IN the late 1980s, an elderly blind widow in Arlington frustrated the city's plans for a grand shopping mall. She refused to surrender the small plot of land where she had lived for decades, choosing to live out her days in the familiar surroundings of her wood-frame house. The mall was built around her property, her faded white home jutting into its parking lot. She held out for years. After she died, developers bought the property and paved it over, melding it into the glaring sameness of suburban retail like the last reluctant piece of a jigsaw puzzle. In light...