Megapolis Unbond

Jim and Delores Bach live in a redwood contemporary in West Nyack, N.Y., about 25 miles north of Manhattan. Twenty years ago, their cul de sac was an apple orchard, and today two gnarled old trees on the front lawn still hold up their fruit to the early autumn sun.

This morning two of the Bach children will board buses to school and Delores will drive young Alex to a day-care center in nearby Nanuet. Then she will drive 20 minutes down the Garden State Parkway to her job at a medical laboratory in Montvale, N.J. Her husband, meanwhile, will be on the New York State Thruway, headed east over the Hudson River on the Tappan Zee Bridge to his job with IBM in Westchester County.