Thanks for posting that story Kylie. My town (Chicago suburb) used to be on the edge of nowhere. Kinda the like the divider between suburbs and farmland. There's a major N/S road just to the west of my house that stretches for about an hour's drive, and it used to be surrounded by beautiful cornfields the whole way, no longer than about 10 or 15 years ago. Now it's all (ALL) stripmalls and housing developments. You can drive on one road and see about 3 or 4 Applebees, Best Buy's, Old Navy's, Starbucks(probably even more of those)... To top it off, the business is heightening the value of the surrounding land, so every single farm from there to about a half an hour west is either for sale or already starting to be built up with new subdivisions. It's the kind of thing where you just don't understand/predict what will happen till it's already sold and built and there... and by that time it's too late and is already starting to spawn something else. I don't know what to do, and it's horrifying to see it continue so fast. Suburban sprawl is a *huge* problem and it's growing faster than anybody imagines. The only way to stop it is to prevent it from happening, and nobody feels the need to prevent it until it becomes a problem. It starts out as something harmless-sounding like a new grocery store to bring in some money and lower the taxes. Yoink. Done.
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