LA - Edge City

• How do Edge Cities form?


  Suburbanisation and counter urbanisation of people and industry that creates urban sprawl. And the movement of jobs to the fringes means that people can rely on these places for employment.
• Edge Cities in LA

  • LA has very low density housing that covers a huge land mass
  • LA also has a vast inequality of wealth in society and is still recovering from the 1992 race riots
  • Areas such as compton are poor which are next to rich places like Beverly Hills.
  • This shows that social integration is poor in LA
• Suburbanisation problems - Economic Inequality 


  • Created a doughnut city (declined centre as a result of rapid growth of the surrounding suburbs)
  • Lack of prosperity of jobs in the centre because lots of the industry has moved out.
  • Downtown LA has TNC high paid jobs.
• What problems have Edge Cities caused in LA?


  • wealthy people have moved to edge city settlements, leaving poor and disadvantaged sections of society in the city boundary causing the city to further decline after decentralisation.
• Edge City example - Anaheim- Positives 


  • Population of 340,512
  • 2 hours from central LA
  • 1955 - Disneyland created
  • 78,299 employees = multiplier effect and more tourism jobs created
  • Impact of $8.5 billion in Southern California
• Edge City example - Anaheim Negatives 


  • High house prices due to tourism and demand
  • Taking skilled people out of LA to go and work in Anaheim
• Data About LA


  • Income inequality in LA = 0.5 which represents a large income gap The Gini is on a range of 0 = perfect income equality to 1 = total income inequality.