Book Review: Edge City
Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau, published by Doubleday, 1991. (Amazon)
From the very beginning of Washington Post editor Joel Garreau's popular and influential account of the edge city phenomenon, he explains that the book is an act of reporting, not criticism or polemics. This distinction allows the author to present other people's stories -- a la Studs Terkel or Haruki Murakami -- in addition to the presentation of facts that explain the phenomenon. These stories help give the book a personal flavor that make it more understandable to more people. The most interesting aspect of the book is the variety of voices and approaches to what is in effect a homogenous physical thing, the large cities with a great deal of office space and other uses that exist well beyond traditional downtowns.
Garreau covers specific edge cities around Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, and Washington D.C., among others American cities. But rather than using each of these chapters to focus on the peculiarities of each situation, he uses each as a starting point for the widespread conditions of all edge cities. For example, Detroit naturally leads to a discussion of the impact of the automobile, Atlanta deals with race issues, and Phoenix looks at the blurring of public/private distinctions that are typically clear in downtown jurisdictions but not in edge cities. He also discusses Christopher Alexander's alternatives to this condition, notions of progress, technology, shopping, developers, the list goes on. Garreau is most lacking in environmental considerations, thinking that automobiles will always be around, be they powered by gasoline or corn or hydrogen. The subtitle of the book says as much: the edge city condition is a frontier, a stepping stone into the future and continued progress. In the less than twenty years since this book was published, ideas of progress and its relationship to the built and natural environment are increasingly called into question, enough that the continued existence of edge cities is not guaranteed, at least not in its current form.
From the very beginning of Washington Post editor Joel Garreau's popular and influential account of the edge city phenomenon, he explains that the book is an act of reporting, not criticism or polemics. This distinction allows the author to present other people's stories -- a la Studs Terkel or Haruki Murakami -- in addition to the presentation of facts that explain the phenomenon. These stories help give the book a personal flavor that make it more understandable to more people. The most interesting aspect of the book is the variety of voices and approaches to what is in effect a homogenous physical thing, the large cities with a great deal of office space and other uses that exist well beyond traditional downtowns.
Garreau covers specific edge cities around Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, and Washington D.C., among others American cities. But rather than using each of these chapters to focus on the peculiarities of each situation, he uses each as a starting point for the widespread conditions of all edge cities. For example, Detroit naturally leads to a discussion of the impact of the automobile, Atlanta deals with race issues, and Phoenix looks at the blurring of public/private distinctions that are typically clear in downtown jurisdictions but not in edge cities. He also discusses Christopher Alexander's alternatives to this condition, notions of progress, technology, shopping, developers, the list goes on. Garreau is most lacking in environmental considerations, thinking that automobiles will always be around, be they powered by gasoline or corn or hydrogen. The subtitle of the book says as much: the edge city condition is a frontier, a stepping stone into the future and continued progress. In the less than twenty years since this book was published, ideas of progress and its relationship to the built and natural environment are increasingly called into question, enough that the continued existence of edge cities is not guaranteed, at least not in its current form.
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