Edge Cities and Sphinxs
This is the fourth response paper for my Racial Patterns of Urbanization class:
Edge City: Life on the New Frontier: Chapter 1
Chapter 1 of Garreau’s Edge City is an introduction to an emerging urban form. Interestingly, according to Garreau (1991), “every single American city that is growing, is growing in the fashion of Los Angeles, with multiple urban cores” (p. 3). These cores evolve into the “Edge City.” The heart of these new urban structures is not the “sidewalks of New York of song and fable” (Garreau, 1991, p. 3). Instead, the new “village square” is the suburban mall. I think that the introduction to Edge Cities takes Davis’ (1992) treatise on Los Angeles and expands the L.A. formula to other urban areas.
Edge Cities all contain similar aspects which create a new urbanity. According to Garreau (1991), “[Edge Cities] contain all the functions a city ever has, albeit in a spread-out form that few have come to recognize for what it is” (p. 4). These new cities “are a vigorous world of pioneers and immigrants, rising far from the old downtowns, where little save villages or farmland lay only thirty years before” (Garreau, 1991, p. 4).
Garreau states that there are three elements of which have contributed to the creation or formation of Edge Cities. The first element occurred when people “moved…out past the traditional idea of what constituted a city” (Garreau, 1991, p. 4). The second factor, according to Garreau (1991), was when “we moved our marketplace out to where we lived” (p. 4). Lastly, Garreau (1991), states that we “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” (p. 4).
Garreau lists several examples of current Edge Cities, including the “Schaumburg area west of O’Hare Airport” outside of Chicago, Illinois. Anecdotally, having lived in Chicago, I am enjoying the sociological history of how the almost endlessness of Schaumburg came into being.
Garreau (1991) provides the reader with a handbook of what constitutes an urban environment: “tall buildings, bright lights, office space that represents white-collar jobs, shopping, entertainment, prestigious hotels, corporate headquarters, hospitals with CAT scan, [and] population” (p. 5). Edge Cities mirror their historical counterparts in many ways. Schaumburg offers everything that Chicago delivers except for a rich history.
The commutes for today’s “metropolitan American” are dissimilar to the past. Commuters “skirt the old [city] centers” (Garreau, 1991, p. 5). This is in striking contrast to Mumford’s (1961) Movement and the Avenue where the goal was to increase movement within the city. It is ironic that it is “increasingly difficult in an old downtown to buy such a commodity item as a television set” (Garreau, 1991, p. 5).
I think that one of the most important insights regarding Edge Cities is that they are rarely governed by a “mayor or a city council.” Edge Cities become nameless, nebulas urban environs with phantom power centers. Garreau provides a five-part definition of Edge City. According to Garreau (1991):
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Edge City [is any location that] has five million square feet or more of leasable office space, has 600,000 square feet or more of leasable retail space, has more jobs than bedrooms, is perceived by the population as one place, and was nothing like ‘city’ as recently as thirty years ago” (p. 7).
Garreau compares Edge Cities to the Baroque cities of old and says that they are “works in progress.” Edge City expansion seems limitless. This seems comparable to Mumford’s The Ideology of Power. According to Mumford (1961), “the merchant cannot be too rich; the state cannot possess too much territory; the city cannot become too big” (p. 366).
Like Davis’ Los Angeles, Garreau’s Edge City seems to be artificial. According to Garreau (1991), Edge Cities “lack livability, civilization, community, neighborhood, and even a soul” (p. 8). It is frightening that “Edge City will be the forge of the fabled American way of life well into the twenty-first century” (Garreau, 1991, p. 8).
The spread of the Edge City is introduced in Davis’ City of Quartz. Both Davis and Garreau write about the struggle between the “bulldozer” of development and the “[Joshua] tree” of preservation. Garreau (1991) writes of this divide and states that “nowhere in the American national character, as it turns out, is there as deep a divide as that between our reverence for ‘unspoiled’ nature and our ‘enduring devotion to progress’” (p. 12).
It is disturbing to me that the lack of a sense of community that Mumford writes about in the New Freedom is perpetuated in the Edge City. I would have hoped that the once eroded sense of community would have emerged in the Edge City. Especially when Garreau (1991) states that “Edge City may be the result of Americans striving once again for a new, ‘restorative synthesis’” (p. 14).
Edge City: Life on the New Frontier: Chapter 6
Chapter 6 of Garreau’s Edge City is a disturbing exposé into the “shadow governments” which control Edge Cities. Similar to Davis’ piece on the power brokers of L.A., Garreau informs the reader of the businesses and private interests which control the Edge City.
Phoenix is the target of Garreau’s chapter 6 but it would seem that similar occurrences (given Davis’ writings) take place in many Edge Cities. The basic power structure of the Edge City shadow government is similar to the U.S. Government. According to Garreau (1991):
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[S]hadow governments levy taxes, adjudicate disputes, provide police protection, run fire departments, provide health care, channel development, plan regionally, enforce esthetic standards, run buses, run railroads, run airports, build roads, fill potholes, publish newspapers, pump water, generate electricity, clean streets, landscape grounds, pick up garbage, cut grass, rake leaves, remove snow, offer recreation, and provide the hottest social service in the United States today: day care (p. 185).
The frightening aspect of these shadow governments is that they do not have to abide by the U.S. Constitution. Individuals lose many rights which they take for granted and even the vote is reduced to “one dollar, one vote.”
An Edge City breeding ground, “Phoenix is the first municipality in America to recognize formally, for planning purposes, that it is made up of a constellation of Edge Cities, locally referred to as ‘urban villages’” (Garreau, 1991, p. 197). The city of Phoenix seems no longer to be in control of the populace. Instead, it has been co-opted by developers and private interests who struggle to maintain control over emerging progressive powers.
The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women:
In Chapter 3, Wilson introduces the reader to the “cesspool city: London.” According to Wilson (1991), “Victorian Britain became the world’s first urbanized society” (p. 26). Once again, Wilson dives into a middle-class treatise that is distorted by her seemingly bourgeoisie views. Wilson (1991) writes of the “Victorian identity: the optimism, the belief in the efficacy of providence, and in the ability of the individual to triumph over circumstance” (p. 27).
According to Wilson (1991), “much Victorian journalism was a literature of voyeurism” (p. 27). Furthermore, this voyeurism was gendered. The Victorian voyeur was a man. This had an effect on women who “became more vulnerable to the ‘male gaze’” (Wilson, 1991, p. 27).
The country and the city is an ever-present theme in this chapter. Wilson (1991) refers to it as the “town versus [the] country” (p. 27). The “filth, noise and overcrowding of the cities” (Wilson, 1991, p. 29) contrasted with the positive myth of the countryside. One of the “frightful” aspects of this new urbanity was the “promiscuous mingling of classes in close proximity on the street” (Wilson, 1991, p. 29). Classism, racism, and sexism were seemingly everywhere in Victorian society. The rich were uncomfortable traversing next to the poor, women were reduced to objects or marriageable property, and people of color were constantly vilified. It is fascinating to see how women were scapegoated. In the “1842 Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Classes,” women were “blamed…for the demoralization of the working class” (Wilson, 1991, p. 35).
A fascinating development of this time was creation of town planning ideas which has been utilized in the 20th century. The creative energies of Sir Christopher Wren and others provide today’s cities with plans/structures which are very Victorian.
In Chapter 5, Wilson writes about the experiences of women in Chicago and New York. These cities provided bohemian refuges as well as urban “prototypes” for Europeans. Wilson (1991) writes about how Chicago “appeared to have a life force which moved, controlled and determined the destinies of its inhabitants, who were will-less in the face of its blind energy” (p. 67). This reflected the “City Beautiful movement” which said that “architecture and planning can, of themselves, change human behavior and revolutionise human society” (Wilson, 1991, p. 69). Chicago’s “White City” or “Columbian Exposition” was a great example of how planners and architects hoped to influence the cities inhabitants. Delving past the shining lights of the White City, Wilson (1991) writes about the oppression of women and of the “preoccupations” of “eugenics “and “assembly line efficiency” (p. 70).
The Jane Addams Hull House was created to help the inhabitants of Chicago who were not part of the dominant city paradigm. According to Wilson (1991), “at Hull House both women and men were involved in social work, community work, a soup kitchen, and the organization of the workforce to agitate for better conditions and pay” (p. 72). In fact, “some of the most important work undertaken at Hull House was the support of groups of strikers and the organization of campaigns against the sweated labour of women and children” (Wilson, 1991, p. 73).
Chapter 6 is full of historical context regarding the formation of Vienna, the goings on of famous Viennese, and the architecture of the period. The duality of Vienna is exemplified due to its identities as both the “centre of Jewish life and of anti-Semitism” (Wilson, 1991, p. 84). According to Wilson (1991), Vienna “was a centre of avant-garde creativity yet had not cast off its pre-democratic authoritarian form of government” (p. 85).
The inclusion of Freud and his rampant sexism is valuable due to Wilson’s feminist slant; however, I think it seems fragile to transpose his thoughts with the framework of a city. I often felt lost during this chapter. Perhaps our class discussions will provide me with a contextual basis for reflection. A theme which seems to be present in all of the aforementioned chapters is the city as a mechanism for control. Wilson (1991) states that “the city experience fractured and threatened human subjectivity; somehow the towers of concrete, glass and steel were to reimpose control, community and order” (p. 99). This reminds of the Matrix movie and how control is used to maintain synthetic community within a computerized order.
Resources
Davis, M. (1992). City of quartz: excavating the future in los angeles. New York: Vintage.
Garreau, Joel (1991). Edge city: Life on the new frontier. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
Mumford, L. (1961). The city in history: its origins, its transformations, and its prospects. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Wilson, E. (1991). The sphinx in the city: urban life, the control of disorder, and women. London, England: University of California Press.
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