This book explores the role of the ideology of nature in producing urban and exurban sprawl. It examines the ironies of residential development on the metropolitan fringe, where the search for "nature" brings residents deeper into the world from which they are imagining their escape-of Federal Express, technologically mediated communications, global supply chains, and the anonymity of the global marketplace-and where many of the central features of exurbia-very low-density residential land use, monster homes, and conversion of forested or rural land for housing-contribute to the very problems...