Edge City is an American term for a relatively new concentration of business, shopping and entertainment outside a traditional urban area, in what had recently been a residential suburb or semi-rural community. The term Edge City was first seen in Tom Wolfe's novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). However, the term was popularized in a 1991 book of that title by American writer Joel Garreau, who established its current meaning while working as a reporter for the Washington Post. Garreau argues that the edge city has become the standard form of urban growth worldwide, representing a 20th-century urban form, as distinct from the 19th-century version of the central downtown. Other terms for the phenomenon include suburban activity centers, megacenters, and suburban business districts (Dunphy). Crowded Shibuya, Tokyo shopping district An urban area is an area with an increased density of human-created structures in comparison to the areas surrounding it. ... Housing subdivision near Union, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. ... Sign in a rural area in Dalarna, Sweden Qichun, a rural town in Hubei province, China An artists rendering of an aerial view of the Maryland countryside: Jane Frank (Jane Schenthal Frank, 1918-1986), Aerial Series: Ploughed Fields, Maryland, 1974, acrylic and mixed materials on apertured double canvas, 52... Thomas Kennerly Wolfe (born March 2, 1931 in Richmond, Virginia), known as Tom Wolfe, is a best-selling American author and journalist. ... The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a literary journalism novel written by Tom Wolfe early in his career in 1968. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the 1968 Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the 1991 Gregorian calendar). ... Joel Garreau (born 1948) is a journalist and author. ... A Female Reporter A reporter is a type of journalist who researches and presents information in certain types of mass media. ... ... It has been suggested that Survey of the twentieth century, The 20th century in review be merged into this article or section. ... For the periodical, see Nineteenth Century (periodical). ...

Definitions

Garreau established five rules for a place to be considered an edge city:

• It must have more than five million square feet (465,000 m²) of office space. This is enough to house between 20,000 and 50,000 office workers, as many as some traditional downtowns.
• It must have more than 600,000 square feet (56,000 m²) of retail space, the size of a medium shopping mall. This ensures that the edge city is a center of recreation and commerce as well as office work.
• It must be characterized by more jobs than bedrooms.
• It must be perceived by the population as one place.
• It must have been nothing like a city 30 years earlier. Since Garreau wrote in the early 1990s, a statement better suited for the 2000s is that it must have been nothing like a city in 1960.

Most edge cities develop at or near existing or planned freeway intersections, and are especially likely to develop near major airports. They rarely include heavy industry. They often are not separate legal entities but are governed as part of surrounding counties (this is more often the case in the East than in the Midwest, South, or West). They are numerous -- almost 200 in the United States, compared to 45 downtowns of comparable size -- and are large geographically because they are built at automobile scale. For specific systems, such as the Autobahns of Germany, see list of highway systems with full control of access and no cross traffic. ... Heavy industry does not have a single fixed meaning compared to light industry. ... Karl Benzs Velo model (1894) - entered into the first automobile race An automobile (or motorcar; often simply car; also auto, motor) is a wheeled passenger vehicle that carries its own motor. ...

Spatially, edge cities primarily consist of mid-rise office towers (with some skyscrapers) surrounded by massive surface parking lots and meticulously manicured lawns, almost reminiscent of the designs of Le Corbusier. Instead of a traditional street grid, their street networks are hierarchical, consisting of winding parkways (often lacking sidewalks) that feed into arterial roads or freeway ramps. However, edge cities are of similar job density to the secondary downtowns found in places such as Newark and Pasadena; indeed, Garreau writes that edge cities' development proves that "density is back." This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, who chose to be known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a Swiss and later French, (Swiss-born) architect and writer, who is famous for his contributions to what now is called Modern Architecture. ... A street hierarchy is a system of urban design that completely separates through automobile traffic from developed areas. ... An arterial road is a high-capacity road which is just below a highway level of service. ... Nickname: Map of Newark in Essex County County Essex Founded/Incorporated 1666/1836 Government  - Mayor Cory Booker, term of office 2006–2010 Area [1]  - City 67. ... Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. ...

History

The edge city as Garreau describes it is fundamentally impossible without the automobile. It was not until automobile ownership surged in the 1950s, after four decades of fast steady growth, that the edge city became truly possible. Whereas virtually every American central business district (CBD) or secondary downtown that developed around nonmotorized transportation or the streetcar has a pedestrian-friendly grid pattern of relatively narrow streets, most edge cities instead have a hierarchical street arrangement centered around pedestrian-hostile arterial roads. This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... a historic postcard showing electric trolley-powered streetcars in Richmond, Virginia, where Frank J. Sprague successfully demonstrated his new system on the hills in 1888 A streetcar is a railway vehicle designed to carry passengers on tracks, usually laid in city streets. ... A street hierarchy is a system of urban design that completely separates through automobile traffic from developed areas. ... An arterial road is a high-capacity road which is just below a highway level of service. ...

Perhaps the first edge city was Detroit's New Center, developed in the 1920s. Located three miles north of the city's downtown, it has since been annexed by the city proper. New Center and the Miracle Mile section of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles are considered the earliest automobile-oriented urban forms, although built with radically different purposes in mind (New Center as an office park, the Miracle Mile as a retail strip). Garreau's classic example of an edge city is the information technology center, Tysons Corner, Virginia, west of Washington, D.C. As recently as the end of World War II, it was a country crossroads, but it now has more office space than downtown Atlanta, Georgia. Nickname: Motto: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (Latin for, We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes) Location in Wayne County, Michigan Coordinates: , Country United States State Michigan County Wayne County Founded 1701 Incorporation 1806 Government  - Type Strong Mayor-Council  - Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick Area  - City  143. ... The New Center is a commercial district of Detroit, Michigan located approximately three miles (4. ... The 1920s is a decade that is sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, usually applied to America. ... The Miracle Mile The Miracle Mile is lined by many high-rise buildings. ... Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile District, looking east toward Downtown Los Angeles Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, looking east toward the Millionaires Mile Wilshire Boulevard is one of the principal east-west arterial roads in Los Angeles, California. ... Nickname: Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates: , State California County Los Angeles County Settled 1781 Incorporated April 4, 1850 Government  - Type Mayor-Council  - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa  - City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo  - Governing body City Council Area  - City  498. ... Information and communication technology spending in 2005 Information Technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) is: the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware. ... Tysons Corner is an unincorporated place located in Fairfax County, Virginia, near Washington, DC. Recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau as a census-designated place, the community had a total population of 18,540 as of the 2000 census. ... An office is a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an organisation with specific duties attached to it (see officer, office-holder, official); the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one... Hotlanta redirects here. ...

Edge cities planned around freeway intersections have a history of suffering severe traffic problems if one of these freeways goes unbuilt. In particular, Century City, a pioneering edge city built on former 20th Century Fox backlot in western Los Angeles, was built in mind of connections to both a citywide light rail or monorail system and the planned Beverly Hills Freeway. Neither project ever came to fruition, resulting in massive congestion on the surface streets connecting Century City to the San Diego (I-405) and Santa Monica (I-10) freeways, each two miles distant. Recent calls by Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for construction of a Wilshire Boulevard extension of the Purple Line subway have led many transportation planners and Century City occupants and neighbors to call for a southerly routing of the extension that would pass by Century City on its northern leg. View of the Century City skyline from the Getty Center. ... Twentieth (20th) Century Fox Film Corporation (known from 1935 to 1985 as Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation) is one of the six major American film studios. ... Nickname: Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates: , State California County Los Angeles County Settled 1781 Incorporated April 4, 1850 Government  - Type Mayor-Council  - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa  - City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo  - Governing body City Council Area  - City  498. ... This article is about light rail systems in general. ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ... The Beverly Hills Freeway was the name for a never-built freeway intended to link the Los Angeles districts of Westwood and Echo Park along the route of Santa Monica Boulevard. ... The San Diego Freeway; the Interstate 405 segment is highlighted in red, the Interstate 5 segment is highlighted in blue. ... Interstate 405, colloquially referred to as The 405 (the four-oh-five), is one of the principal north-south highways in Southern California, and the major bypass of I-5 running through Southern California. ... Interstate 10; the Santa Monica Freeway segment is highlighted in red and the San Bernardino Freeway is highlighted in blue. ... Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Interstate 10 Interstate 10 (abbreviated I-10) is the southernmost east-west, coast-to-coast interstate highway in the United States. ... Antonio Ramon Villaraigosa (born Antonio (Tony) Ramon Villar, Jr. ... Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile District, looking east toward Downtown Los Angeles Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, looking east toward the Millionaires Mile Wilshire Boulevard is one of the principal east-west arterial roads in Los Angeles, California. ... Metro rail lines on the Westside of Los Angeles including lines under construction and the Purple Line including extension to Fairfax Avenue The Purple Line is the vestige of the Red Line subway which was originally envisioned running from Union Station along Wilshire to Santa Monica. ...

The Future of Edge Cities

Writing for Fannie Mae, Lang and Lefurgy (2003) note that edge cities may turn out to have been a 20th-century phenomenon only because of their limitations. The residents of the low-density housing areas around them tend to be fiercely resistant to their outward expansion (as has been the case in Tyson's Corner and Century City), but because their internal road networks are severely limited in capacity, densification is far more difficult than in the traditional grid network that characterizes traditional CBDs and secondary downtowns. As a result, construction of medium- and high-density housing in edge cities ranges from difficult to impossible. Because most are built at automobile scale, mass transit frequently cannot serve them well. Pedestrian access to and circulation within an edge city is impractical if not impossible, even if residences are nearby. The authors conclude grimly that revitalization of edge cities may be "the major urban renewal project of the 21st century." An example of this can be seen in France, where in a reversal of American cities, the city is high-scale and the suburbs are the slums. The United States Federal Government created the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) (NYSE: FNM), commonly known as Fannie Mae, in 1938 to establish a secondary market for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). ... 1999 photograph looking northeast on Chicagos now demolished Cabrini-Green housing project, one of many urban renewal efforts. ... Illustration of the backyards of a surburban neighbourhood Suburbs are inhabited districts located either on the outer rim of a city or outside the official limits of a city (the term varies from country to country), or the outer elements of a conurbation. ...

Despite the lessons of the American experience, in rapidly developing countries such as China and India and the United Arab Emirates, the edge city is quickly emerging as an important new development form as automobile ownership skyrockets and marginal land is bulldozed for development. The outskirts of Bangalore, for example, are increasingly replete with mid-rise mirrored-glass office towers set amid lush gardens and sprawling parking lots where many foreign companies deciding have set up shop. Dubai offers also another recent example. , Bangalore (to be renamed as BengalÅ«ru) (Kannada: ; pronunciation: in Kannada and in English) is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. ... Coordinates: , Emirate Dubai Government  - Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Area [1]  - Metro 4,114 km² (1,588. ...

Criticisms

Garreau has been criticized by numerous urban planning scholars for the ambiguity of his definitions. One common accusation is that an edge city only qualifies at the wishes of Garreau.^{[citation needed]} Urban planning is concerned with the ordering and design of settlements, from the smallest towns to the worlds largest cities. ...

List of edge cities, by urban area

Main article: List of edge cities

:This is a list of edge cities by urban area. ...

See also

• Bedroom community
• Boomburbs

Commuters waiting for the morning train in Maplewood, New Jersey A bedroom community, dormitory town, or commuter town is a community that is primarily residential in character, with most of its workers commuting to a nearby town or city to earn their livelihood. ... Boomburb is a neologism for a large, rapidly growing suburban city that remains essentially suburban in character even as it reaches populations more typical of urban core cities. ...

References

• Dunphy, Robert T., "Activity Centers" in Transportation Planning Handbook, John D. Edwards, editor, Institution of Transportation Engineers, 1999, p. 573.

• Lang, Robert and LeFurgy, Jennifer (2003). "Edgeless Cities: Examining the Noncentered Metropolis." Housing Policy Debate 14:3, pp 427-460.

External links

• Garreau's web site with searchable text of the book
• John McCrory, The Edge City Fallacy: New Urban Form or Same Old Megalopolis?.
• Joel Garreau' vision of the future of edge cities, Edgier Cities