Today’s Trib carries a curious story by John Handley on how high gas prices may eventually slow the spread of sprawl. (With oil prices stuck well above $50 a barrel for the foreseeable future, not even invading Iraq and drilling under every playground in Alaska will keep American drivers from fondly reminiscing about $2.50 a gallon next year or so.) It’s curious because the quotes switch from (suburban-based) real estate analysts who point out the possible link between gas prices and sprawl — after all, metropolitan transportation and housing costs are strongly and inversely correlated — and far-edge-exurban commuters (Minooka, Rockford, DeKalb, somewhere near Beloit) who looooooove their big houses and their looooooong commutes. (Hey, life is suffering, right?)

“Gas prices above $2.50 might start to kick in a slowing of the outward movement of housing in the Chicago area,” said real estate analyst Tracy Cross…

For Marianne Hall, who commutes 73 miles–2 hours and 15 minutes on the road each way — from DeKalb to her job in downtown Chicago, “it would take a really big increase in gas to offset the long-term gain we got by moving farther out.”

She and her husband, Randy, a bookkeeper who works from home, and their three children moved from Oswego to DeKalb a year ago.

“It’s a dream home,” Hall said. “We have a huge yard and the kids have the run of the neighborhood; there’s not a lot of traffic.”

Yeah, and if idiots like you keep moving out there, you’ll lose all of it.

But real state analyst Steve Hovany believes that a move toward shorter commutes has begun in the Chicago area.

“People are paying extra to reduce their commute. They’re moving to closer-in, infill housing in the suburbs and to downtown,” he said. “Right now, that inward move is major. It’s being driven by older buyers. Commuting doesn’t grow on you. Empty-nesters won’t buy in the middle of nowhere.”

He also worries about gasoline prices. “The rising price of gas is a jolt that could affect residential sales,” said Hovany, president of Strategy Planning Associates in Schaumburg.

He noted, though, that not everyone can pay for a close-in location, and economics forces many younger couples to start their families on the edge of the Chicago area.

The location of jobs is a key to where new homes are built, Hovany said. “If a new housing development wants volume sales, it has to be within a 35- to 40-minute drive from major job markets.”

And because of growing employment around Schaumburg, Aurora-Naperville and other areas, suburb-to-suburb commuting is on the rise.

Hovany’s company did a study on Waterman, a town 60 miles west of Chicago on U.S. Highway 30. “Though it may be far from the city, it’s only a 35- to 40-minute drive to the Aurora-Naperville job corridor,” Hovany said.

Third wave edge cities like the East-West Corridor will spawn fourth wave sprawl, which will give rise to fourth wave edge cities in places like New Lenox, which will… Well, duh, that’s the way suburban growth paths work. However, what will ultimately break this particular path dependence? The Metropolis Pledge? Employers realizing that locating closer to the center of the region offers them the best access to the largest, most competitively priced labor pool?

Speaking of growth paths, someone pointed out during the development of the Metropolis Plan that the Chicago region’s growth paths have strayed so far from the center that even sprawl at current rates doesn’t look all that dramatic on a map. (The growth path gets wider as it progresses outwards and therefore appears to slow down; each mile of lateral travel encompasses a steadily larger surface area.)