Population 553,947 as it stands. Pasco County, home to all of those tired “Florida Man” stories from 2010, is one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S. The county is named after a Confederate soldier turned Senator, Samuel Pasco, who died peacefully without consequence in his namesake county before the turn of the century. The landscape is a fluid combination of farmland, wild swamps, McMansions and construction, but the recipe is ever changing.

I was sent by Wall Street Journal photo editor Ariel Zambelich to explore the landscape and illustrate the county that seems to be growing faster than the cosmos, and the beauties and horrors of a condominium civilization built on an ancient and unappreciated swamp.

While working on this story, I was struck by the lack of people in the region. Plenty of cars whizzing by. Towers of apartments stacked neatly off the highway. Grocery stores busting with treasures. All of them presumably stocked with neighbors and PTA members and trivia teams. But the streets and neighborhoods are void of community. The exhausting isolation of the exurbs separates us into cubes of lonely individualism. Each home an island, each neighborhood an archipelago.