Edge City

Joel Garreau, a longtime reporter for The Washington Post, was one of the first people to take the sprawling suburbs, the collections of malls, subdivisions, and office parks seriously. He was one of the first people to call them cities. After publishing his book, academics, and professional urban planners began discussing “edge cities.”

Garreau gives many specifics because he is a reporter, which is how he works. He travels the country looking at different edge cities, starting with the one in his own backyard, Tyson’s Corner, outside Washington, D.C.