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Edgeless Cities: a reportSuburbs now contain the majority of office space in many of the country's top metropolitan office markets, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. Before 1980, central cities dominated the office market, but over the last two decades, office space has become much more dispersed. The old, central-city downtown has lost its primacy in most major office markets.According to Bruce Katz, Director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, "This study confirms that sprawl and decentralization are the dominant trends in the American economy today. It provides more evidence of why we are increasingly stuck in traffic, losing open space and breathing polluted air." In addition to examining the city-suburban trend in office space, the study compares the amount of office space in a metropolitan area's primary downtown with the amount found in "edgeless cities." An edgeless city is defined as a highly dispersed office cluster, lacking clear boundaries, and containing less than 5 million square feet of office space (as compared to an "edge city," which has recognized borders and contains at least 5 million square feet). Nationwide, 38 percent of office space was found in traditional downtown areas, while 37 percent was found in edgeless locations in 1999. Based on the percent of office space in a traditional downtown versus in an edgeless city, the study classifies thirteen top metropolitan office markets as either "core dominated," "balanced," "dispersed," or "edgeless." New York and Chicago are "core dominated." Boston, Washington D.C., Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are "balanced." "Dispersed" cities include Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Detroit. The "edgeless" cities identified in the study are Philadelphia and Miami. Robert E. Lang, of the Fannie Mae Foundation, the study's author, said, "Edgeless cities should concern anyone seeking to curb sprawl because they are the most dispersed, low-density form of development. They are not mixed-use, pedestrian friendly, or accessible by transit, and they cannot be remade into traditional downtowns. They represent a new and different urban form." Download the full report from the Brookings Institute at www.brook.edu. |
