Urban Forms in Suburbia
The Rise of the Edge City
Part 4 :
Contents :
Part 6
"As centralization was the natural "monarchy", men were compelled to centralize
and revolve as closely as possible around an exalted common center, for any
desirable exploitation of the man-unit. The idea of democracy is contrary.
Decentralization - reintegrated - is the reflex: many free units developing
strength as they learn to function and grow together in adequate space, mutual
freedom a reality." (Wright, p. 83)
Simply, Edge City offers what Americans want. They have voted with their feet
for it. Whether or not the architects believe Americans really know what they
are doing, there is a definite, purposeful movement to the periphery. Americans
want freedom of choice, privacy, and the security of the edge.
Edge City offers choice. Anyone can have his own private castle. Everyone can
pay for just what he wants. Anyone can live just where he wants and can go
anywhere, too. Automobiles promise nearly unlimited freedom of mobility, and
Edge City is set up to exploit that power.
"Spaciousness is for safety as well as beauty." (Wright, p. 96)
The vast distances over which Edge Cities sprawl does much to affect crime
rates as well. Though not completely unknown, crime is far rarer in Edge City
than in old cities with comparable institutions. Not only does Edge City dilute
the density of street crime activity, it also works to prevent it. It is much
more difficult for a fugitive to run and "blend in" in a suburb than in a city.
The individualized culture of the edge would cause anyone less than middle
class to stand out. Also, some criminals simply would not know where to rob in
an edge city.
On the other hand, Edge City has also spawned the largest, most effective type
of crime: "white collar" crime. Illegal financial trading is no longer limited
to Wall Street, thanks to the emergence of computer networks. Indeed, since
many high technology (and high dollar) companies populate the edges, it is not
possible for a white collar criminal to work out of the same pastoral setting
so propounded by Frank Lloyd Wright and Ebenezer Howard. Neither of them would
ever have dreamed of the theft of millions of dollars out in the gardens.
Another safety issue not predicted by the visionaries is that of direct
assault. Wright believed that, exposed to Nature, man would evolve to a more
peaceful self. Rather, man has taken his traditional practices of rape, assault
and molestation out into the privacy of the edge. Here, such crimes are even
harder for authorities to spot. Indeed, some authorities (ie. tenants'
associations) may even be unwilling to interfere with such practices, judging
them to be out of their jurisdiction. It seems odd that developments are so
well protected against crime by outsiders, while that of insiders continues
unchecked. Such is the price of extreme privacy.
Old towns and cities still do have a great deal going for them. People are
simply used to living there. Forms of government have evolved to address
problems of inequality and to protect and serve citizens. Cities today have all
the necessary infrastructure to support large populations in place and it is
much more efficient and concentrated there. The values and norms of city life
are also widely accepted and enforced and they seem to function well enough for
people to get by happily.
Cities have evolved functions and infrastructure over a long period of time to
address the needs of their inhabitants. Water pipes and sewers have long been
placed and necessary utilities are in place. Other "infrastructure", such as
police, fire, and government, are in place as well. Over hundreds of years,
cities have developed the necessary skills to use these services effectively.
It is also very efficient for people to be concentrated, since infrastructural
members then only have to be larger, not reaching greater distances as in
suburban development.
Cities also have developed social functions to control their populations
effectively. The pubs of the nineteenth century have given way to bars and
restaurants for entertainment and socialization. Social, service and political
clubs allow people to feel involved in the shaping of their surroundings. Also,
people are used to living in traditional urban settings, and have gotten quite
good at it. Norms control behavior in the numerous public places found in
cities, and people value the knowledge that others will behave in predictable
ways.
Cities just work. Cities effectively allow people a say in their future. They
open up possibilities for self betterment. They allow for cultural and normal
diversity. Cities really do allow all of the benefits so admired by historians.
However, this love is often vastly overstated. "The way things were" is
romanticized, painting a false image of perfect hamlets of happy peasants.
Cities have always been "in the midst of a crime epidemic", "filthy",
"dangerous", and "shockingly inhumane". Cities do work, just not as well as
some people seem to believe they once did.
"Town and country must be married, and out of this joyous union will
spring a new hope, a new life, and a new civilization." Ebenezer Howard, 1898
(Fishman 2, p. 23)
There is also a group of people who believe that there is indeed an alternative
to Edge City living for the upper class. Though the "New Town Movement" is not
a new one, it continues to explore the alternatives to Edge City. This movement
was founded initially to answer two great 19th-century concerns: moral and
physical decay in the urban core and the need for suitable housing for the
emerging middle class. Basing themselves on the premise that Edge City is
indeed not the fulfillment of Ebenezer Howard's vision, numerous
planners have labored to create new expressions of Howard's answer.
"the Pedestrian Pocket is defined as a balanced, mixed use area within a
quarter mile or a five minute walking radius of a transit station. The
functions within this 50 to 100-acre zone include housing, offices, retail, day
care, recreation, and parks. Up to two thousand units of housing and one
million square feet of office space can be located within three blocks of the
transit station using typical residential densities and four-story office
configurations." (Kelbaugh, p. 11)
There is another possibility besides the unchecked expansion of edge city. In
1988, a meeting of architects at the University of Washington discussed the
possibility of a completely new, and certainly workable, urban/suburban form:
The Pedestrian Pocket. Pockets would be based on free markets, just as Edge
Cities are. Cities would zone certain 50-100 acre sites along their light rail
system for mixed use and let developers build houses, complexes, or even entire
pockets. Pedestrian Pockets are based on the human scale of walking time and
foster the use of public transportation and the creation of community space.
They can even coexist peacefully with other forms of Edge City construction and
stand a good chance of being more attractive than competing condominiums and
office parks. The only problem with the Pedestrian Pocket concept is that it
requires a light rail system, and most cities simply do not have such a
system. If commuter rail was to once again be built up and if companies once
again situated themselves either along these rail lines or in the central city,
the Pedestrian Pocket concept would work. Without light rail, though, it is
doomed.
Another alternative to suburban growth is an outgrowth and continuation of
Ebenezer Howard's planned towns. Popularized, and made viable in America, by
the architectural team of Plater-Zybek and Duany, the New Town is also an
attractive alternative to Edge City. Like the Pedestrian Pocket, the New Town
is a "back to human scale" concept. It focuses on compact, planned towns which,
though allowing entry by automobiles, encourage pedestrian movement. They rely
on a complex and strict building code to force the market to create a compact,
new version of the old village. These regulations require porches and
"harmonious" architecture and outlaw front yards and driveways. The most
successful example is the Plater-Zybek/Duany village of Seaside, Florida, which
has indeed evolved into a charming village. However, as pointed out by Peter
Calthorpe in The Pedestrian Pocket Book, the New Town is a difficult
sell. It is too big and expensive for a single developer to afford, and it must
initially be relatively built up for it to be viable. Also, though retail and
commercial locations were planned for New Towns from the beginning, these urban
forms have been slow to appear on the New Town scene. When they have come, as
in Reston, Virginia, they tend to be built in a more Edge Cityish manner than
desired by New Town planners. New Towns have so far only replaced the
residential portion of Edge City. It is unlikely that they will succeed beyond
this level.
Finally, there is what has been called The Big Problem with both Edge Cities
and private governments: exclusion. Put bluntly, Edge Cities are no place for
the poor. Neither are they a place for proponents of the "soft path" of energy
independence. Edge Cities require money from every participant. Private
governments do not serve those who can not or will not pay for them. The edge
City future has no place for the less fortunate, and these people are already
being left behind in the old cities.
Edge Cities require the use of an automobile. Without an automobile, the
geography of time is returned to the scale of space. A person on foot, or even
on a bicycle, simply can not use an edge city as a city. The most he can hope
for is to use a few of its services as an individual entity. For instance, a
pedestrian might be able to reach a movie theater or a shopping center.
However, a pedestrian simply can not conceive of an Edge City in time terms. He
must settle for the physically coherent old cities. He can conceptualize of
Edge City as a place, much in the way 19th-century workers could imagine life
on an English estate. However, like the wage-earning worker, the strict
pedestrian is locked out.
Furthermore, pedestrians are pointedly shunned by the time-scale buildings of
Edge City. The automobile demands an architecture on massive scales. The
designers of Edge City responded to this demand with extremely spread-out
construction linked with highways and pedestrian-inaccessable streets. No one
in an Edge City office, condominium, or mall could conceive of a pedestrian in
their midst. Most people have trouble navigating too-large parking lots,
sometimes preferring to drive their cars from one end of a mall to another!
(Garreau, P. 464) A mere human would be dwarfed by time-scale building and
signs anyway, perhaps even finding it difficult to locate an entrance. Even
Frank Lloyd Wright could not get around this. He designed highway interchanges
with pedestrian walkways, but he realized that the scale of a highway is far
too large to expect a pedestrian to be able to use it. (Wright, pp. 115-117)
His solution to this problem was to eliminate it: In his vision, every
American would live in Broadacres. As we have seen, this is simply not
possible. Even if it was desirable for every person to live in Edge City, which
is highly debatable, it is inconceivable to expect every person to be able to
afford it.
This brings us to the next part of The Big Problem. Edge Cities are built upon
capital. They are primarily an expression of consumerism and industry. They
require a well-paying job. Edge City housing, though not in the estate
range, is extremely expensive. This is done for both practicality and purpose.
Practically, building a large, spread-out, Edge City housing complex is an
enormous expense, requiring far more land than an apartment tower. Developers
feel justified in charging a similar amount as a typical suburban house. After
all, Edge City housing is always "centrally located, located on manicured
grounds, and newly constructed." Edge City housing is also purposely priced
outside the range of the urban underclass. Edge City considers non-salaried
people "undesirable". After all, they might not have a car and insist on
walking to work!
Excluded from housing and lacking transportation, the underclass is excluded
from Edge City. They cannot live near a corporate campus so they cannot walk to
an Edge City job so they cannot have one. Without an Edge City job, they
cannot earn enough to afford an Edge City house. The most they can expect is
public transportation to a mall. Here they can either compete with upper-class
teenagers for low-paying jobs or spend their wages on upper-priced goods.
Increasingly, too, the mall is driving inner-city businesses out of business,
forcing the city dweller into the untenable position of shopping at Edge City
malls or sticking to "strip mall" chain stores that cater to, and prey on,
their needs. Edge City leaves the underclass working in a low-wage service job,
living in a decaying apartment, and shopping and playing either in the
remaining city establishments or "invading" the fringes of Edge City. The upper
class escapes to their own, time-based cities, leaving the underclass with the
problems of the old space-based cities.
The old cities, too, are drained. Without upper-class dwellers, banks are
unwilling to loan money for city improvements. Without money, the old cities
are decaying. Though this practice of "redlining" is explicitly illegal, it has
been documented many times and certainly continues and will continue.
(see especially Mohl) Banks feel perfectly justified in denying loans to those
who they feel cannot repay. It is their business to make money from loan
repayment, not to lose it on bad loans. However, it seems certain that their
judgment of risks is questionable in many cases. The Savings and Loan
establishment of the 1980s was perfectly happy to loan huge amounts to
high-risk developments and ventures in Edge City, while starving the inner
city. Perhaps it seemed that a loan for the development of the periphery was an
investment while one for the reconstruction of the core was throwing good money
after bad. Perhaps instead these decisions were made more because those with
power and influence lived in the periphery. It is extremely unlikely that a
Savings and Loan decision maker would live in an urban core.
The best a modern old city can hope for is to attract an upper-class colony in
a downtown core. These redevelopment plans usually call for redeveloping the
city into an Edge City! Any number of examples can be provided of redevelopment
plans that call for auto-oriented construction in the city core. Often these
plans fall flat because, all things being equal, the upperclass will head for
free parking. They see the redeveloped core as no more than another pocket of
their own time-scale city. Only a very well thought-out urban core can compete
with a freshly designed mall.
Even if they do compete, though, urban core redevelopment is usually built to
attract the upperclass, further excluding the underclass. Wage earners cannot
afford to shop on Newbury Street in the center of Boston any more than they can
go to the Atrium in Wellesley Hills. Though central Boston is, without a doubt,
one of the most successful redevelopments of an urban core to date, it is
important to remember than it is built on top of none other than Herbert
Gans' Urban Village of West Boston. Perhaps that definition of success
should be rethought.
Boston has survived the transition to a central hub of a vast Edge City, but at
what cost? West Roxbury is just as blighted as any underclass inner city. The T
system's Orange Line, which runs into West Roxbury, is avoided by the majority
of riders and suffers without proper funding and maintenance. Gans' West Boston
has been levelled and replaced with the imposing, time-scale Government Center.
Even with an "unqualified success" on their hands, Boston city managers often
run short on necessary funds. Meanwhile, the city continues to fight for Edge
City dominance by spending billions of dollars to extend the Massachusetts
Turnpike right into the center of the city so Edge dwellers can reach the heart
of the city with less trouble. Recently the city centers of Quincy Market and
Newbury Street were flooded with an inordinate number of police officers in
order to keep the peace so Christmas shoppers would not be frightened away. The
local news station, meanwhile, reported that the West Roxbury force could not
keep up with their casework and that enforcement there would have to suffer.
Boston, and any other old city wishing to compete with Edge City, must ask
itself if the struggle for Edge City dominance is really worth the sacrifice of
the "real" population of the city.
Simply put, the people who core redevelopment efforts cater to do not pay the
bills for the efforts on their behalf. Cities still rely on property taxes for
their main source of income. Edge City dwellers, though, can live anywhere they
want, usually staying sidestepping the central city for the more suburban
living of places like Garreau's Lordvale. They pay their taxes for the benefit
of Wellesley Hills, while Boston spends their precious resources to attract
them to the core. Though, doubtlessly, their expenditures on Newbury Street do
benefit the City of Boston, those expenses are repaid in spades with projects
like the central artery expansion and increased police protection. The
underclass of Boston spends its precious wages in other areas of the city, only
to receive inequitable, even questionable, benefits.
Finally, there is the issue of private governments. These institutions are
,by their very nature, exclusive. The fundamental rule of private
governing is the traditional law of capital: You get what you pay for. The
underclass simply can not afford the protection of a private government. They
cannot spend enough in an urban-core mall to justify the immense security often
found in suburban malls. They cannot afford to form a tenants' association to
protect their homes, let alone the elaborate security precautions often found
in Edge City housing developments. Without a private government of their own,
the urban underclass is not party to the benefits of private government.
Instead they must rely on the strained resources of the traditional municipal
governments that, as has been illustrated above, often cares more about
catering to the extra-urban population than its own constituents.
Indeed, it is often the very purpose of private government to exclude the
underclass. Private security, from the mall to the corporate campus to the
condominium, is instructed to keep at bay those who do not "belong" in such
places. This is based partly on the upperclass' real fear of the underclass.
Quite simply, those who are excluded from both the material and social
artifacts of modern society are often quite willing to attempt to take what
they can. Edge Cities and private governments are, has been stated numerous
times here, exclusive to those who "belong" there. While bringing freedom to
the upper class, the emergence of the Edge City brings, at the very least,
trouble for the rest.
Part 4 :
Contents :
Part 6