Reply #10: Check out the novel "Snow Crash" by Neil Stephenson

[HippieCowgirl]

Aside from the main story, he writes a dead-on prediction of our future urban landscape. An endless series of freeways, with exactly the same franchises everywhere. Each suburb is actually a nation (or part of a nation) on it's own. Where one gated neighborhood is Hong Kong, and the one down the street is part of the Fundamentalist Nation, and the next one down is owned by Taiwan, etc. etc.

IIRC he wrote it in the 80's and his predictions of what America has turned into are pretty close to the mark.