I live what used to be a very rural part of Washington state. My grandmother moved here from Bavaria somewhere around the ‘50s, and there was the local high school (that I now go to), her small street of houses, a large evergreen forest, and some farmland. Period.
My mother (who had already been married when my grandmother moved) moved here around the ‘80s after my father got out of the military. There were maybe 4–6 streets of houses, a small shopping plaza (a grocery store, hardware store and a gas station, all family owned) a mile away, and the rest was all the same.
When I was born in the ‘90s, our street had become part of a decent-sized neighborhood, still bordered on a forest, and had some new, bigger roads, though there were still farms within walking distance.
Now, not even two decades later, there is no forest, and all the farmland has been sold out and turned into housing developments with no backyards (that have no occupants because of the economy), massive industrial warehouses and plants and empty land covered in scrub brush because no one wants land next to an ugly warehouse off a busy, loud, and dangerous road. The road off our neighborhood is packed with cars 24/7. People get into accidents on each end of it practically daily (you can hear sirens screaming, especially at night), and all the family-owned businesses like grocery stores and pet stores and restaurants have been put out of business because of chains like Fred Meyer’s, Walmart, and McDonald’s. There is no evergreen forest or farmland within a 5 mile radius.
It’s sad, really. The young kids here don’t have a place to hang out or play—it’s all eaten up by suburbia and empty houses and land with “no trespassing” signs.