographic and economic trends, it does not exist yet — at least not in the volume or at the prices offered by many developers today.

Equally important, the celebratory rhetoric surrounding the condo “boom” has deluded many urban policy makers into mistaking speculative development for real progress. They would have been much better off focusing on fundamentals like boosting middle class jobs, reining in inflated public employee costs, improving educational systems and improving basic infrastructure.

Yet, ironically, the current condo glut could still present a great long-term opportunity for urban centers. Lower condominium and rental prices might lure key urban demographic groups, like young educated workers, to the central cities that were becoming too pricey for them. City boosters would do well to use this current crisis to nurture a sustainable urban middle class instead of wasting time bashing the majority who, stubbornly, still prefer suburbs.

Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and the author of “The City: A Global History” and “Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy.” He is writing a book about the American future.