Wetlands have been eaten away by tightly packed clusters of town houses, where the shore is not sand but heaps of chunky gravel that alter the water's acidity and choke off life.
Over the last 15 years, the federal government has shifted its public housing policy, providing money — although in an ever-dwindling stream in recent years — to tear down high-rises like Hamilton and replace them with clusters of town houses and duplexes.
Arrive through the rear gate, as my husband and I did after a day of backroads rambling on the way down from Dublin, and you might think you'd been transported to an upscale retirement colony in the Carolinas: the landscape is all glossy green golf course, punctuated by clusters of town houses and little placards advertising wonderful opportunities for the construction of lavish dream homes.
The technological heart of California has traditionally been Silicon Valley, the cluster of towns to San Francisco's south-east.
In Norway, Terra Securities filed for bankruptcy protection in November after regulators revoked its license for selling risky American securities to a cluster of towns near the Arctic Circle.
Down in Colorado's Front Range, the cluster of towns and cities that cling to the eastern edge of the Rockies, the scent of what has been dubbed a commercial "green rush" is hanging in the air – literally.
Kristy Davis, a special agent with the Texas Department of Public Safety, who works in the cluster of towns north of Houston where Murray lives, credited the volunteers in that area with rescuing at least 500 people in three days this week.
In northeastern Italy, in a cluster of towns that were once a hub of global luxury manufacturing but today are floundering due to competition from China and other Asian nations, 3D printing is revitalizing artisanal craftsmanship.
According to a French witness from the time, the whole region was a sort of cluster of towns, each with streets, walks, and squares, while some 80% the countryside around it was mostly cultivated fields.
Fighters from the extremist group Boko Haram laid waste to a cluster of towns in northeast Nigeria earlier this month, inflicting a massacre that Amnesty International said may be the bloodiest in the Islamic militants' history.
