I'm in some exurban zone between Wilmington and Baltimore, and there are plenty of newly minted and still under construction housing developments of the very worst kind. I think one thing people fail to notice sometimes is just much land these things use. I remember hearing a talk in the 90s, when I was living in Providence, about the attempts to revitalize the downtown core of that city. To provide a sense of scale the presenter demonstrated using scale models how the entire Providence downtown area easily fit within the footprint of a moderately sized local suburban mall&parking lot.
