Edge Cities

Edge city is a term coined by journalist Joel Garreau. He defined edge cities as suburban areas that could boast of at least 5 million square feet of leasable office space, 600,000 square feet of leasable retail space, and more jobs than residents. Edge cities were the exact opposite of the traditional commuter suburb, a place where one slept but did not work. They were not somnolent retreats from the commercial activity of the central city but centers of shopping, employment, and entertainment along the metropolitan fringe. During the 1970s and 1980s, these outlying business hubs developed to the point where they rivaled all but the largest central-city downtowns.

Although the phenomenon was evident throughout the United States by the close of the 20th century, edge cities differed in their origin and configuration. Many developed around suburban shopping malls. For example, the success of regional malls spawned office, hotel, and additional retail development in Tysons Corners outside of Washington, D.C., the Galleria area on the west side of Houston, King of Prussia west of Philadelphia, and the Schaumburg area northwest of Chicago. With eight department-store anchors and approximately 300 shops, South Coast Plaza in Orange County, California, quickly became the focus of hotel, office, and apartment construction. Reflecting the significance of the mall in edge city life, Orange County built its 3,000-seat, $73-million performing arts center adjacent to South Coast Plaza. A few edge cities arose in older suburban downtowns. Within a few decades, the once-quiet core of the elite St. Louis suburb of Clayton sprouted office towers housing thousands of white-collar [Page 235]workers. Still other edge cities sprawled along free-ways, forming corridors of commerce. In Montgomery County, Maryland, northwest of Washington, D.C., a business corridor extended for 20 miles along I-270. South of Minneapolis, businesses lined the 7-mile stretch of the I-494 beltway between suburban Bloomington and Edina.

Virtually everywhere, expressway access was vital to edge city growth, and major interchanges were magnets for massive commercial development. In the Atlanta region, the Perimeter Center edge city grew around the intersection of Georgia 400 and the I-285 beltway. To the west, the Cumberland/Galleria business district arose near the interchange of I-75 and I-285.

By the late 1980s, these freshly minted business behemoths had transformed the commercial geography of the nation. In 1988, 16 million square feet of commercial office space clustered in the Perimeter Center area as compared to only 13 million square feet in Atlanta's downtown. As early as 1986, the Costa Mesa–Irvine–Newport Beach area, with 21.1 million square feet of office space, ranked as California's third largest business district, surpassed only by the downtowns of Los Angeles and San Francisco. By the late 1980s, the edge city of Southfield, Michigan could claim 20 million square feet of office space, more than existed in downtown Detroit. A city of 78,000 residents, Southfield at the beginning of the 21st century boasted a daytime population of almost 175,000.

Moreover, the central-city downtown no longer had a monopoly on high-rise office towers. Transco Tower soared 64 floors over Houston's Galleria edge city, Perimeter Center included a 31-story high-rise, and the equally tall Oakbrook Terrace Tower was the pre-eminent landmark of the Chicago area's Oak Brook district, an edge city hub that also housed the corporate headquarters of fast-food giant McDonalds. A 32-story office building and 33-story apartment tower soared over Southfield, advertising to freeway travelers that the once-stereotypical suburb had evolved into an edge city.

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