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Title: Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau ISBN: 0-385-42434-5 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 October, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.89 (9 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Why suburban sprawl is inevitable - say goodbye to downtown
Comment: Although this book is over a decade old, it is still a classic on why suburban sprawl is unstoppable, and why those trying to recreate 1920s-style downtowns are doomed to failure. The author is somewhat sympathetic to new urbanists, preservationists, and advocates of mass transit, but he believes that they're overlooking some basic facts: First, Americans will always be motorists. Even if oil becomes expensive, alternative fuels will arise and the car will always be ubiquitous. No one really wants to stand in the pouring rain to board a bus filled with smelly street people and other lowlifes. Second, Americans refuse to walk more than 600 feet, not coincidentally the distance between anchor stores in a large mall. Garreau laments how sterile suburbia has become but argues it is impossible to turn the clock back to the heyday of the American downtown.
There is at least a chapter on each of New Jersey, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, Phoenix, Texas, LA, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. There are only 2 photos and 10 maps; more illustrations would have helped. Over 70 pages cover the conflict between preservationists and a developer named Til Hazel regarding the Manassas (Va.) battlefield. The developer is portrayed, not as an unethical monster, but as a salt-of-the-earth entrepreneur who is genuinely mystified why people would be against progress, and mystified why people romanticize past eras in which the standard of living was so dismal
The greatest flaw is the author's wordiness. Time and time again, he bludgeons the reader with repetition and paraphrases, to make sure no one misses his point. It's as though his motto is never to use one sentence when five will do. There is not enough brevity, and he tends to repeat himself (like I am doing right now - isn't it irritating?).
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Book for Thought and Discussion
Comment: I first bought this book back when it first came out in 1992. I've lent it out to numerous friends and acquaintances over the following years and it always provoked good discussions about what's important in how people make decisions about where they live and how location does and doesn't affect the fabric of your life.
Edge City looks at how suburbs are no longer just residential areas whose populations commute to the city to work and play, but have emerged as centers of employment and commerce in their own right. This will be familiar to anyone who has commuted down to a job in the quintessentially "Edge City" Silicon Valley. Each chapter looks at a different edge city and uses it to examine some of the issues that have cropped up in what Garreau argues is a new way of life. Although the subject urban planning could be a pretty slow read, Garreua's training as a journalist shows and his prose make an easy and enjoyable read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Optimistic about an uncertain future?
Comment: Joel Garreau is a good story teller about life on the new suburban frontier. His writing style reminds me of Jane Jacobs and her classic "Death and Life of Great American Cities." While Jacobs' book helped to modify the discourse on central city urban development with her praise of mixed uses, the value of sidewalks, and face to face encounters with your neighbors, Garreau likewise stakes out some ground counter to conventional planning wisdom about the suburbs.
As a former city planner, I found Garreau's discussion of the new "downtowns" that are forming up on the suburban fringe and along certain freeways to provide a refreshingly candid look. He is essentially optimistic about a phenomena that is almost universally condemed by the professional planning and architecture community.
The book's final two chapters are worth the price alone. In "The Words" chapter the author defines in lighthearted terms some of the slang that is associated with edge city development: "Ooh-ah: An unusual Amenity inserted in a development specifically to elicit an animated reaction from a client. Commmercial Ooh-ahs include built in hair dryers in the mens room" In the chapter titled "the Laws" and includes such tidbits as: "The number of blocks an American will walk in most downtowns: Three, maybe four."
Overall a very readable and important book. In fact I use it as a text for a college class titled "The Built Environment" By reveiwing and discussing the "terms", "laws" and the players in nine "edge cities" around the country, the author does an amazing job clarifying what drives this sort of development and where it leading the future of American cities into the 21rst century. Jareau is basically optimistic, despite the boring warnings planners who warn of the impending collapse of civilization unless we abide by their dictates.
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Title: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs ISBN: 067974195X Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: December, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck ISBN: 0865476063 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States by Kenneth T. Jackson ISBN: 0195049837 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: April, 1987 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Geography Of Nowhere: The Rise And Declineof America'S Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler ISBN: 0671888250 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: July, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis (Brookings Metro Series) by Robert E. Lang, Strobe Talbott ISBN: 0815706111 Publisher: The Brookings Institution Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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