Editing Edge city (section)

==Definitions==
In 1991, Garreau established five rules for a place to be considered an edge city:
* Has five million or more square feet (465,000 m<sup>2</sup>) of leasable office space
* Has 600,000 square feet (56,000 m<sup>2</sup>) or more of leasable retail space
* Has more jobs than bedrooms
* Is perceived by the population as one place
* Was nothing like a "city" as recently as 30 years ago. Then it was just bedrooms, if not cow pastures.{{sfn|Garreau|1991|p=7}}

Most edge cities develop at or near existing or planned [[freeway]] intersections, and are especially likely to develop near major [[airport]]s.  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 the United States, compared to 45 downtowns of comparable size<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.newgeography.com/content/004786-the-curious-comeback-of-us-downtowns|title=The Curious Comeback Of U.S. Downtowns - Newgeography.com|website=www.newgeography.com}}</ref>—and are large geographically because they are built at [[automobile]] scale.

===Types of edge cities===
Garreau identified three distinct varieties of the edge city phenomenon:
* '''[[Boomburb]]s''' or "boomers" – the most common type, having developed incrementally but rapidly around a [[shopping mall]] or [[highway]] interchange, for example [[Tysons, Virginia]], near [[Washington, D.C.]]{{sfn|Garreau|1991|p=114}}
* '''Greenfields''' – originally master-planned as [[new towns]], generally on the suburban fringe, for example [[Reston Town Center]] in [[Reston, Virginia]], near [[Washington, D.C.]]{{sfn|Garreau|1991|p=116}}
* '''Uptowns''' – an older city, town, or [[satellite city]], upon and around which a major regional hub of economic activity rises, for example [[Arlington, Virginia]], across the [[Potomac River]] from [[Washington, D.C.]]{{sfn|Garreau|1991|p=113}}

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''.<ref name="thoughtco">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thoughtco.com/edge-city-1435778|title=Outside Every Metropolis You Will Find an Edge City|work=ThoughtCo|access-date=2018-04-03}}</ref>