I mentioned I appropriated the phrase from Holly Black, right? She used the term to describe Tithe, a gorgeous novel that juxtaposes the industrial Jersey shore with the organic worlds of the Seelie and Unseelie courts.
It's a concept that resonates for me, having spend most of my youth reading and stretching my imagination in the suburban wastelands of Indiana and Wisconsin.
Many authors utilize the same device(s) to the same effect. I am mad for Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter and have tremendous respect for Emma Bull's The War For the Oaks. But I've not found many authors that speak about it on-the-record quite so articulately as Holly has.
Set on the outskirts of Chicago, in suburban Evanston, Black Poplar freely crosses the threshold between the first and second (read: fantastic) worlds. Instead of the fair folk, its denizens have been sculpted from the clay of the early Greek mythos.
I have intended, in writing the novel, for its roots to be those of the same (suburban) family tree.