The Galactic Suburban Frontier

"In one sense, it is easy to explain where Gail and Brent Heppner live. Their new house is off Exit 110 of Interstate 95, a solid 70 miles south of the District, beyond so many subdivisions and fast-food clusters, past the giant, circular sign heralding Potomac Mills mall, then farms with billboards for $9.99 truck-stop rib-eyes, and then an additional 30 minutes past gray-green blurs of second-growth pine. They live all the way down in Caroline County, recently named one of the fastest-growing counties in the country.

In another sense, though, the Heppners' place in the geography of suburbia, of exurbia, of the Washington region -- and really, of the nation -- is more difficult to pinpoint."

"Although once-rural Loudoun County has for years been the icon of rapid growth, and Spotsylvania County considered the southernmost edge of sprawl, suddenly the edge seems to have jumped 30 miles or so south and east into Caroline and King George counties, which popped up right behind Loudoun on the latest top 10 list of fast-growing counties. Both are closer to Richmond than to the District.

Over the years, such areas have been called exurbs and disurbs, edge counties and edgeless cities, exopoli, outtowns, penturbias, rururbias, slurbs and, curiously, net of mixed beads. Still other terms grasp at their relation to neighboring areas: archipelago economy, global network of nodes and hubs, planetary urban networks."