“Shopping malls, business parks, single-family subdivisions, and garden apartment complexes all seemed to be jumbled together without plan or design. / Not being legal municipalities, these outer cities also have another strange characteristic for a city--they have not distinct elected government. Within these edge cities there thus seems to be no real civic order. They appear to be public places, but in reality, they are private...What really makes these places break with the past is not that they are newer, shinier, or have more glass and marble. What makes them different is that they are private domains rather than incorporated legally defined areas.”

(Palen, J. John. The Suburbs. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995. Print.)