It's happening everywhere; commercial and housing development, along with the road network need to suport it, is the single greatest pressure on natural landscapes in the United States, and by its very pervasiveness the hardest to control. Between 1982 and 1997, developed land in the forty-eight contiguous states increased by 25 million acres- meaning a quarter of all the open land lost since the European settlement disappeared in those fifteen years. This isn't a trend, it is a juggernaut, and the worst may be yet to come. At this pace, by 2025 there will be 68 million more rural acres in development, an area about the size of Wyoming, and the total developed land in the United States will stand at a Texas-sized 174 million acres. Already, just the impervious covering we put on the land, the things like roads, sidewalks, and buildings we pave with asphalt or concrete, add up to an area the size of Ohio.

...led Dolores Hayden, a professor of architecture and American studies at Yale, to compile a new lexicon by which to describe it, including a "boom burb" (for a fast growing suburb), "zoom burb" (for one growing even faster), "LULU" (Locally Unwanted Land Use), and "litter on a stick" (billboards).

-Scott Weidensaul
Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul