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MEMORANDUM TO: Professor McFarland

DATE: March 24, 2015

FROM: Zachary Hicks

SUBJECT: Critical Book Review for Edge Cities by Joel Garreau

Introduction

Edge Cities is a non-fiction book written in 1991 in the form of an essay that documents

the rise of automobile-friendly urban centers located near airports and/or freeway

interchanges. Author Joel Garreau noticed how areas that were farmland in the 1950s and

1960s are now occupied by at least 5 million square feet of retail and 600,000 square feet of

leasable retail space. This phenomenon became known as “edge cities” or “suburban activity

centers”. Edge cities are often in unincorporated areas, and are frequently referred to by a

single name. The daytime population of an edge city is much greater than the nighttime

population due to a miniscule or non-existent residential population.1 Garreau cited Tysons

Corner, VA as the pre-eminent example of an edge city. Immediately after World War II, Tysons

Corner was quiet a rural corner featuring a lone gas station. By the 1980s, it was sprawling

urban district featuring towering office buildings and two large regional malls.2

Garreau compared edge cities to secondary downtowns. Secondary downtowns are

downtown districts that retain street grids, utilize mass transit, and have significant residential

populations, but remain secondary to the central business district of a metropolitan area.

Secondary downtowns are often downtowns in large suburbs or in cities that were absorbed

1 pp. 6-7 2 Personal site visit, as well as photos in inset of Edge Cities

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into a larger city’s metropolitan area. The example of a secondary downtown that Garreau cited

was Downtown Newark, which is 14 miles southwest of Midtown Manhattan.3 While edge cities

emerged as an automobile-oriented alternative to the traditional downtown, many edge cities

– particularly in the Baltimore-Washington region – are currently being redeveloped with new

residential options, updated street grids, and improved accessibility to mass transit. Edge cities,

as defined by Garreau, are slowly evolving into secondary downtowns because of new

residential construction and the addition of mass transit connections.

Summary

Joel Garreau was a journalist for the Washington Post who noticed that due to

Washington, DC’s strict building height restriction, unincorporated communities in the region

located near major freeway interchanges such as Reston, Tysons Corner, and Bethesda were

emerging as high-density urban districts with office buildings and shopping malls. Many of

these edge cities were rural as recently as the 1970s. As the Washington, DC region expanded,

additional edge cities were constructed along the fringes of the metropolitan such as

Gainesville, Bowie, Leesburg, and Chantilly. Garreau would classify edge cities into three

categories explaining the function and origin of each edge city. A boomer was developed

incrementally around a shopping mall or an interchange. A greenfield is a master-planned town

that is generally on the suburban fringe. Finally, an uptown is a historic activity center built over

an older city or town. For example, in the Baltimore area, White Marsh was developed as a

boomer, Columbia was developed a greenfield, and Towson was developed as an uptown.4

3 Google Maps 4 pp. 113-114

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Columbia and Towson now share many characteristics with traditional secondary downtowns,

and thus no longer match the exact definition of an edge city.

Joel Garreau wrote this book from a journalistic perspective – he was adamant that he

was a reporter, not a critic.5 Instead of observing and analyzing data as an urban geographer

would have done, he relied almost exclusively on site visits and interviews with subjects from

across the country. Garreau spent over a decade conducting research and writing for Edge

Cities.6 While Garreau personally expressed both skepticism7 and awe8 towards the

development of edge cities in the suburbs, he maintained a neutral perspective in his narrative.

Edge Cities is divided into sections that describe edge cities in different metropolitan

areas. For example, Chapter 4 chronicles edge cities in the automobile-dominated Detroit –

Windsor metropolitan area, while Chapter 9 describes edge cities in the geographically-

constricted and geologically-constricted San Francisco Bay region. Each chapter features

interviews with real people in each of the metropolitan areas he focused on. Developers,

business moguls, and employees all discuss why they believe that edge cities are revolutionizing

the way Americans work and shop.

Evaluation of Edge Cities

It appears that Edge Cities is the first major publication on “suburban activity centers”.

Joel Garreau’s journalism background is highly effective in explaining to a layperson his

5 p. xx 6 p. xx 7 pp. 8-9 8 p. 14

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argument that edge cities are an American way of adapting to rapid suburbanization, although

many of his subjects fail to remain subjective while critiquing edge cities . Garreau excels at

interviewing witnesses to the explosive growth found in edge cities, and has an uncanny ability

to find an eclectic group of people, ranging from those who have profited off of the growth of

edge cities to those who work in an edge city. Garreau lets his interview subjects speak without

much guidance, and thus the bias of many of his interview subjects is not neutralized. His

subjects view edge cities in black and white terms, and frequently fail to analyze edge cities

objectively. Although his subjects can be lacking in substance, his ability to use statistics

reflecting distributions of office space in the United States when applicable makes up for any

flaws with his interviewing method. His background in journalism allows his message to be

constructed much stronger than a traditional academic paper. Garreau excels at explaining

common terms associated with edge cities and using maps to show the locations of edge cities

and (as of 1991) emerging edge cities, breaking it down so anyone can understand in complete

detail what an edge city is and how it functions.

Joel Garreau interviewed people from academic backgrounds, although his subjects

were not experts in the development of edge cities from real estate or planning perspectives. In

Chapter 3, he interviewed David L. Birch, the director of MIT’s Program on Corporate Change

and Job Creation.9 Birch explained growth in a metropolitan area and how it correlated with

entrepreneurial innovation. Fortune 500 companies first moved to edge cities to be closer to

their clients, most of whom lived in the suburbs. It was the small and medium-sized firms

9 pp. 75-79

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catering to these Fortune 500 companies that caused edge cities to expand, claimed Birch.

While this satisfies the reader’s desire to understand how firms are being attracted to edge

cities, it fails to explain the theoretical aspects of developing edge cities. In order to further

bolster his argument, I would have recommended using more professors from relevant fields,

such as urban planning and real estate, as interview subjects.

Edge Cities is a work that is only interesting to people in niche fields. I was lucky enough

to have read this in my Urban Geography course at the University of Akron. Although I found

this book to be on a topic that few people outside of the University of Akron’s Department of

Geography and Planning would have an interest in, I found it to be entertaining and

informative. I found it difficult to set down my book – Garreau’s ability to relate developers’

desires and the wants and needs of a businessman to the overall picture of how edge cities

function is his greatest asset.

When I first read Edge Cities back in 2009, it opened me up to the world of edge cities. It

explained how the edge cities surrounding me back in Northeast Ohio such as Beachwood,

Independence, Montrose/Fairlawn, and Belden Village rose to prominence. In the case of

Belden Village, the edge city had become even more important to the vitality of the

metropolitan area than the central business district, Downtown Canton.10 While I had noticed

that shopping malls and office buildings were clustered around major interchanges, I was

unable to understand why or how. After reading Edge Cities, I then understood that edge cities

are urban districts in the suburbs that cater to suburbanites. As important as the central

10 Personal experience living in Northeast Ohio for 25 years

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business districts of Cleveland or Akron were in the 1950s for shopping and commerce, edge

cities such as Beachwood and Montrose/Fairlawn were now serving those functions in the

2000s.

A central argument to Edge Cities is that the rise of suburban activity centers proves

that “density is back”. It can similarly be argued that density has always been admirable and

present. The growth of edge cities has been fueled by suburbanization and an inability for

central business districts to expand horizontally. Instead of basing one of its top-performing

Japanese hypermarket locations in Manhattan, Yaohan Plaza ended up building a hypermarket

across the Hudson River11 in the edge city of Fort Lee, NJ. The spokesman for the Fort Lee, NJ

location of Yaohan Plaza, Hiroaki Kawai, noted: “In old downtowns it is very difficult to find

enough space for us. So we go out to new towns, where there is plenty of space.”12 The reason

for high densities in edge cities can be directly attributed to property values. My Urban

Geography professor, Jon Moore, explained during this course that property values are higher

closer to the central business district and lower in the urban periphery, where many edge cities

are located. It costs less to build a 20-story skyscraper in the suburbs near a major interchange

than it costs to build a 20-story skyscraper in the central business district. There is also no

requirement to build expensive parking decks, since there is more available land for expansive

parking lots in the suburbs. Thus, there is an added incentive for a developer to build in edge

cities.

11 Google Maps 12 pp. 22-23

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Edge cities are very likely unable to continue growing horizontally due to resistance

from surrounding suburban neighborhoods. For example, Tysons Corner is surrounded to the

north and east by Virginia State Route 267, to the south by Scott Run and subdivisions in

Pimmit Hills, VA, and to the west by subdivisions in Vienna, VA.13 In this area of Fairfax County,

homeowner associations are highly influential in local politics. Given the enormous political

clout of Vienna and Pimmit Hills’s many homeowner associations, Tysons Corner is very likely

confined to its current boundaries. It will have to grow vertically, and the Fairfax County

Department of Planning and Zoning has plans to allow Tysons Corner to grow vertically around

the area’s four recently-constructed Metrorail stations.14 By 2050, Tysons Corner is envisioned

to be home to 100,000 residents and 200,000 jobs in a walkable, sustainable environment.

Further to the east down Metrorail’s Silver Line, the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor of Arlington, VA

has already become a mixed-use, walkable, and sustainable community. The corridor currently

has 26 million square feet of office space and retail, as well as 30,000 residential units – all in a

corridor that, if found in a suburb with typical density patterns, would span 14 miles.15 This

shows that many edge cities are in the process of transitioning from suburban activity centers

to more traditional urban districts.

Conclusion

After reading Edge Cities, I was impressed by Joel Garreau’s offering. Even though

Garreau had no urban planning or real estate development background, he may have

13 Google Maps 14 http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/tysons/ 15 http://projects.arlingtonva.us/planning/smart-growth/rosslyn-ballston-corridor/

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inadvertently published the seminal urban geography work of our time. His ability to find

connections between suburbia and density – and be the first to do so – has made an impact on

planning officials, urban geographers, and developers alike. While I was able to find flaws with

some of his arguments, particularly the view that density had somehow become irrelevant for

an extended period, his ability to interview witnesses and collect information has rarely been

seen in the fields of urban planning and real estate development, if ever. Joel Garreau’s thesis

that edge cities are an American answer to runaway suburbanization was well defended.

I had the impression that while edge cities are important to how a metropolitan area

functions, edge cities in their present form are unsustainable. Planning agencies and even

developers are starting to realize the need for mass trans it improvements in the suburbs, and

the first place to start is where suburbanites work and shop. Developers and planners

understand that as investment returns to central business districts , edge cities need to add

housing units and drastically improve mass transit in order to compete with central business

districts. Functionally, this will make edge cities become more like secondary downtowns in

metropolitan areas. While Garreau did not foresee back in 1991 how Millennials would return

to the same urbanized areas that their parents and grandparents abandoned,16 Garreau

eloquently made the case that edge cities are here to stay, and will adapt if needed.

16 http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/25100/watch-the-region-get-older-as-young-people-cluster-around-

stuff-to-do/