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 . These districts have now developed in many countries.
47-452: Cumberland is an edge city in Cobb County located in an unincorporated area of the northwest Atlanta metropolitan area , Georgia, United States. It is situated ten miles (16 km) northwest of downtown Atlanta . With approximately 122,000 workers and 103,000 residents, Cumberland is the region's fifth-largest business district, and is marked by several modern skyscrapers rising from
94-493: A "growth machine" that spreads the urbanization of the United States. They can obscure smaller settlements that are also going through similar phases of redevelopment. Depending on the size of the settlements the modes of urban politics can change. "State interventions are important both conceptually and to the empirical matter of this article since the extent, timing, nature, and legacies of state interventions significantly shape
141-539: A considerable debate among economists as to whether "jobs follow people or people follow jobs," but in the context of the edge city phenomenon, workers have been drawn from metropolitan business hubs in favor of the edge city economy. Developers of edge cities have been shown to strategically plan expansion of such business areas to draw workers away from more dense port cities and thereby keep profits from surrounding interests. Edge cities contribute greatly to urban development by creating new jobs by attracting workers from
188-435: A half-century later, the D Line subway extension will finally provide rail access, with Century City/Constellation station planned to open in 2025. As recently as 2003, some critics believed that edge cities might turn out to have been only a 20th-century phenomenon because of their limitations. The residents of the low-density housing areas around them tend to be fiercely resistant to their outward expansion (as has been
235-500: A history of severe traffic problems if one of these freeways goes unbuilt. In particular, Century City , a pioneering 1960s edge city built on a former 20th Century Fox backlot in western Los Angeles, was built with long-term plans for access via an urban rail system and the planned Beverly Hills Freeway . Neither project ever came to fruition, resulting in massive congestion on the surface streets connecting Century City to existing freeways, every two miles (3 km) distant. More than
282-540: A light rail line from the Cumberland/Galleria area to the Town Center/KSU area. If constructed, the line would be approximately 14.5 miles (23.3 km) long with seven stations. The proposed line would be constructed and operational by 2019 with the expectation of nearly 50,000 riders daily by 2025. At each end of the line, a circulator bus system has also been proposed bringing the total expected ridership for
329-521: A place to be considered an edge city: Most edge cities develop at or near existing or planned freeway intersections, and are especially likely to develop near major airports . They rarely include heavy industry . They often are not separate legal entities but are governed as part of surrounding counties (this is more often the case in the East than in the Midwest, South, or West). They are numerous—almost 200 in
376-508: A push for more accessibility by transit and bicycle, and addition of housing in denser, urban-style neighborhoods within the edge city. For example, at Tysons, in the Washington, D.C., metro area, the plan remains to see the city become the downtown core of Fairfax County. To this point "…eight districts have been delimited, with four centered on new metro stations being transit-oriented development districts". Future plans to transportation around
423-482: A road bearing its name in the Vinings vicinity (the camp moved in 1960 to a site south of Covington ). The area began seeing growth following World War II , but major development did not occur until Cumberland Mall opened as Georgia's largest and metro Atlanta's sixth enclosed regional mall in 1973. A decade later, the first office tower of Cobb Galleria was built on 86 acres (350,000 m) of prime space in what became
470-440: A significant growth in sophisticated retail, entertainment, and consumer service facilities, which in turn leads to a rise in local employment opportunities. The edge city has a tendency to affect the surrounding areas by procuring more opportunities within the labor market. Edge Cities are well suited to an economy which is known for a service-oriented market as well as sustaining major manufacturing sectors. Political groups aid
517-542: A ‘privatopia’ is formed within edge city residential areas, where the private housing developments are administered by homeowner associations. In 1964 there were fewer than 500 associations, but “…by 1992, there were 150,000 associations privately governing approximately 32 million Americans”. As with any city, edge cities go through phases of growth and redevelopment. Politics within Edge Cities are unique in that they typically revolve around developing them. They contribute to
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#1732869105607564-596: Is along South Marietta Parkway in Marietta , just west of the former Southern Polytechnic State University now the Marietta campus of Kennesaw State University. Routes connect to the most populated areas of the county, including Mableton and Kennesaw . Express routes also operate down to Atlanta , connecting with MARTA at the Arts Center station. Transfers are free between MARTA and CCT, though both transit agencies charge
611-408: Is also a Cumberland CID circulator shuttle. Cobb operates five GRTA Express routes, funded by GRTA. Express route 476 serves Douglas County, Powder Springs and Hiram park and rides. Route 463 serves Douglas County MMTC and West Douglas. Route 480, 483, and 490 serve Town Center. 480 continues to Acworth. 483 and 490 continue to Woodstock, and then 490 continues to Canton. Most routes begin and end at
658-452: Is back!". Garreau shows how edge cities developed in a U.S. context. Starting in the 1950s, businesses were incentivized to open branches in the suburbs and eventually in many cases, leave traditional downtowns entirely, due to increased use of the automobile and move of middle and upper class residents to suburbs, which in turn led to frustration with downtown traffic and lack of parking. Escalating land values in central downtown areas, and
705-547: The Cumberland Mall and Town Center at Cobb areas. Other solutions proposed include special bus-only lanes on Interstate 75 , and commuter rail into Cherokee County . A cross-suburb line over to Gwinnett County has also been proposed, intersecting with a future extended MARTA north line between Roswell and Sandy Springs in Fulton County . In May 2010 Cobb's Board of Commissioners approved further funding to study
752-556: The United Arab Emirates , the edge city is quickly emerging as an important new development form as automobile ownership skyrockets and marginal land is bulldozed for development. For example, the outskirts of Bangalore , India are increasingly replete with mid-rise mirrored-glass office towers set amid lush gardens and sprawling parking lots where many foreign companies have set up shop. Dubai offers another example. The emergence of edge cities has not been without consequences to
799-572: The Vinings area, which the United States Postal Service assigns as an Atlanta mailing address, although "Vinings" is acceptable as an alternate. While there are no official boundaries (except for the CID, which is a 5½-square-mile area that includes the interchanges of I-75 (Exit#s 258,9,60) and I-285 (Exit#s 19,20), and U.S. Highway 41), the business district generally extends as far northeast as
846-703: The streetcar has a pedestrian-friendly grid pattern of relatively narrow streets, most edge cities instead have a hierarchical street arrangement centered on pedestrian-hostile arterial roads , making most of this generation of edge cities difficult to get to and get around with public transportation or by walking, although transit was sometimes added in later decades, such as the Silver Line metro linking Downtown Washington, D.C. , with Arlington and Tysons edge cities, and government-planned edge cities in London ( Canary Wharf ) and Paris ( La Défense ) integrated transit from
893-575: The Cobb-Marietta Exhibit Hall and Coliseum Authority built the $ 48 million Cobb Galleria Centre by renovating the existing mall there, and it has become another success for the district. A few small shopping centers were constructed in the mid-1990s, and a Cumberland Mall expansion and renovation was completed in 2006. Construction was completed on the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in late 2007, adding nightlife to
940-716: The I-75 southbound off-ramp, and parallels the road until turning southwest along I-285, becoming Spring Road at 41 (and then Concord Road at Atlanta Road in Smyrna). CobbLinc , Marietta/Cobb County's Transit System serves the District in addition to one MARTA bus line making connections at the Cumberland/Galleria Transfer station. The former Louisville & Nashville (Now CSXT) mainline from Cincinnati to Atlanta, runs just west of Truist Park. Cumberland's office towers house some of
987-616: The Interstate North office park, located immediately to the north of the interchange, and home to the Weather Channel. Interstate North Parkway runs parallel to 75 southeast to 285, then parallels it (and Powers Ferry) across the Chattahoochee River . Akers Mill Road starts in the east at Powers Ferry, is broken by a stretch of Cumberland Boulevard, then continues west across 41. Circle 75 Parkway begins at Windy Hill Road, opposite
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#17328691056071034-608: The Miracle Mile as a retail strip). Garreau's classic example of an edge city is the information technology center Tysons, Virginia , west of Washington, D.C. Garreau shows how edge cities have also developed in other countries, specifically citing Canada, Mexico, Australia, and cities such as Paris, London, Karachi, Jakarta, and Tianjin, China. In the cases of London and Paris he notes how these edge cities developed with government planning and with integrated public transportation. Edge cities planned around freeway interchanges have
1081-835: The United States, compared to 45 downtowns of comparable size —and are large geographically because they are built at automobile scale. Garreau identified three distinct varieties of the edge city phenomenon: Additional terms are used to refer to edge cities, such as suburban business districts , major diversified centers , suburban cores , minicities , suburban activity centers , cities of realms , galactic cities , urban subcenters , pepperoni-pizza cities , superburbia , technoburbs , nucleations , disurbs , service cities , perimeter cities , peripheral centers , urban villages , and suburban downtowns . Spatially, edge cities primarily consist of mid-rise office towers (with some skyscrapers ) surrounded by massive surface parking lots and meticulously manicured lawns, almost reminiscent of
1128-470: The Wildwood Office Park on Powers Ferry Road, and up Cobb Parkway , the district's main street . Windy Hill Road is generally the northern extent of the district. To the south and west, it extends down Cumberland Parkway and Paces Ferry Road . Cumberland has changed immensely over the past 50 years. From 1927 to 1960, the area contained Camp Bert Adams , a Boy Scout reservation which still has
1175-474: The area continue to be made, the accessibility of the area is on the rise with many forms of transportation being formed. "The aims of the plan are for 75% of development to be within half a mile of metro stations, an urban center of 200,000 jobs and 100,000 residents, a jobs balance of 4.0 per household". Despite the lessons of the American experience, in rapidly developing countries such as China and India and
1222-411: The area's 24 million ft (over 2.2 million m) of office space, containing more office space than downtown Miami and making it metro Atlanta 's fifth-largest commercial office district, after Downtown , Midtown , Buckhead , and Perimeter Center . Companies such as Travelport , The Home Depot , Genuine Parts Company , Papa John's , RaceTrac , and The Weather Channel are headquartered in
1269-527: The area. Cumberland also houses some ten million ft (930,000 m) of retail, with its focal point being Cumberland Mall. In 2017, the Atlanta Braves opened Truist Park and The Battery Atlanta , a mixed-use development surrounding the ballpark, at the west-northwest side of the interchange of I-75 and I-285, just north of Cobb Galleria, with a pedestrian bridge connecting both complexes. Edge city In 1991, Garreau established five rules for
1316-480: The area. The Atlanta Opera , founded in 1979, moved its base to this location. The dominant form of transportation in Cumberland, as with most suburban edge cities, is the automobile, which is transported along a network of collector roads. Cumberland Boulevard encircles most of the area, and then continues northeast to Wildwood as Windy Ridge Parkway after crossing US Highway 41 (Cobb Parkway). Windy Ridge runs through
1363-472: The case in Tysons and Century City ), but because their internal road networks are severely limited in capacity, densification is more difficult than in the traditional grid network that characterizes traditional CBDs and secondary downtowns. As a result, construction of medium- and high-density housing in edge cities ranges was perceived to be "difficult to impossible". Because most are built at automobile scale, it
1410-662: The creation of the edge city in a particular way. There is usually a development commission or similar organization that operates in parallel to, and interact with standard city, county, and state government institutions. Some authors call such commissions private "proto-government" or "shadow governments". According to authors Phelps and Dear, these "shadow governments can tax, legislate for, and police their communities, but they are rarely accountable, are responsive primarily to wealth (as opposed to numbers of voters), and subject to few constitutional constraints”, as "edge cities have had substantial investments placed in them". In most cases
1457-423: The designs of Le Corbusier . Instead of a traditional street grid, their street networks are hierarchical , consisting of winding parkways (often lacking sidewalks) that feed into arterial roads or freeway ramps. However, edge cities feature job density similar to that of secondary downtowns found in places such as Newark and Pasadena ; indeed, Garreau writes that edge cities' development proves that "density
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1504-460: The development of communications (telephone, fax, email and other electronic communication) also enabled the trend. Despite early examples in the 1920s, it was not until car ownership surged in the 1950s, after four decades of fast, steady growth, that it was possible for edge cities to emerge on a large scale. Whereas virtually every American central business district (CBD) or secondary downtown that developed around non-motorized transportation or
1551-479: The edge city and the surrounding areas. Through Garreau, the term edge city has provided information on how corporate players remain important to the strength of urban and regional subsets. Garreau describes that the edge city has a tendency to have a large service-oriented industry linked to the national economy. The edge city offers supplies to the local area in the form of retail facilities and consumer services. Progressively different services begin to move towards
1598-469: The edge city as the population of corporate businesses increase. The corporate offices fill in space in edge cities and provide connections to exterior locations if decisions are being made from those locales. Not only do corporate, service, and transportation based edge cities exist, but the innovation-driven edge cities will generate extra- metropolitan linkages. These innovative edge cities expand various corporate activities as hosts. Edge cities may create
1645-634: The fiscal capacity of the County vis-à-vis perceived shortfalls in collective consumption expenditures (County of Fairfax 1976a). CobbLinc CobbLinc (formerly Cobb Community Transit ) is the bus public transit system in Cobb County, Georgia , one of metro Atlanta 's three most populous suburban counties . CobbLinc began operations in July 1989 (as Cobb Community Transit) and has had relatively strong ridership (3,793,253 total passengers in 2005) since then. CobbLinc has two hubs . Marietta Transit Center
1692-578: The hearing-impaired. External announcements are also made by voice, in addition to the normal electronic signs. Some buses also run on compressed natural gas (CNG) rather than diesel . Along with Gwinnett, Cobb voted against MARTA in the 1970s, and thus was left out of the system. The lack of sales tax revenue from the two counties stunted the growth of MARTA, however the GRTA created by former governor of Georgia Roy Barnes has been seeking to create other solutions, such as possible light rail to Cobb through
1739-535: The heart of the Cumberland district. This paved the way for several other towers, retail strips and hotels . In 1988, property owners formed the Cumberland Community Improvement District (Cumberland CID), the first in Georgia. The CID, a self-taxing district , has raised millions and has completed several infrastructure improvements in the area since its inception. During the summer of 1994,
1786-471: The metropolitan areas around it. Also as a result of the rise of edge cities, more department stores, hotels, apartments, and office spaces are created . There are more edge cities than their downtown counterparts of the same size. Garreau states one reason for the rise of edge cities is that, "Today, we have moved our means of creating wealth, the essence of urbanism - our jobs - out to where most of us have lived and shopped for two generations. That has led to
1833-464: The metropolitan areas they surround. Edge cities arise from population decentralization from large major core cities and has been ongoing since the 1960s. Shifts in socioeconomics in metro areas (including rising real estate prices during periods of stagnant wages), location of metro industrial areas, and labor competition between edge cities and their more central neighbors have been attributed to their development and continued expansion. There has been
1880-422: The mode of urban politics in different places and in a single place over time". State interventions are essential to the politics in developing edge cities. Tysons, Virginia is an example that went through the process of development due to the county government's aggressive recruitment of businesses. Similar methods of development can be seen and applied to other edge cities as well. Tysons recruited businesses with
1927-519: The new combined LRT/BRT system to nearly 100,000. The project would be funded and operated through both federal and local sources. As of 2010, it is unclear whether or not the new transit system would be operated by CCT, a new agency, or even another existing agency such as MARTA. In 2015, Flex buses were added in Cobb County. They are organized into three zones in Powder Springs and Austell. There
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1974-482: The promise of growth in the future. More businesses coming in allowed for the city to grow which led to the businesses growing as well. A chain reaction was created which crafted the modern-day Tysons. This community was also an example of politics playing a role in developing an edge city. It could be traced to a special commission established at the request of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors that examined
2021-440: The rise of Edge City." In comparison with urban centers edge cities offer global corporations many advantages: cheaper land, security, efficient land communications, advanced technological installations, and a high quality of life for their employees and executives. The appeal of edge cities attract large corporations as well, boosting the already growing city. This concept has showcased the impact that national economies have on
2068-408: The same fare ($ 2.50) with a Breeze Card . CobbLinc's annual operating budget is about $ 12.9 million (2004), from fares and the general county budget, as well as Federal grants . All buses make automatic announcements inside the bus of upcoming stops and major roads, and stop requests from passengers. This is done by pre-recorded voice announcements for the vision-impaired and LED message signs for
2115-514: The start. The first edge city was Detroit's New Center , developed in the 1920s, three miles (5 km) north of downtown, as a new downtown for Detroit. New Center and the Miracle Mile section of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles are considered the earliest automobile-oriented urban forms. However the two were built with radically different purposes in mind (New Center as an office park,
2162-438: The wooded hills above the freeways. The Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball play their games at Truist Park , which is located in Cumberland. It is situated ten miles (16 km) northwest of downtown Atlanta at the junction of I-75 and I-285 (the "Cobb Cloverleaf") in Cobb County . Although small portions lie within incorporated Smyrna , the majority of the area is unincorporated and shares ZIP code 30339 with
2209-423: Was felt that "mass transit frequently could not serve them well". Pedestrian access to and circulation within an edge city was perceived to be impractical if not impossible, even if residences are nearby. Revitalization of edge cities was seen to be "the major urban renewal project of the 21st century". Today, many edge cities have plans for densification, sometimes around a walkable downtown-style core, often with
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