The Brawl Over Sprawl

Before America turns into one giant paved-over subdivision, people are fighting back. Is there hope?

I hear the whistle of the locomotive in the woods... Whew! Whew! Whew! How is real estate here in the swamp and wilderness? --Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1842

Which brings us to greater Atlanta, 1999. Once a wilderness, it's now a 13-county eruption, one that has been called the fastest-spreading human settlement in history. Already more than 110 miles across, up from just 65 in 1990, it consumes an additional 500 acres of field and farmland every week. What it leaves behind is tract houses, access roads, strip malls, off ramps, industrial parks and billboards advertising more tract houses where the peach...

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