Edge city

This article is about the city-planning concept. For other uses, see Edge City (disambiguation).
Aerial view of Bellevue, Washington, a typical edge city with a large amount of office and retail space
La Défense, an edge city of Paris
The Rosslyn–Ballston corridor in Arlington County near Washington, D.C.
Century City, an edge city of Los Angeles
Zona Río, 1980s master-planned edge city and largest commercial district in Tijuana, Mexico
Dadeland is sometimes referred to as "downtown Kendall", despite the fact that Kendall is part of unincorporated Miami-Dade County. A special zoning area allowed high rise development in the area consisting mostly of single family homes.

An edge city is a concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional downtown or central business district, in what had previously been a suburban, residential or rural area. The term was popularized by the 1991 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau, who established its current meaning while working as a reporter for The Washington Post. Garreau argues that the edge city has become the standard form of urban growth worldwide, representing a 20th-century urban form unlike that of the 19th-century central downtown. Other terms for these areas include suburban activity centers, megacenters, and suburban business districts.[1] These districts have now developed in many countries.

  1. ^ Dunphy 1999, p. 573.