Edge Cities perform this function in a world where the main product is information and decisions. This shift to the Information Age is the origin of the rapid growth in Edge Cities. Among the original purposes of cities was to provide safety for those inside the settlement compared to the barbarity of the outside world. Edge City remains true to that conception. Edge city has privatized the domains in which large numbers of strangers come together and supervises and controls these interactions to an extent impossible in the central cities.
Homes have to exist first and be available at a price people can pay.
A rule of thumb is that a developer must sell a house for 4 times the price of the land it is on. As Edge cities develop, the price of land can skyrocket and with it the cost of housing. The only way to solve this problem is to build at higher density. These are row houses or houses on very small lots, thrown up in a hurry to accommodate the legions of workers flocking to the edge cities. In design, they are tenements turned on their sides.