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What is an Edge City?
Edge Cities are large, diverse, information-age cities that emerged within the last 20 to 30 years as the standard fonn of American urban place. They function similarly to the old traditional downtown centers with jobs, shopping, entertainment, services, and housing. Unlike the old downtowns, Edge Cities can be physically strange to look at - physically sprawling and even chaotic. They rarely follow any political boundaries. Edge Cities are typically defined as job cores that:
- primarily feature commercial office buildings - the factories of the information age;
- were where most of the commercial office and retail development occuffed during the real estate boom of the 1970s and 1980s;
- are not suburbs or sub-anything; they rose as urban cores from what 30 years ago was considered to be "the suburbs" - what used to be nothing but residential areas outside the old downtowns;
- are numerous - there are almost five times as many Edge Cities as there are downtowns of comparable size.
- are huge - each is approximately equal to or larger than downtown Orlando;
- have a population base that is dominated by white collar workers;
- offer an urbane variety of goods and services as well as entertainment and restaurants;
- are perceived as one place, an end destination for mixed use no matter how sprawling they may appear; and
- rarely have a formal, political government with mayors or city councils.
Edge Cities were shaped by Americans' search for quality of life, economic advantage and time savings. Major catalysts in the growth of Edge Cities included computers, women entering the work force, highways, airports, and an expansion in real estate financing sources.
The Edge CityTM Ventures, Inc. defined the geographies for the Edge Cities and the downtowns to which they are related in 34 metropolitan areas by aggregating the job centers and relevant contiguous areas in each Edge City and downtown. This database is the first apples to apples comparison of Edge Cities and related downtowns.
The Edge Cities in the database were primarily those listed in Joel Garreau's book, "Edge City: Life on the New Frontier", published by Doubleday in 1991. Additional Edge Cities will be added to the emerging lists as they evolve. Edge Cities are defined as having a minimum of 24,000 jobs. An emerging Edge City has between 14,000 and 24,000 jobs.
