edge city

A modern, suburban area that acts as a central business district, since it contains lots of office buildings & jobs, malls & shopping centers, cultural and entertainment offerings, and major transportation corridors. The term was coined by Joel Garreau in his 1990 book of the same name.

Edge city examples include Schaumburg IL, Buckhead GA, Tysons Corner VA, Bloomington MN, Arlington TX, Plano TX, The Woodlands TX, Southfield MI, Bridgewater NJ, Rye-Purchase NY, Framingham MA, Bellevue WA, Silicon Valley CA, Aurora CO, Anaheim CA, Ontario CA, Glendale AZ, King of Prussia PA, Maryland Heights MO, Gaithersburg MD, etc.

edge city by acb February 21, 2007

Edge City

1)A book written in 1991 by Joel Garreau

2)A "Suburb" with a large commercial district that takes on the identity of the metropolitan center, along with all others within a particular MSA/CMSA

3)A place which is dependent on the automobile, usually growing up around a mall, freeway exit, and several office parks

4)A place which often was nothing but forest and or farmland prior to 1965, or at most a small town

5)A place where there are often surface parking lots as far as the eye can see

6)The setting of the 1994 Jim Carey box office feature presentation "The Mask." A city plagued by crime and pollution

7)A nationally-syndicated comic strip created by Terry and Patty LeBan about a Jewish American family "juggling relationships, careers and traditions at the fast pace of modern life"

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 non-motorized 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.

-Fom a certain popular online encyclopedia which anyone can edit

Edge City by Miskatonic Jack 2 January 14, 2011