Economic collapse creates a chain of events, but on a micro level (county, city) there is a marked reduction in revenue for maintenance of services. Loss of services to outlying areas means, for example, roads not being maintained to rural/suburban areas. Roads not being maintained to those areas, schools not being supported in those areas, law enforcement/fire/social services not being supported in those areas means a gradual movement into the denser city centers. Add to that the increased cost of gasoline (manipulated), and the higher cost of energy (manipulated) to heat and cool statistically larger homes, and you have more pressure to leave rural and suburban areas. Reduction of energy usage is key. Smart Growth/New Urbanism is the supposed answer: smaller units, attached condos, little or no parking, few private cars. More eyes on the street. Paid for and subsidized with your property tax dollars through redevelopment. You pay for 30-45 years.
In addition to these factors, ecologically motivated regulation makes rural/suburban development prohibitive. From stream/creek/ditch protection to watershed protection, to bayland/inland/rural corridor prohibitions, to increased species protection (lists are growing), the use of land is greatly limited. Water well monitoring and loss of water rights reduce the opportunity for living outside of cities. Wildlands programs that prohibit roads/trails into rural areas while supposedly protecting them with conservation easements (sale of development rights to Agricultural Land Trusts that restrict farmers and ranchers from using their lands and therefore make it impossible to farm for more than one more generation) increase the loss of our food source independence.
Add to this the pressure from Climate Protection Campaigns to reduce our energy usage to pre-1985 levels and increased regulations on industry and you have the perfect storm for loss of jobs and greater dependence on other countries for goods. As the population becomes more and more urbanized and less able to provide food or necessary products, more people are dependent on the government for housing, food, and other basic necessities. Government itself becomes dependent on grants and loans with requirements attached. In this way policy-makers are influenced and pressured by the corporatocracy. Public/private partnerships favor some businesses over others and completely unbalance the playing field. Independent businesses go out. Poverty works its way into the middle class.
Social equity, another one of the cornerstones of Agenda 21 comes in here. As a major leveler, the loss of money, land, food, and energy independence brings the US into 'social equity' with the poorer countries. This is a goal of Agenda 21. Health will suffer, presumably health care will suffer, nutrition will suffer. Psychological problems, stress from living in tight areas with other un- or underemployed people, and crime will result. Community Oriented Policing will encourage, if not require, people to watch their neighbors and report suspicious activity. More activity will be identified as 'crime'--such as obesity, smoking, drinking when you have a drinking problem, name calling, leaving lights on, neglect (in someone's perception) of children, elderly, and pets, driving when you could ride a bike, breaking a curfew, failure to do mandatory volunteering. The 'community' will demand more law enforcement to restore order, and more rules and regulations will ensue. The Chinese and Russian models are instructive. See: Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai, and Alexsander Solzhenitsen's The Gulag Archipelago for details.
You can see that the groundwork for this has been laid and is being implemented throughout the nation. When you create deep dependence and then withdraw assistance the result is chaos and poverty. Propaganda infuses our culture with messages that there are just a few winners and many losers; that we are killing the earth and time is running out; that prosperity is an anachronism and detrimental to life; that individual freedom is selfish and injures those who are less free.
This is Agenda 21.
Communitarianism is the 'balancing' or subsuming of individual rights below the needs of the 'community.' The community is defined now as the global village. So anything identified as serving the global village takes precedence over the rights of the individual. In the United States, our constitution guarantees our rights to life and liberty. Ownership of property includes that of our own persons.
Personal liberty is at odds with Communitarianism, the new standard of the Twenty-first Century.