It seems there's almost no barrier to adding the infrastructure required for everyone to live in individual castles, carting themselves around in ever-growing wheelchairs to gigantic commerce centers designed for said wheelchairs (but not humans). Will the cost of this ever come into consideration? Will anything in America be human-sized in 80 years? Perhaps my view is clouded by the Texas sprawl I see every day.

The pickup truck perfectly represents the excesses of this development pattern: It consumes large amounts of fuel and takes up lots of space. With high hoods (and often added bull bar/brush guard) it's dangerous to those outside of it while protecting the single person inside at all costs. It can hold four/five people while also carrying/towing a large amount of purchased goods, and though it isn't often used for such purposes, it represents a "hard work" ethos, especially that of the hourly worker, which fuels the consumerism that enables such a vehicles existence.