Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

In the southeast corner of Champaign, the black soil plowed for generations into small wave-like rows is being cleared to make way for housing and office space. A number of prim, attractive and similar looking houses line the roads. Brick walls with stone trusses and beige siding enclose them. Their walkways cut through neatly trimmed lawns to stately front door steps surrounded by woodchips or small seas of carefully selected pebbles. There are no thick, stout trees here — only saplings. The neighborhoods are too new for them to have grown tall.

People will commute to and from these homes. They’ll raise children, and take out mortgages to live in them. But these houses are also ground zero for a thorny issue facing growing cities throughout the U.S.: sprawl.