To say "it goes much deeper than the oil crisis" and then hang your argument on ideas about time being expensive, thus leading us to live non-suburan lives - it is just too much.

High energy cost have everything to do with the devaluing of suburbia. Cheap energy and the U.S. style of housing development and highway construction are part of a system that is now collapsing. The whole thing depended on a profligate and ever growing use of energy. High energy costs means no more growth, and that pretty much is that. The air is being let out of the balloon.

"Time" savings have nothing to do with it. If someone cannot afford to drive 50 miles round trip, then they will be forced to move. The place they lived will either grow job centers organically, or it will slowly decay into the sparsely inhabited wilderness area it was 50 years ago.