Why aren't people buying cars?

Here's an interesting series of photos of unsold vehicles just sitting around.

So why aren't cars being sold?  Conventional thought is that the slowdown in the economy and the tightening of credit is largely to blame, and I'd have to agree that much of the crisis in the car industry has to do with economic conditions.

But here's another thought:  perhaps the massive re-urbanization of our societies is a much greater, underlying cause.

For years now, North Americans have stopped dreaming of a house in the suburbs and two cars in every garage.  Professionals in their 20s and 30s no longer seem to be purchasing vehicles in the numbers that they used to, and many have moved into condos and multi-unit housing in the downtown core instead of into the suburbs as they used to do en masse only thirty years ago.  If this is the case, consumer demand for automobiles may continue to be low even after the economy picks up.

There's an entire truckload of reasons why people are no longer buying cars.  But perhaps more attention should be trained on the greater demographic shifts in our society rather than on temporary economic conditions.