Edge City; Life on the New Frontier

New York: Doubleday, 1991. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Dave Cook (Maps). xiv, 546 pages. Maps. Glossary of a New Frontier. Suggested Readings. Notes. Index. Author inscription Illustrated endpapers. Inscribed by the author on the fep. For Alexander Omsy--For all the time I've spent checking out this new frontier, I've got to admit it's nice to return to civilization at the Ambassador East--Regards--Joel Garreau 10/4/91. An examination of America's edge cities--the standard form of American urban life, which includes people's homes, material goods and work--discusses their developers, builders, and inhabitants According to Joel Garreau, we are in the middle of the biggest change in 100 years in how we live, work, and play--and most of us don't even know it. By moving our jobs out to the suburbs where we live and shop, we have created Edge Cities. Garreau has spent three years visiting Edge Cities and presents a groundbreaking book about who we are, how we got that way, where we are headed and what we value. Joel Garreau (born 1948) is an American journalist, scholar, and author. In 1981, Garreau published The Nine Nations of North America. In 1991, he published Edge City: Life on the New Frontier.[2] In 2005, he published Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human. He has served as a fellow at Cambridge University, a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at New America Foundation, the University of California at Berkeley and George Mason University. Previously, he was a reporter and editor at The Washington Post. Edge city is a term that originated in the United States for 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. These districts have now developed in many countries. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: Garreau shows that Americans, weary of daily commutes between suburb and city, are developing concentrated communities near major metropolitan areas that blend home, workplace, schools and recreation. He calls these all-inclusive urban centers `edge cities': among them, White Plains, near Manhattan; King of Prussia, outside of Philadelphia; Scottsdale and Tempe, adjacent to Phoenix. Nine chapters on specific regions include interviews with modern `pioneers,' professionals who have chosen the edge-city lifestyle, and planners such as controversial Northern Virginia developer John T. (Til) Hazel. Edge-city proponents make a case for practicality, safety and cultural growth, while detractors cite bland artificiality and environmental threats in the expanding realm of industrial parks and strip malls. Garreau maintains a casual style, incorporating statistical data, historical references and regional data into an eminently readable, thought-provoking, optimistic text.