We've also done Dun & Bradstreet runs on ethnic restaurants, only to discover with some incredulity that restaurant critics have not yet discovered edge cities like Rosslyn-Ballston, Va., where immigrants have launched Afghanistani, Thai, Salvadoran, and otherwise fragrant, intriguing, and tasty eateries.
Some other rules of thumb have emerged:
Worry about the future of places that rely on government tenants. Government workers in places like downtown Atlanta or the Security Boulevard area of Baltimore seem to live out of brown paper bags; they create little demand for lively shops and restaurants surrounding their offices. Also, government is not a growth industry.
Take antigrowth movements as positive indicators. Look at the people who successfully repulsed Walt Disney's plan for a theme park near the Manassas National Battlefield. What you observe is an attractive target market -- affluent and educated people concerned about quality of life. If they care that much about the place they're in, it must have something remarkable going for it.
Look for places that have made significant civic investment in art museums, streetscapes, public transportation, and parks. To thrive long term, a place has to have people who care about it -- stakeholders who have affection for it, who think of it as theirs -- like the Uptown/Central Avenue area of Phoenix or the Rice University/Texas Medical Center area of Houston. The earmark of such concern is charming and lasting nonprofit investment, like the famously glitzy, $73-million, 3,000-seat, completely privately financed Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, near Irvine, in Orange County, Calif.
Pay attention to strong public-private partnerships. Edge cities rarely have mayors and city councils. But they have frequently created "establishments" or "councils of the gods," full of CEOs who thrash out the burning issues of the day. A prime example is the Buckhead Coalition, in Buckhead, near Atlanta, or the Houston Uptown Association, in the Galleria area. If there is no such formal or informal council of the powerful -- which inexplicably appears to be the case in, for example, the Denver Tech Center edge city -- how does anything significant get done?
Consider the sight of tower cranes a cause for slack-jawed amazement. As recently as two years ago, North American edge cities were so overbuilt that the 10 million square feet of new office buildings going up in Mexico City exceeded all 226 U.S. markets combined. Today U.S. commercial real estate is reviving, but there are still bargains to be found: real estate is changing hands at prices below original cost. That's why new construction -- as in the Platinum Triangle area of Cobb County, in the Atlanta region -- remains an intriguing market anomaly.
Look for imaginative retrofit. If you see down-at-the-heels shopping centers being gutted and rehabilitated for new use, pay attention. Rehabilitation may represent an edge city moving into the fourth wave -- the search for civilization and soul. Some of those retrofits involve moving way upscale, housing Hermes and Tiffany's, as Tysons Corner, Va., is doing. Some gut jobs now house new play centers for children. Others are becoming arts centers. And then there are the seedy shopping strips that are being made over into hopping night-club and virtual-reality strips, as in the Richmond Avenue area of Houston. (I love the Yucatan Liquor Stand.) A crucial sign: the parking lots. If you see them being jackhammered to be replaced by expensive, structured parking decks to free up land for new building, that is way hot demand.
Look for wealthy minorities. One of the vestiges of racism is that most people still don't realize that the top third of all African Americans in this country make more money and have more education than the average white person does and that almost all of those African Americans live in predominantly edge-city environments that are usually 70% to 90% white, where their market needs are not met. Did you know that the Lanham/ Landover edge city in Maryland, outside D.C., which has a highly affluent, educated African American majority, shows a higher growth rate than Plano, Tex., and still doesn't have a first-rate restaurant or bookstore?
Keep your eye on enterprises with a proven track record in spotting great edge-city locations. Borders Bookstores, recently bought out by K-mart, recognizes that edge cities are full of people with advanced degrees who yearn for huge, full-service bookstores with couches and coffee bars. Other significant players that research and find quality locations include Ritz-Carlton, Embassy Suites, and Nordstrom.
Be wary of places that are full of clichÉs. If you're looking at a community that thinks that a new Bennigan's or TGI Friday's is the epitome of chic, run -- do not walk. The next thing you'll hear is bragging about food courts. Ask people where they go for their morning coffee. If the answer is McDonald's drive-thru, be concerned. Find a place where coffee shops that sell expensive, flavored coffee -- like Starbucks -- are opening on every corner, for example, the Newport Beach area of Orange County, Calif., or even downtown Washington, D.C.
Throughout history, people have built cities to meet their needs. The turn of the third millennium is no different. The edge cities we are building today will evolve to meet our needs. How we build them will describe our values in, literally, the most concrete way possible.
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Joel Garreau, author of Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (Doubleday/Anchor, 1991), is a principal of the Edge City Group. The Edge City Database is distributed by Strategic Mapping Inc., in association with Dun & Bradstreet, 800-866-2255.
THE HOTTEST EDGE CITIES ARE KID-FRIENDLY
The baby boom has aged, and not surprisingly, 1991 was the crest of an echo boom during which more babies were born in the United States than in any year since the previous peak -- in the heralded 1957. If you're looking for hot edge cities, look for places that make life easy for moms and dads. This is bad news for old downtowns. It is great news for places with first-rate school systems. According to the Edge City Database, the top 10 urban cores, as measured by the percentage of residents who are married, with kids under 18, include the following:
1. North Coast, Calif. (San Diego area)
2. Schaumberg Area, Ill. (Chicago area)
3. East-West Tollway/Naperville, Ill. (Chicago area)
4. I-15 North/Escondido, Calif. (San Diego area)
5. Edens Area, Ill. (Chicago area)
6. Princeton/Route 1, N.J. (New York City area)
7. I-80/287, N.J. (New York City area)
8. Columbia, Md. (Washington, D.C., area)
9. King of Prussia/Route 202, Pa. (Philadelphia area)
10. I-287/78, N.J. (New York City area)
