These days, a baby's first birthday or a wedding will sometimes get the fire going, but imus have largely become the victims of crowded suburbs, looser family ties and microwave ovens.

Animosities and suspicions are so deep, Zimbabweans say, that residents in the crowded black suburbs of Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, refuse to speak to neighbors with differing political allegiances.

Then Mr. Florio headed north into the state's crowded suburbs, the heart of Mr. Corzine's support.

They went through the outlying district, through the market where in a happier day Jeff had chosen a pair of boots, and into a crowded and dirty suburb.

In New York's crowded suburbs, which have been adding jobs faster than new housing, a house is beyond the means of most people who don't already own one.

He predicted that Re would become just a crowded suburb of La Rochelle.

Seductive country, then, to charm a young London schoolteacher away from the semi-rural but crowded northern suburbs of the capital.

But we don't live in a crowded suburb.

Following this new street, they reached a less crowded suburb of the town, where large dwellings stood in their own gardens.

The bucolic outpost became another crowded suburb, albeit for the rich and famous.