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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 Reminds one of
complained about the condition 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 world NOWHERE_TRIP
isn't established. The kind of NOWHERE_POLICY
places we've built in the last
50 years have been dictated as
much by public policy decisions
as by individual economic
choices.
((a candidate for
Garreau gushes about how the another node:))
economic activity in his Edge
Cities now exceeds that in
traditional cities, but isn't Going by rents and housing
it possible that this is prices, places like New York and
because it's now illegal to San Francisco would seem to meet
build a traditional city? with the approval of many
people.
Okay, so laughable rhetoric They're in high demand, so the
aside, does Garreau have market should supply *more* of
anything? This category of them, right?
"Edge City" he likes to talk
about, is it a real But it can't: the buildings
phenomena, a real trend, there are too close together
should we add it to our for code; the businesses
mental map of the world? that exist there couldn't be
created now without the
My current mental map is legally demanded acres of parking.
that nearly all of us live
in cities: "Suburb" just The cities of our grandfather's
means "badly laid out city". era can only exist where they've
been grandfathered in.
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 Edge City
is that it's a new city with
oodles of office and retail
space, but little living
space.
He also adds that people
*recognize* it as a distinct
place... a funny addition to
the definition: it's a
different logical category,
not a concretely measurable
stat.
(Ah, and later he admits there are
judgment calls here, because "Edge
Cities" are so diffuse... heh,
putting a brave face on "sprawl"
are we?).
The wording of it is funny, also:
"It is perceived by the population
as one place. It is a regional
end destination for mixed use --
not a starting point -- that 'has
it all,' from jobs, to shopping, The bit about how it "has it all"
to entertainment." is a bit much, too. A
movie-theater multiplex I'd
This is a really odd notion believe. A punk rock bar would
of "mixed use": it excludes surprise the hell out of me.
living space.
NOWHERE_PUNK
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 "Edge City" rather
than just an older place that's seen a lot of
recent growth. (A bunch of people actually
*live* there, too: not a great match for
his edge city concept.)
I bet it's because he wants
to prove that edge cities are
engines of growth, so it (He's also clearly an
helps to have Silicon Valley east coast dude...
on his side. 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 helps bump up
Edge Cities that the average economic
flop don't count as productivity, yes?
Edge Cities.
But wouldn't you need to look at
both if you're trying to decide
if it's a good idea to build By the same token, I
another Edge City? should be looking at
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's be interesting
to take a close look at 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
((add a quote sometime)) that many people
know about real
cities they learned
Reviewing the reviews: from 80s 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:
http://www.johnmccrory.com/articles/article.asp?this=129
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:
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/faculty/kling/pubs/postedge.html
He makes the point that Garreau's analysis of
the area around Irvine splits up the
territory in a funny way, seeing a "city" there
when it's by no means clear.
He also mentions that Garreau ignores poorer
ethnically oriented places like Westminster VIETNAMESE_MUSIC
(famous for 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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