Copses

Back when we were a nation of 200 million people, 38 percent of us lived in the suburbs. Now fully HALF of our 300 million people do. Housing tracts have displaced pastures and quiet copses and turned suburbs into centers of economic and political power. And everything you may have heard about explosive growth in what we call the "Sun Belt" is true. Just about half of our 300 million people now live in the sunny South and West. That's twice as many people as lived there 39 years ago.