<P> Subdivisions often incorporate curved roads and cul - de-sacs . These subdivisions may offer only a few places to enter and exit the development, causing traffic to use high volume collector streets . All trips, no matter how short, must enter the collector road in a suburban system . </P> <P> Because the advent of sprawl meant more land for lower costs, home owners had more land at their disposal, and the development of the residential lawn after the Second World War became commonplace in suburbs, notably, but not exclusively in North America . The creation in the early 20th century of country clubs and golf courses completed the rise of lawn culture in the United States . Lawns now take up a significant amount of land in suburban developments, contributing in no small part to sprawl . </P> <P> In areas of sprawl commercial use is generally segregated from other uses . In the U.S. and Canada, these vary from strip malls, which refer to collections of buildings sharing a common parking lot, usually built on a high - capacity roadway with commercial functions (i.e., a "strip"). Similar developments in the UK are called Retail Parks . Strip malls consisting mostly of big box stores or category killers are sometimes called "power centers" (U.S.). These developments tend to be low - density; the buildings are single - story and there is ample space for parking and access for delivery vehicles . This character is reflected in the spacious landscaping of the parking lots and walkways and clear signage of the retail establishments . Some strip malls are undergoing a transformation into Lifestyle centers; entailing investments in common areas and facilities (plazas, cafes) and shifting tenancy from daily goods to recreational shopping . </P> <P> Another prominent form of retail development in areas characterized by sprawl is the shopping mall . Unlike the strip mall, this is usually composed of a single building surrounded by a parking lot that contains multiple shops, usually "anchored" by one or more department stores (Gruen and Smith 1960). The function and size is also distinct from the strip mall . The focus is almost exclusively on recreational shopping rather than daily goods . Shopping malls also tend to serve a wider (regional) public and require higher - order infrastructure such as highway access and can have floorspaces in excess of a million square feet (ca . 100,000 m2). Shopping malls are often detrimental to downtown shopping centres of nearby cities since the shopping malls act as a surrogate for the city centre (Crawford 1992). Some downtowns have responded to this challenge by building shopping centres of their own (Frieden and Sagelyn 1989). </P>

A continuous area of human development and urban growth