How fragile is your web of daily life? How quickly would a major spike in gas prices disrupt your regular necessities? When gas first reached $5/gallon not long ago, some people with lower-paying jobs who lived further out were already having to choose between groceries and gas. That first spike didn’t last long, but we’d be deceiving ourselves to think that more spikes aren’t on the way.

Today, there are roughly 2-1/2 billion people in China and in India moving from very low-impact agrarian settings into the city. In the US, there’s more than one car per person. If China and India do 2-1/2 times as well as the US in their need for cars, there will still be a billion cars on the road in those two countries alone in the next few years, competing with the rest of us for gas. So there’s no doubt which direction the price of gas is going... the only questions are “how high?” and “how soon?”

We shop most often at two grocery stores, although there are three more small groceries within two blocks of the office.

We’re about three blocks from the center of Flamingo Park from both home and office.

The post office is diagonally across the street from our office.

We chose a physician on the beach. It’s about a 15 minute walk from home, so I sometimes ride a bike if I’m in a hurry. But I’ve only needed to go to the doctor for routine checkups because I’ve stayed quite healthy in this walkable place.

Here’s the walkable bank we selected, just a few blocks from the office

I normally go to the vitamin store from home... it’s just four blocks south on Meridian, which is a beautiful street lined by great trees that create a canopy of shade.

Here’s the hardware store. It’s a long enough walk (close to 20 minutes) that I’ll often take Wanda’s bike, which has three baskets in which to carry my purchases.

Here’s my favorite bookstore: Books & Books is south Florida’s best independent bookstore.

The Apple Store is just a few blocks north of home on Meridian, and a similar distance from the office, assuming you cut across on the delightful little Espanola Way.

These are some of our favorite restaurants, although there are probably a hundred within a ten-minute walk.

Here are the combined paths to all these places.

This is our Web of Daily Life. In our case, we don’t even want to drive any of these paths, unless we’re buying something too big to carry, like a computer. So no matter what the price of gas does, we’ll be able to get around to all these necessities self-propelled: either walking or biking.

You should also map out your Web of Daily Life. Then ask yourself “which of these paths would be most easily disrupted?” At $5/gallon? At $10/gallon? At $20/gallon? And then let’s have a conversation about some of the best ways of strengthening your Web of Daily Life.