Sure is a lot of development LT. As Memory said, new housing complexes are going up - townhouses with lightweight construction. That's why these townhouse developments, although sometimes nice always spread easily to the expousures. There are also new commercial strip malls going up as well, they'll take down some wooded area and build a few stores and boom. Usually they'll add a small, horribly thought out parking lot as well. Of course more traffic.
As for uninhabitable, most of the west shore of the island is the Fresh Kills landfill, complete with creeks and tributaries. So that's not really easy to build upon.