Where do we go from here?

It's not like we're at a crossroads where we are forced to make a choice.....yet. But lately I've been thinking a lot about the future, given the increasingly high cost of fuel and food. Of course, opinion is somewhat divided as to whether these costs will continue to rise, but it seems to me that a prudent and safe presumption would be that they will.
So, the question becomes, in a future of increasingly limited resources, what will our communities look like? James Kuntsler believes that they will look an awful lot like villages did prior to the Industrial Revolution, and that big cities are doomed, as they will lack the resources to provide for their population. Others believe that with limited resources, people will need to live in cities due to jobs and distribution centers (in other words, it will only be economically possible to ship food to limited "ports" -- no more trucking avocadoes from Mexico to Maine).

In the past year, we've formed some bonds locally up in the foothills of the Sierra, which is a bit mystifying to me. It all started because we wanted a yard for the dogs. The whole process which began over 2 years ago and has now culminated in us becoming a part of a community that we never dreamed we would fit into, is almost metaphysical and to question whether it is practical seems a bit like rejecting guidance from the Numinous. And that seems very ill-advised.
On the other hand, it is entirely possible that I am letting my emotions have dangerous control over what should be a more practical decision. It's not like human beings are unknown to make poor decisions based on misguided spiritual beliefs and emotional attachments, after all.

In the last few years, I developed a real admiration for modern design, because it is clean and simple. And that has led me to become fascinated with modern housing architecture, and to almost exclusively track a particular type of mid-century modern tract house built in the Sacramento older suburbs by the Streng Brothers. If the New Urbanists are right, then living in an older and established suburb in a Streng home would be perfectly workable, and in many ways ideal. There would be nearby public transportation, shops and parks. It would be much closer to my current work territory. Additionally, my chosen career path is heavily dependant on driving and as the cost of fuel becomes more prohibitive, I don't see that my employer will have any choice than to limit services to higher population density areas. If Kuntsler is right, then it would be better to move even further away (but closer to our social circle who live mostly in the Placerville region). My job prospects would be less appealing. I could probably find work doing pretty much what I'm doing now, but it would pay a lot less and yet rent and food would remain around the same cost. Where we live currently is at a border area, literally. We live right on the border of Sacramento and El Dorado County, right on the border between urban and rural. We are neither here, nor there.
The Armstrongs, my Scottish clan, were a borders clan. The borders of Scotland were a wild and crazy place, of nearly constant warfare and invasion. People lived in modified towers, basically, in which they could draw up the ladder to the second floor and have some defense against casual opportunistic foes. Just thinking about the daily lives of my forbears makes me anxious, and while my borders are nowhere near as tumultous as theirs, the resonance of the borders as a place in space and time does seem apt and descriptive of where I find myself.