Here is where I live:
Lincoln, California - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's rather interesting... Lincoln, CA, was a small town in the middle of no where outside of Sacramento, California, when someone discovered there was a small freeway off of the main freeway - and lots of cheap undeveloped land. In ten years the town went from a population of 11k to 42k, making us one of the fastest growing cities in the country. We still have that old town feel, yet we have all of the modern stuff too.
My town was hit hard during the recession - all of these new homes meant a lot of bad loans and a lot of people lost their homes. We had two different condo complexes that stopped building; They had huge concrete pads laid out with the plumbing, etc, and they just sat there for three or four years. Building seems to be back now.