Edge City

by Joel Garreau

  Reps, John W. The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965.

  Saint, Andrew. The Image of the Architect. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

  An eye-opening guide to the wounds architects have suffered—many self-inflicted—which have often resulted in impotence.

  Schwartz, Gail Garfield. Where’s Main Street, U.S.A.? Westport, Conn.: ENO Foundation for Transportation, 1984.

  Scully, Vincent. American Architecture and Urbanism. New York: Praeger, 1969.

  Stilgoe, John. Common Landscape of America, 1580–1845. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

  Tafuri, Manfredo. Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988.

  Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. 2d ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977.

  Vidor, King, director, and Henry Blanke, producer. The Fountainhead. Warner Bros., 1949. (Screenplay by Ayn Rand from her novel. New York: Macmillan, 1943.)

  Check out the building that Gary Cooper blows up. Premature postmodernism?

  Vitruvius. The Ten Books on Architecture. New York: Dover, 1960.

  Von Eckardt, Wolf. Back to the Drawing Board: Planning Livable Cities. Washington, D.C.: New Republic Press, 1970.

  Weightman, Barbara. “Gay Bars as Private Places.” Landscape 24, no. 1. (1980).

  Let the record show that one of the things cities are for is the exercise of extremely private lives. Note also Denis Wood, below.

  Whyte, William H. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Washington, D.C.: Conservation Foundation, 1980.

  Wolfe, Tom. From Bauhaus to Our House. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981.

  A brief history of designers who should have been smothered in their cribs.

  Wood, Denis. “In Defense of Indefensible Space.” In Urban Crime and Environmental Criminology. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981.

  Designs with Edge City in Mind

  Boles, Daralice D. “Reordering the Suburbs.” Progressive Architecture (May 1989).

  Calthorpe, Peter. “Pedestrian Pockets: New Strategies for Suburban Growth.” Whole Earth Review, Spring 1988.

  Derven, Ronald, and Carol Feder, ed. Mixed-Use Business Parks. National Association of Industrial and Office Parks, 1988.

  How the developers see our world.

  Gillette, Howard, Jr. “The Evolution of the Planned Shopping Center in Suburb and City.” APA Journal (1985).

  Harvey, Douglas Pegues. “Of Malls, Garages, and the Fertility of Freeways.” Texas Architect (July-August 1985).

  Knack, Ruth Eckdish. “Repent, Ye Sinners, Repent: We Can Save the Suburbs, Say Advocates of Neotraditional Town Planning.” American Planning Association Journal (August 1989).

  Lemire, Robert. Creative Land Development: Bridge to the Future. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.

  Van Der Ryn, Sim, and Peter Calthorpe. Sustainable Communities: A New Design Synthesis for Cities, Suburbs and Towns. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986.

  On the Rise of Edge Cities Worldwide

  Kostin, David J. Sydney Real Estate Market. New York: Salomon Brothers, September 1988.

  Shulman, David, and David J. Kostin, London Office Market. New York: Salomon Brothers, September, 1988.

  Shulman, David, David J. Kostin, Danielle Kadeyan, and Alison Howe. Paris Real Estate Market. New York: Salomon Brothers, August 1989.

  On Community

  Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Huebsch, 1919.

  Bellah, Robert, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. Habits of the Heart. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.

  Gans, Herbert. The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans. New York: Free Press, 1962.

  —–. The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community. New York: Pantheon, 1967.

  Kahn, Bonnie Menes. Cosmopolitan Culture. New York: Atheneum, 1987.

  Lemann, Nicholas. “Stressed Out in Suburbia: A Generation After the Postwar Boom, Life in the Suburbs Has Changed, Even if Our Picture of It Hasn’t.” Atlantic, November 1989.

  Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street. New York: Harcourt, 1920.

  —–. Babbitt. New York: Harcourt, 1924.

  Louv, Richard. Childhood’s Future: Listening to the American Family; New Hope for the Next Generation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.

  Nisbet, Robert A. The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

  Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954.

  Sennett, Richard. The Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism. New York: Knopf, 1977.

  —–. The Conscience of the Eye. New York: Knopf, 1990.

  Whyte, William H. The Organization Man. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956.

  On Technology, Progress, and Values

  Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography. New York: Modern Library, 1931.

  See especially “The Dynamo and the Virgin,” chap. 25.

  Beniger, James. The Control Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.

  Giedion, Siegfried. Mechanization Takes Command. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948.

  Hughes, Thomas P. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970. New York: Viking, 1989.

  Nisbet, Robert. History of the Idea of Progress. New York: Basic Books, 1980.

  All of these volumes make explicit reference to how industrialization split our modes of thinking from our modes of feeling, and offer ideas about how to bridge that gap.

  On How Scientific Thought Is Changing

  Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Viking Penguin, 1987.

  Kuhn, Thomas S. The Copernican Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.

  —–. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” New York: International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, 1962.

  —–. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970.

  Kuhn originated the concept “paradigm” to suggest that any body of research is shaped by the current dominant world views, institutions, and beliefs of the researchers. Hence, these paradigms, or world-view structures, are subject to sharp, discontinuous transformations as new structures are found that describe reality better. These breaks, or “paradigm shifts,” are referred to as scientific or societal revolutions.

  Mallove, Eugene. The Quickening Universe: Cosmic Evolution and Human Destiny New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.

  On Christopher Alexander

  Alexander, Christopher. “A City Is Not a Tree.” Design Magazine, 1965.

  —–. “The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe.” Draft manuscript, 1988.

  —–, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiks dahl-King, and Shlomo Angel. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

  —–, Hajo Neis, Artemis Anninou, and Ingrid King. A New Theory of Urban Design. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

  Grabow, Stephen. Christopher Alexander: The Search for a New Paradigm in Architecture. Stocksfield: Oriel Press, 1983.

  On Civilization, Soul, and Values

  Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1988.

  Charles, Prince of Wales. A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture. London: Doubleday, 1989.

  Clark, Petula. “Downtown.” Words and music by Tony Hatch. Epic Records.

  The way it is supposed to be.

  Hiss, Tony. The Experience of Place. New York: Knopf, 1990.

  Macdonald, Dwight. Against the American Grain. New York: Da Capo Press, 1962.

  Morris, James. Venice. London: Faber & Faber, 1983.

  Moyers, Bill. A World of Ideas. Garden City, N.Y.
: Doubleday, 1989.

  Murray, Charles. In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

  Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place. New York: Paragon House, 1989.

  Sale, Kirkpatrick. Human Scale. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980.

  On Growth

  America’s Real Estate: A Review of Real Estate and Its Role in the U.S. Economy. Washington, D.C.: National Realty Committee, 1989.

  Lest we forget, the National Realty Committee reminds us we are talking big bucks here. Lavishly illustrated.

  Baldassare, Mark. “Suburban Support for No-Growth Policies: Implications for the Growth Revolt.” Journal of Urban Affairs 12, no. 2 (1990).

  “The Future of American Cities: To Grow or Not to Grow?” Reason 21, no. 4 (August-September 1989), special issue.

  Harvey, Douglas Pegues. “Escape from the Planet of the Modernists: Beyond the Growth Syndrome.” Texas Architect (October 1988).

  Heilbroner, Robert. Behind the Veil of Economics. New York: Norton, 1988.

  LeGates, Richard T. Public Opinion Gridlock on California Growth Issues. San Francisco: San Francisco State University Foundation and the Public Research Institute, September 1989.

  Morris, Charles R. “The Coming Global Boom.” Atlantic, October 1989.

  Postrel, Virginia I. “The Ideology Shuffle: Forget Left and Right—Our Politics Are Breaking Down into Growth vs. Green.” Washington Post, April 1, 1990, Outlook section.

  Wagner, Kenneth C. Economic Development Manual. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi for the Mississippi Research and Development Center, 1978.

  On the Land

  Bramwell, Anna. Ecology in the 20th Century: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

  Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill & Wang, 1983.

  Kostmayer, Peter H. The American Landscape in the 21st Century. Opening Remarks, Oversight Hearing, Subcommittee on General Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, May 18, 1989.

  In 1989, Representative Peter Kostmayer, who represents Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a beautiful area facing intense development pressure, convened a series of subcommittee hearings on the future of the American landscape. The result was that rarity—congressional testimony worth reading. It ranged from that of Ian McHarg to John Herbers to Ed McMahon.

  Harris, Larry D. “Edge Effects and Conservation of Biotic Diversity.” Conservation Biology 2, no. 4 (December 1988).

  As I researched Edge City, I was intrigued to learn that it has a biological, ecological, natural analogy. The zones of transition between one ecology and another—for example, the wetlands where the water meets the land, or the strip where the woods meet the meadow—are known to professionals as “edge ecologies.” They are of tremendous value because a high diversity of plants and animals are associated with them. It would be nice to think that Edge City is a similarly fertile ecology, equally full of possibilities.

  Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.

  The twentieth century’s Walden.

  Lopez, Barry. Arctic Dreams. New York: Scribner’s, 1986.

  —–. Crossing Open Ground. New York: Scribner’s, 1988.

  —–. “Unbounded Wilderness.” Aperture 120 (Late Summer 1990).

  Lyon, Thomas J., ed. This Incomperable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.

  The selections are stirring and the bibliography—with enlightening commentary—splendid.

  MacKaye, Benton. The New Exploration: A Philosophy of Regional Planning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962.

  McHarg, Ian. The Fitness of Man’s Environment. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1968.

  —–. Design with Nature. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969.

  McPhee, John. Encounters with the Archdruid: Narratives About a Conservationist and Three of His Natural Enemies. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971.

  —–. The Control of Nature. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989.

  Sloane, Eric. Our Vanishing Landscape. New York: Ballantine, 1974.

  Stegner, Wallace. The Sound of Mountain Water. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969.

  Stokes, Samuel, and A. Elizabeth Watson. Saving America’s Countryside: A Guide to Rural Conservation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

  Teltsch, Kathleen. “U.S. Gets 100,000 Acres in Largest Gift of Land.” New York Times, July 1, 1990, A1.

  Including the Cornfield at Antietam, the site of the bloodiest day of fighting of the Civil War.

  Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. New York: New American Library, 1960.

  Yaro, Robert D., Randall Arendt, Harry L. Dodson, and Elizabeth A. Brabec. Dealing with Change in the Connecticut River Valley: A Design Manual for Conservation and Development. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.

  Yaro, Robert D., Neil Jorgensen, Mark S. Finnen, and Harry L. Dodson. Massachusetts Landscape Inventory. Boston: Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management, 1982.

  Whyte, William H. Conservation Easements. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 1959.

  On the Civil War and Its Enduring Impact

  Abell, Sam, and Brian C. Pohanka. Distant Thunder: A Photographic Essay on the American Civil War. Charlottesville: Thomasson-Grant, 1988.

  Burns, Ken, et al. The Civil War: A Film Series. Florentine Films and WETA-TV, 1990.

  Catton, Bruce. The Centennial History of the Civil War. Vol. 1, The Coming Fury. Vol. 2, Terrible Swift Sword. Vol. 3, Never Call Retreat. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961, 1963, 1965.

  Davis, George B., Leslie J. Perry, and Joseph W. Kirkley. The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War. New York: Fairfax Press, 1983.

  Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol. 1, Fort Sumter to Perryville. Vol. 2, Fredericksburg to Meridian. Vol. 3, Red River to Appomattox. New York: Random House, 1958, 1963, 1974.

  MacDonald, John. Great Battles of the Civil War. New York: Macmillan, 1988.

  McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

  The Pulitzer Prize winner.

  Taylor, William. Cavalier & Yankee: The Old South and American National Character. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.

  Ward, Geoffrey C., with Ric Burns and Ken Burns. The Civil War: An Illustrated History. New York: Knopf, 1990.

  The companion volume to the celebrated PBS television series.

  Wicker, Tom. Unto This Hour. New York: Viking, 1984.

  On the Shaping of the New York Metropolitan Area, Especially the New Jersey Side

  Butterfield, Fox. “Is Life in New York Really Getting Worse?” New York Times, March 10, 1989, B1.

  The moment that as loyal a publication as the New York Times put this headline on the front page of its local section, and allowed as distinguished a reporter as Butterfield to vividly answer yes, was when I started to really worry about Manhattan.

  Byrne, Thérèse E. The Edge City as a Paradigm: Remodeling the I-78 Corridor. New York: Salomon Brothers, 1989.

  Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Knopf, 1974.

  Communities of Place: The New Jersey Preliminary State Development and Redevelopment Plan. Vol. 1, A Legacy for the Next Generation. Vol. 2, Strategies and Policies. Trenton: New Jersey State Planning Commission, 1988.

  Glaberson, William. “The Little Engines That Could … and Do: In Allentown and Elsewhere, Small Companies Are Fueling a Big Growth in Jobs.” New York Times, May 1, 1988.

  Songster Billy Joel had it all wrong when he lamented the decline of heavy industry in places like Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

  Graf, Don. Convenience for Research: Buildings for the Bell Telephone Laboratory, Inc., Murray Hill, New Jersey. New York: Voorhees Walker Foley & S
mith, Architects and Engineers, 1944.

  An oversized picture book that carefully and proudly details the design of one of the first Edge City corporate campuses—the Bell Labs facilities built in Murray Hill during World War II. Today, the book seems more impressive than the buildings that it glorifies. Produced by the designers and builders of the complex, it proclaims an esthetic of “character” for a place that looked exactly like what it was—a factory for research.

  Hamill, Samuel M., Jr., John C. Keene, David N. Kinsey, and Roger K. Lewis. The Growth Management Handbook: A Primer for Citizen and Government Planners. Princeton: Middlesex Somerset Mercer Regional Council, 1989.

  NJ Theatre & You, Perfect Together: New Jersey Theatre Group Presents New Jersey’s Professional Theatres 1988–89 Calendar with Transit Information. Florham Park, N.J.: New Jersey Professional Theatre Foundation, 1988.

  “New Jersey/Manhattan Economic Comparison” and “New Jersey Takes a Smaller Personal Tax Bite.” In New Jersey Facts and Facets. Trenton: New Jersey Department of Commerce and Economic Development, circa 1989.

  Invidious comparisons of New Jersey with New York City and New York State. Shulman, David, et al. New York Metropolitan Area Office Market. New York: Salomon Brothers, 1988.

  Sterba, James P. “Even a Real Genius Notes That Bambi Is a Relevant Factor: When Deer Hunting Starts in Princeton, Equations Become Really Complex.” Wall Street Journal, October 12, 1989.

  Sternlieb, George. Patterns of Development. Piscataway, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1986.

  —–, and James W. Hughes, eds. Revitalizing the Northeast. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1978.

  —–, and Alex Schwartz. New Jersey Growth Corridors. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1986.