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EDGE_CITY
February 2, 2004
About Joel Garreau's "Edge City" (1991):
FIRST13
The thesis of this book is that there's
a third category between the urban and
the suburban that is ignored or unfairly
reviled: the new commercial centers that
have grown up on the edges around the
old centers of action.
The gushing, laudatory tone of
the book's first chapter is
truly a thing of amazement.
Edge Cities are:
o the new American Frontier;
o the proud continuation of our
tradition of rough and ready
pragmatism;
o the fulfillment of Jefferson's
dreams, and the predictions of
Frank Lloyd Wright.
But check this quotation:
"For my sins I once spent a fair chunk
of a Christmas season in Tysons
Corner, Virgina, stopping people as
they hurried about their holiday
tasks, asking them what they thought
of their brave new world.
The words I recorded were searing.
They described the area as plastic, Disneyland a
a hodgepodge, Disneyland (used as a pejorative?
pejorative), and sterile. They said it How strange.
lacked livability, civilization,
community, neighborhood, and even a soul. (In my circle,
... " they call it
"Mauschwitz".)
"Will we ever be proud of this place? ..."
"Robert Fishman, a Rutgers historian who is
one of the few academics successfully to
examine Edge City, thinks he knows the
answer. 'All new city forms appear in
their early stages to be chaotic,' he
reports. He quotes Charles Dickens on
London in 1848 ..."
But let's stop right there. Well
okay, no one says they like these
places, but as usual those silly
people don't know what they're
talking about, why they even This reminds
complained about the condition of of the "Hey,
Victorian London! that's what
they said
This is the libertarian "just-so" about Son of
story running wild. "The market" Sam!" defense.
has created them, therefore they
*must* be good... the fact that
everyone seems to hate them
doesn't matter:
"They are the culmination of a generation
of individual American value decisions
about the best ways to live, work, and
play -- about how to create 'home.' "
This is a nice expression of
the free market ideal, but
it's connection to the real NOWHERE_TRIP
world isn't established.
NOWHERE_POLICY
The kind of places we've built
in the last 50 years have been
dictated as much by public In Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn"
policy decisions as by BBC series, they spin the Edge City
individual economic choices. as a place built outside of the zoning
restrictions of the core city--
Garreau gushes about how the
economic activity in his Edge I have my doubts about the
Cities now exceeds that in historical accuracy of that.
traditional cities, but then
it's now illegal to build a
tradtional city, isn't it? ILLEGAL_LANDS
Okay, so laughable rhetoric
aside, does Garreau have
anything? This category of
"Edge City" he likes to talk
about, is it a real
phenomena, a real trend,
should we add it to our
mental map of the world?
My current mental map is
that nearly all of us live
in cities: "Suburb" just
means "badly laid out city".
If there's another category
that I've missed (the "young
city" perhaps) then Garreau
has a valuable observation
buried in this polemic.
His definition of an "Edge City"
is that it's a new city with (In his "How Buildings Learn"
oodles of office and retail segment, it sounds like Garreau
space, but little living space. may have decided to drop that
"no living" restriction.)
He also adds that
people "*recognize*"
it as a distinct Ah, and later he admits there are
place... that's an judgment calls here, because "Edge
odd addition to the Cities" are so diffuse...
definition: it's a
different logical Heh, putting a
category from the brave face on
other elements, not a "sprawl" are we?
concretely measurable
stat. Which is it:
recognized or
The wording of it is funny, also: unrecognizable?
"It is perceived by the
population as one place.
It is a regional end The bit about how it
destination for mixed "has it all" is a bit
use-- not a starting much, too. A movie-
point-- that 'has it all,' theater multiplex
from jobs, to shopping, to I'd believe. A punk
entertainment." rock bar would surprise
the hell out of me. NOWHERE_PUNK
This is a really odd notion
of "mixed use": it excludes The funny thing
living space. about "Edge Cities"
is that they've got
no edge.
By the way: how new is new?
He says "less than 30
years old". The work was
published in 1991, so he
was writing in the late Question: would he say
80s. that this is still
happening? Have new Edge
So "edge cities" Cities emerged in the last
started sometime ten years, ones that were
after 1960 or so. founded in 1970?
His definition of when a place
is "recognized" is more than a
little fuzzy... e.g. San Jose
is tentatively regarded as an A bunch of people actually *live*
"Edge City" rather than just an there, too: not a great match for
older place that's seen a lot his edge city concept.
of recent growth.
But then, if you want to
prove that edge cities are
engines of growth, it helps
to have Silicon Valley on (He's also clearly an
your side. east coast dude...
maybe he doesn't
know that much about
San Jose.)
My suspicion is that the
thesis that Edge Cities are
economically productive is The boundaries of
circular because their Edge Cities exclude
definition requires that they the surrounding
be large commercial centers. residential areas,
which might bring down
Edge Cities that the average economic
flop don't count productivity, yes?
as Edge Cities.
You would need to
look at both to
decide if it's a By the same token, I
good idea to build should be looking at
another one. more pre-car cities than
those bi-coastal
favorites, SF & NY...
but those are the two
I'm most familiar with.
I've also taken a glance at
Chicago and Boston, but can't
claim to know much about them.
Someday it'd be interesting
to examine places like
Philadelphia & Pittsburg...
Their reputations aren't
Note: looking around outside as sexy as SF/NY, but if
of the first thirteen pages... new urban doctrine is
correct, their older cores
There's a glossary of developer should be better places
jargon in the back that looks to live than the 'burbs.
good.
(Consider that all
that many people
know about real
cities they learned
Reviewing the reviews: from television.
Maybe it's all
Skimming around the Web, I find the glowing "Hill Street Blues"
commentary about this book (particularly on fault.)
book review sites), is pretty funny... is
this astroturf? Maybe it's just tribalism...
This fellow is the only one I've
found thus far to say what should
be obvious:
[ref]
"Garreau's Edge City ignores the extent
to which government was responsible for
the creation of suburbia over the last
fifty years. He takes the boot-strapping
myth for the truth ..."
And there's a detailed academic
critique, picking holes in
Garreau's definition of an edge city:
[ref]
They make the point that Garreau's By Rob Kling, Spencer Olin,
analysis of the area around Irvine and Mark Poster, written for:
splits up the territory in a funny "Postsuburban California:
way, seeing a "city" there when The Transformation of Postwar
it's by no means clear. Orange County, California" (1995)
They also point out that
Garreau ignores poorer
ethnically oriented places
like Westminster, famous for VIETNAMESE_MUSIC
it's Vietnamese population.
This is the kind of simplification
you make when you focus on commerce
to the exclusion of culture.
Is it a simplification
we want to make?
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