Edge City

by Joel Garreau

  19 “The urbanized portion of Los Angeles County”: Robert Cervero, Suburban Gridlock (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University, Center for Urban Policy Research, 1986), 24.

  20 as much as $4.00 a gallon: Third-quarter 1990 figures, reflecting prices after the Iraq invasion of Kuwait: Milan, $4.73, up $0.62; Stockholm, $4.57, up $0.77; Paris, $4.24, up $0.78; Dublin, $4.15, up $0.70; Tokyo, $3.76, up $0.19. Runzheimer International, cited in Washington Post Magazine, November 11, 1990, 16.

  21 There are already 19 percent more legally registered motor vehicles: In 1988, there were 140.7 million cars, 42.8 million trucks and buses, and 4.7 million motorcycles registered in America, for a total of 188.2 million registered motorized ground vehicles. In 1986, there were only 158.5 million licensed drivers. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract, table 1029, p. 604, and table 1040, p. 608.

  22 The Census is expected to find only four states: Interview with Alan Pisarski, author of Commuting in America: A National Report on Commuting Patterns and Trends (Westport, Conn.: Eno Foundation for Transportation, 1987).

  23 There are not many more women who can work: The total increase expected to the end of the century is about half a percent per year. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract, chart 625, p. 378.

  24 “supercommuters”: See, among dozens of others, Rodney Ferguson and Eugene Carlson, “The Boomdocks: Distant Communities Promise Good Homes but Produce Malaise: Census Shows People Moving so Far from Jobs That They Lack Time to Enjoy Life,” Wall Street Journal, October 25, 1990, A1.

  25 But fewer than 4 percent: Transportation Research Board.

  26 Californians now actually consume less gasoline: An annual rate of 494 gallons per capita, below the national average of 526 gallons per person, according to federal estimates. Jay Mathews, “Cities in West Steering Away from Growth: More Compact Style Marks California Life,” Washington Post, Sunday, June 14, 1990, A3.

  27 They also require fewer cars: California, 693 per 1000; Florida, 868 per 1000; Texas, 772 per 1000. Ibid.

  28 forecasts for recent light-rail projects: In Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Portland (Oregon), and Sacramento.

  29 A merely huge fifteen million square feet: Interview with C. Kenneth Orski, president of Urban Mobility Corporation, citing the study “Urban Rail Transit Projects: Forecasts Versus Actual Ridership and Costs” by the Urban Mass Transit Association, and “Urban Rail in America” by Boris Pushkarev.

  30 A newspaper published by the Detroit Free Press or the Detroit News: Interview with Bob Burns, senior vice president for operations.

  31 That detachment is linked: Interviews with Katy Blackwell, public affairs, systems; Jim Trainer, public affairs, Ford Parts and Service.

  32 This was pointed out by Edwin S. Mills: “Sectoral Clustering and Metropolitan Development,” in Sources of Metropolitan Growth and Development (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1991).

  33 The Human Interface Lab is regarded by many: Doug Stewart, “Through the Looking Glass into an Artificial World—via Computer,” Smithsonian, January 1991, 36.

  34 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration now has a virtual reality generator: Ibid., 40.

  Chapter 5 Atlanta: The Color of Money

  1 Almost a third make more money: In 1989, 28.76 percent of all black families in the Atlanta region had combined incomes in excess of $35,000 at a time when the median white family income in America was slightly in excess of $34,000. Ciaritas, L.P., 1989. Claritas is a national marketing demographic firm.

  2 Throughout this chapter in reference to demographic data, typical is used interchangeably with the more technical word median. Median income is one for which 50 percent of all families have incomes greater and 50 percent have incomes lower. That is usually not the same as average or mean, which refers to the total of all incomes divided by the number of families. In demo graphic analyses such as these, median or typical is thought to offer a more reliable snapshot of the middle ground than mean or average.

  3 Forty percent are suburbanites: Suburbs here are defined as political jurisdictions in the eighteen-county Atlanta region that are outside the city of Atlanta. Ciaritas, L.P.

  4 A third live in predominantly white areas: In 1988, 31.83 percent of the nonwhite population of the seven-county Atlanta region lived in the twenty-three Census-tract-based “superdistricts” that were majority white in 1988. Of that black population in majority white neighborhoods, 63.2 percent were on the north side. Atlanta Regional Commission, “Atlanta Region Outlook,” rev., August 1989, A-8, A-9.

  5 Middle-class black families: Census tracts in which the median black family income in 1989 was more than $35,000. Ciaritas, L.P.

  6 virtually the same income as their white neighbors: In the Atlanta area Census tracts in which the majority of black families make more money than the typical white family in America, the median income for such black families is $42,194. The median income for their white neighbors in the same Census tracts is $43,983. The difference is 4 percent. Ibid.

  7 In the Oakland area: All figures are for Metropolitan Statistical Areas and reflect the number of black families that had a median income in excess of $35,000 when the median white family income in America was slightly over $34,000. Ibid.

  8 One in four young black males in America is in jail: John Leo, U.S. News & World Report, October 1, 1990, 23.

  9 That would compare: Black Enterprise, June 1990, p. 113.

  10 E. Franklin Frazier: Black Bourgeoisie: The Rise of a New Middle Class in the United States (New York: Free Press, 1957), 116.

  11 In 1950, less than 1 percent: Ibid., 49.

  12 Right after World War II: Roughly comparable to $52,500 in 1990, by calculation, using Frazier’s figure of $3232 for the median white family income in 1949. Ibid., 48.

  13 Perhaps seventy-five thousand black people in the whole country: Frazier reports five in every 1000 with an annual income of $5000. Ibid., 49. The total black population in 1950 was 15,042,000. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1990, 110th ed. (Washington, D.C., 1990), chart 18.

  14 system of terrorism: See especially Chapter 27, “Desegregation,” in Michael Barone, Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: Free Press, 1990), 272.

  15 Claritas: Claritas’ clients include such national giants as General Motors, Coca-Cola, J. C. Penney, and Chase Manhattan.

  16 Detroit had the largest proportion of skilled black craftsmen: Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, 44.

  17 “I grew up in California, and I never knew about Jim Crow”: Quoted by Barbara Matusow, “Alone Together,” The Washingtonian, November 1989, 153.

  18 Today Los Angeles: The black population was 17 percent in the 1980 Census, but it was expected to be 12 percent in the 1990 Census.

  19 the number of black-owned businesses: Judith Waldrop, “Shades of Black,” American Demographics (September 1990): 33.

  20 Roughly a third: March 1988 Census.

  21 “underclass neighborhoods”: U.S. News & World Report, December 25, 1989-January 1, 1990, 73.

  22 in 1983 the unemployment rate: Ibid., 76.

  23 Only 38 percent of young adult blacks: Young adult is defined as ages 25 to 29. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract, chart 215, p. 133.

  24 Of all black kids who had graduated from high school in 1988: Kids is defined as eighteen to twenty-one. Ibid., chart 249, p. 150.

  25 a higher percentage of young black Americans: Larry Harrison, “Five Ethnic Groups in America,” draft, p. 34. Figures are from the World Bank, “World Development Report,” 1989 ed. Percentage of post-secondary age population actually enrolled: Switzerland, 23 percent; England, 22 percent.

  26 “increased access to integrated, non-ghetto schools”: Quoted in Kenneth J. Cooper, “Assessing Black Students in the ‘80s,” Washington Post, April 8, 1990, Education Review, p. 1.

  27 averages are not fully representative: Bill Dedman, when he was
with the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for his series “The Color of Money” (May 1–4, 1988). In it he demonstrated that among stable neighborhoods of the same income, white neighborhoods always received the most bank loans per 1000 single-family homes. Integrated neighborhoods always received fewer. Black neighborhoods—including Cascade Heights, where then-Mayor Andrew Young lived—always received the fewest. This discriminatory effect had pervasive and negative social consequences.

  The majority of Atlanta’s black population lives in predominantly black neighborhoods. So Dedman, who helped me generously in my work on this chapter, properly examined those neighborhoods. He also wished to be conservative in his judgments. So as not to contaminate his findings by including neighborhoods with wide swings in growth, he eliminated any neighborhood that grew by more than 10 percent in the number of single-family houses from 1980 to 1987. In such fashion he conclusively demonstrated that in the neighborhoods in which the majority of black people live, the banks’ lending practices were discriminatory and hurtful.

  At the same time, I do not believe his work contradicts, nor is it contradicted by, any findings in this chapter. By definition, he was not looking at the booming areas outside the established center of the Atlanta area where the majority of the black middle class lives.

  28 class has become a more important predictor of behavior: William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

  29 Throughout the middle of this century: Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, 43. 154 The total black migration from the South was 1.6 million in the 1940s and 1.5 million in the 1950s: Barone, Our Country, 273.

  30 In 1900, nine tenths of all blacks: Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, 23.

  31 Today it is half that: By calculation using figures from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1989 (Washington, D.C., 1989). The share of the total American black population residing in the South, defined as eleven southern states, is 44 percent. In the Census definition of the South—sixteen states plus the District of Columbia—the share of the black population in 1988 was 56 percent.

  32 tie to the declining old downtowns: Nonetheless, the percentage of all blacks living in the Northeast dropped from 19 to 17 percent from 1980 to 1988, according to the Census.

  33 “That’s a profile of people who migrate for job opportunities”: Time, January 22, 1990, 27.

  34 convicted church bomber J. B. Stoner: Durwood McAlister, “Thank the Parole Board for J. B. Stoner’s Candidacy,” Atlanta Journal, June 3, 1990. McAlister is editor of the editorial pages for the Atlanta Journal.

  35 “I say to you today, my friends”: The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Coretta Scott King (New York: Newmarket Press, 1987), 95.

  36 seeking the black university experience: From 1985 to 1989, the number of blacks attending black colleges increased 10 percent, to 294,427, according to the National Association of Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. That increase occurred as the percentage of black eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds enrolled in colleges had declined, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

  37 “If you are buying a home”: Susan Wells, “Middle-class Black Belt Spans Southside,” “Shaping of Atlanta,” Series in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

  38 racial patterns of residence are still very strong: Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton once performed a study they called “Hypersegregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: Black and Hispanic Segregation Along Five Dimensions” (Demography, 26, no. 3 [August 1989]). It was fascinating in that it broke out aspects of racial segregation along five dimensions for sixty U.S. urban areas. It argues that the Atlanta area, for example, has a high level of “unevenness,” to the degree that the percentage of minority members within residential areas does not equal the citywide minority percentage. But it had a low level of “clustering” because minority neighborhoods were scattered widely in space—they were not ghettoized.

  39 in Chicago the residential patterns: Sam Bass Warner, Jr., The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 108.

  40 clubs, whips, and tear gas: “Fiftieth Birthday Tribute to Congressman John Lewis” program. See also Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa, The Almanac of American Politics 1990 (Washington, D.C.: National Journal, 1990), 306.

  41 “I owe a great deal to my early life, and to the chickens”: Taylor Branch, in Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), explains: “Young Lewis lived in a world of his own. He had no feeling whatsoever for hogs, dogs, or most farm animals, but endless hours of study convinced him that chickens were worthy of adoption as the world’s innocent creatures … If a small chicken died, Lewis buried it in a lard can and made sure flowers grew on the site. He also baptized the new chicks. Once he got carried away in his prayers and baptized one too long, which became one of his worst childhood … nightmares,” 262.

  Chapter 6 Phoenix: Shadow Government

  1 Sun City, Arizona: Martha Moyer, public information, the Del Webb Corporation, developers of Sun City.

  2 These shadow governments have become the most numerous, ubiquitous, and largest form of local government: There is one federal government; there are fifty state governments, and 83,166 relatively conventional local governments in America, according to the most recent Census of Governments (1987) of the U.S. Bureau of the Census. These local governments are divided into five types: county, 3042; municipal, 19,205; township, 16,691; independent school district, 14,741; and independent special district, 29,487. Many of the independent special districts, in turn, have gained so much power that they are more usefully thought of as public shadow governments. Bruce D. McDowall, U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Affairs, Washington, D.C.

  3 What makes these outfits like governments: I am indebted to Walter A. Scheiber, former executive director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, for first offering me this three-part formulation.

  4 Charles Keating buried C C & Rs in the deeds: Interview with Jana Bommersbach of New Times.

  5 These native Americans built a 250-mile canal system: A Valley Reborn: The Story of the Salt River Project; SRP Canals; and other histories published by the Salt River Project, Phoenix.

  6 Moses “had glimpsed in the institution called ‘public authority’ a potential for power”: Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Knopf, 1974).

  7 Over the years it has taken on the rights: D. Michael Rappoport, assistant general manager for government affairs, Salt River Project.

  8 As recently at World War II: Charles Sargent, ed. Metro Arizona (Scottsdale: Biffington Books, 1988).

  9 “Them that has, gits”: Edward Noyes Westcott, David Harum (1898), chap. 35.

  10 “Two forms of government—democracy and socialism”: James E. Vance, Jr., This Scene of Man: The Role and Structure of the City in the Geography of Western Civilization (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 10–12.

  Chapter 7 Texas: Civilization

  1 “What happened to you living in England”: Philip Roth, interview by Jonathan Brent, New York Times Book Review, September 25, 1988, 3.

  2 “America’s boldest testing ground of the 1880s”: Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), 222.

  3 “Oh, yeah, Venice was bizarre”: Larry Gerkins, interview.

  4 fresh insight and artistic vision: I am indebted to Neil Barsky of the Wall Street Journal for this formulation.

  5 more households have a car than have a water heater: Households owning a car: 87.7 percent; households owning a water heater: 84.2 percent. For that matter, 75.1 percent of households are connected to a public sewer. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1990, 110th ed. (Washington, D.C., 1990). Cars and water heaters: chart 1280, Novemb
er 1987 data (represents appliances possessed and generally used by a household). Public sewers: Ibid., chart 1272, 1987 data (as a percentage of occupied housing units).

  6 “There is no zoning, only deals”: Sam Lefrak, quoted by Robert Fishman, “Megalopolis Unbound,” Wilson Quarterly (Winter 1990): 36.

  7 “We might hope”: Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1987), 204.

  8 The world moved on July 15, 1972: Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981), 74.

  9 Costs of Sprawl report: The Costs of Sprawl (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1974).

  10 In addition, the Paris area has five Greenfield Edge City sites: David Shulman et al., Paris Real Estate Market (New York: Salomon Brothers, August 1989).

  11 Sydney, Australia, even without a beltway: David J. Kostin, Sydney Real Estate Market (New York: Salomon Brothers, September 1988).

  12 the greater London area is now more than a hundred miles across: Christopher B. Leinberger, interview with the author.

  13 London’s outer Edge Cities: David Shulman and David J. Kostin, London Office Market (New York: Salomon Brothers, September 1988).

  14 In Amsterdam, in 1989: Leinberger, interview with the author.

  15 Bangkok: David E. Dowall, professor of planning, University of California at Berkeley, interview. Also Djakarta, page 238.

  16 In Mexico, on the west side of Guadalajara: Louis B. Casagrande, Science Museum of Minnesota, interview with the author.

  17 Seoul is trying to force Edge Cities at two locations: Stephen S. Fuller, chair, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., interview with the author.

  18 architects control a mere 30 percent of their market: Andrew Saint, The Image of the Architect (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 160.