the.com/subdivision
Where farms go to become addresses that all sound like the forest they bulldozed.
means A tract of land split into smaller lots for building houses, and the name for the resulting housing development itself.
from Built from the Latin prefix 'sub-' (under, below) plus 'divisio' (a dividing), from 'dividere' (to divide). The word simply meant 'a division made within a division' — a part cut from a larger part — long before it narrowed, in step with 20th-century suburban growth, to mean land parceled into residential lots.
- naming irony
- streets named after trees removed to build them
- legal trick
- splits one parcel into many to dodge zoning limits
- cul-de-sac logic
- designed for privacy, delivers identical houses facing each other
- economic engine
- developer profits come from infrastructure costs, not the homes