Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
WordNet
n. building complex in a continuous row along a road
Wikipedia
Ribbon development is building houses along the routes of communications radiating from a human settlement. Such development generated great concern in the United Kingdom during the 1920s and the 1930s as well as in numerous other countries.
Increasing motor car ownership meant that houses could be sold easily even if they were remote from shops and other services. It was attractive to developers because they did not have to waste money or plot space constructing roads.
The practice became seen as inefficient use of resources and a precursor to urban sprawl, so a key aim for the United Kingdom's post-war planning system was to halt ribbon development. It led to the introduction of green belt policies.
Usage examples of "ribbon development".
She could see the Nile, and the ribbon development along it, surrounded by the baked-hard surface of the desert.
Suburbia started about fifteen miles from the airport, mainly ribbon development on either side of the Beltway--very neat wooden and brick houses, many still under construction.
More or less following the A3 with the strips of ribbon development getting longer and uglier as they neared London.
Wone tabard, wine tap and warm tavern 5 and, by ribbon development, from contact bridge to lease lapse, only two millium two humbered and eighty thausig nine humbered and sixty radiolumin lines to the wustworts of a Finntown's generous poet's office.