Beyond edge cities: job decentralization and urban sprawl

The issues related to the suburbanization of population and the reshaping of the economic land-scape in metropolitan areas have drawn much attention during past decades. These issues are important to planning and policy makers because public services, infrastructure provision, tax bases, and housing and land markets are linked to the urban landscape of population and eco-nomic activity. The authors analyze the relationship between population and employment changes in the spatial context and the impact of edge cities on residential location choice. They conclude that emerging edge cities push population further out and that the effect of edge cities diminishes if edge cities are located further away from the inner city. The decentralization of employment and the suburbanization of popula-tion are among the significant changes in U.S. metropolitan areas during the past several decades. One consequence of these changes is that most scholars now believe that decentralization and suburbanization have contributed to various social and economic problems that plague large cities, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. The well-documented problems include crime, insufficient tax bases, racial tension, poverty, poor schools, and poor publi