Crabgrass Frontier

I've been seeking a book to explain the development of the American landscape as it is now and have found it in Kenneth Jackson's "Crabgrass Frontier". I believe the book is classified under urban development but it is as much a book about American History as it is about suburbanization. Beginning with Brooklyn and Brookline and covering the entire country with only a handful of exceptions, the book addresses the American need to get out of the city and into the "country", the need for space (freedom), and those who suffered to create it. What I found most interesting about the study is the development of municipalities, how new towns were connected to the cities that spawned them and that the poorer classes left in the cities were now paying for sewage, water and electricity in these new, extravagent towns. Jackson shows how race, poverty, disease, industry, wealth, and the automobile built the America(n) we see now, one that is isolated rather than part of a community. Or at least the America we saw in 1985. At that time, I walked most places. Now, the lenght of those walks to the store is about the length of a Target. Recently I visited Manchester, Vermont and saw how they had spread their mall throughout the town, so that chain stores were run out of Cape style cottages and neatly paved sidewalks where local restaurants, offices, and trade shops also operated. I'm not sure if this is better or worse, but it seems that the town should have a say in how these businesses appear, no matter the dangers and comforts that lurk inside.