The Wired City. revolutionäre Entwicklung durchlaufen. Dank computergestützter Informationstechnologien

Transkript

1 Martina Koll-Schretzenmayr DISP The Wired City Seit drei Jahren in Folge hält San Francisco den vom Yahoo Internet Life Magazine vergebenen Titel The Most Wired City. Als Beurteilungskriterien dienen Quantität und Qualität des Anschlusses der Stadt(-bewohner) ans Internet. Laut einer neuen Studie des US-Wirtschaftsministeriums wird voraussichtlich Mitte 2001 jeder zweite US-Haushalt an das Internet angeschlossen sein. Ende 2000 gab es in Deutschland schätzungsweise 20 Millionen Internet-Nutzer, über ein Viertel aller Bürger zwischen 14 und 69 Jahren sind bereits online. Der Anschluss an Datennetze ist jedoch zunehmend vom guten alten Kabel unabhängig. Längst haben sich drahtlose Technologien durchgesetzt, mit welchen Informationen übermittelt werden können. In der Schweiz standen Ende 2000 etwa 5 Millionen Festnetzanschlüssen 4,6 Millionen Mobilfunk-Anschlüsse gegenüber. In Deutschland hat sich die Zahl der Mobilfunk-Kunden im Jahr 2000 auf insgesamt rund 48 Millionen mehr als verdoppelt und übertrifft damit erstmals die Zahl der Festnetzanschlüsse. Die Telekommunikation hat in den vergangenen beiden Jahrzehnten eine geradezu revolutionäre Entwicklung durchlaufen. Dank computergestützter Informationstechnologien (IT) sind wir in der Lage, Informationen immer rascher, effizienter und einfacher zu erfassen, zu verwalten, zu bearbeiten und mittels Telekommunikation und weltweiter Datennetze zu übermitteln. Die Einsatzgebiete der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (ICT) sind vielfältig und umfassen neben der Telekommunikation beispielsweise auch die Logistik, die Steuerung der Ver- und Entsorgung von Städten, Planung und Kontrolle von Infrastrukturauslastungen oder das Risikomanagement. Entfernungen haben heute eine ganz andere Bedeutung, als dies noch vor zwei Jahrzehnten der Fall war. Allen voran ökonomische, politische und soziale Beziehungen haben hierdurch Veränderungen erfahren. Dies kann nicht ohne Auswirkungen auf die Städte bleiben. Im Wesentlichen können drei Betrachtungsrichtungen unterschieden werden: (1) die Auseinandersetzung mit dem globalen Städtesystem, (2) Untersuchungen auf der Ebene der Stadtregion, (3) Überlegungen zur Zukunft der stadtbildenden Elemente Wohnung, Büro, Strassenraum u.a. Für die Diskussion grundlegend war und ist John Friedmanns (1986) Weltstadthypothese, welche sich mit der Beziehung von Urbanisationsprozessen und ökonomischen Globalisierungstendenzen auseinander setzt. Zum einen wurde damit das Konzept der world cities begründet: ein weltweites hierarchisches System von Schlüsselstädten, welche Kapital und Entscheidungsfunktionen auf sich konzentrieren. Zum anderen kommt in der Weltstadthypothese auch die «städtische Ebene» zum Tragen: world cities als Anziehungspunkte globaler Migrationsströme und Schauplätze von räumlichen und sozialen Disparitäten. In The Informational City (1989) gefolgt von seiner Trilogie The Informational Age (1996, 1997, 1998) geht Manuel Castells davon aus, dass der technologische Wandel zu einem hoch dynamischen Netzwerk von Informations-, Personen und Warenflüssen dem space of flows führt, welcher das statische Raumgefüge der Orte überlagert. Saskia Sassen prägte den Begriff der Neuen Geographie der Zentralität und Marginalität. Die Konzentration der globalen Ökonomie auf einige wenige Städte bringt es mit sich, dass diese internationalen Finanz- und Wirtschaftszentren Bestandteil eines transnationalen Städtesystems werden. Die Einbindung der global cities in ihr nationales Umfeld geht weitgehend verloren, und neue Marginalitäten entstehen: Das einstige Nord-Süd- Gefälle wird aufgelöst, in dem auch in den hoch technisierten Industriestaaten wirtschaftliche Peripherräume auftreten. Auch auf der Ebene der Stadtregion von world cities ist zunehmend ein Gefälle zu verzeichnen, indem den global agierenden Geschäftszentren in wachsendem Umfang Stadtviertel mit ökonomischen und sozialen Problemen gegenüberstehen. Ziel dieser Ausgabe der DISP ist es, den Themenkomplex «Informations- und Telekommunikationstechnologien und deren Auswirkungen auf die Stadt» schlaglichtartig zu beleuchten: Steven Graham stellt fest, dass sich die städtischen Räume, welche dank weltweiter Vernetzung den global-orientierten Transport von Personen, Waren und Informationen organisieren, zu Enklaven entwickeln und sich bei zunehmender globaler Vernetzung untereinander gleichzeitig von den sie direkt umgebenden Stadträumen abkoppeln. Susan Fainstein zeigt in ihrem Artikel am Beispiel von New York, London, Tokio, Paris und der Randstad (NL), dass innerhalb der einzelnen Weltstadtregionen grosse Einkommensunterschiede zu verzeichnen sind. Aufbauend auf einem interdisziplinären Design-Ansatz, präsentiert Tom Horan Prinzipien für die Schaffung vernetzter attraktiver «digitaler Orte», welche die Gelegenheit für Nutzungsvielfalt und die Verknüpfung mit «traditionellen Orten» schaffen. Armin Rücker, Klaus R. Kunzmann und Bruno Heinz Brödner geben einen Überblick über das Angebot an kommunalen Web-Seiten in Deutschland und deren Wirkung auf partizipative Prozesse auf der Ebene der Stadtregion. Aufbauend auf dieser Analyse geben sie zehn Empfehlungen, wie netzbasierte Informations- und Kommunikationsplattformen zu gestalten sind, um lokale Demokratieprozesse wirksam zu unterstützen. Michael Gisler gibt einen Einblick in die Diskussion und den Einsatz von egovernment und grenzt hierbei vom ebusiness ab. In zunehmendem Masse sind räumliche und hier vor allem städtische Systeme von Gefahren, die aus dem Betrieb technischer Systeme resultieren, beeinträchtigt. Ralf Mock präsentiert einen Überblick über moderne Methoden der Risikobewertung komplexer Systeme unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Einsatzes von Petri Netzen. In Ergänzung zu den Artikeln im Hauptteil dieser Ausgabe haben wir im Serviceteil eine Reihe von themenbezogenen Buchbesprechungen aufgenommen. Unsere Internetausgabe bietet darüber hinaus in DISPlus eine Sammlung von Links zum Thema. Apropos Internetausgabe: Sie finden uns neu unter

2 Martina Koll-Schretzenmayr DISP The Wired City For the past three years in a row, San Francisco was given the title The Most Wired City by the Yahoo Internet Life Magazine. The quantity and quality of Internet connections throughout the city served as selection criteria. According to a new study of the U.S. Economic Department, by mid 2001, every second U.S. household will be online. In Germany at the end of the year 2000, there were already an estimated 20 million Internet users, or over one quarter of all citizens between the ages of 14 and 69. The connection onto the data network is increasingly independent on the good old cables. For a long time now, wireless technologies have established themselves as a way to transmit information. In Switzerland by the end of 2000, there will be 5 million conventional telephone lines against 4,6 million mobile users. And at present, almost 7 million SMS are sent daily in Switzerland alone. In Germany last year, the number of mobile phone customers more than doubled to 48 million, overtaking for the first time the number of conventional telephone lines. Telecommunication has experienced a revolutionary development in the past two decades. Still, not only the transfer of information through the most modern telecommunication technologies has dramatically changed our lives. Thanks to computer-supported Information Technologies (IT), we are capable of recording, organizing and processing information more quickly, efficiently and simply, and transmit it by using telecommunication and worldwide data networks. The application areas of information and communication technologies (ICT) are manifold and comprise next to telecommunication for example, also logistics, the steering of the supply and waste management of cities, planning and managing infrastructure operations, and risk management. Frances Cairncross made her stamp on 1997 by coining the term the death of distance. Distances have an entirely different meaning today as they did two centuries ago. As a result, all economical, political and social relationships have experienced changes. These could not remain without having an impact on cities. Essentially, three views can be differentiated: (1) discussion of the global city network, (2) studies on the level of the city region, (3) considering the future of the elements that make up the city, such as residences, offices, streets, etc. Fundamental to the discussion was and is John Friedmann s World City Hypothesis (1986), which considers the relationship between urbanizing processes and economic globalizing trends. For one thing, the concept of world cities was founded: A worldwide hierarchical system of key cities that concentrate capital and decision-making functions among themselves. Another point is that in the World City Hypothesis, the city level carries weight: World cities become the attraction for global migration streams and stages for spatial and social disparities. In The Informational City (1989), followed by his trilogy The Informational Age (1996, 1997, 1998), Manuel Castells asserts that technological developments will lead to a highly dynamic network of information, people, and products a space of flows which will superimpose the static spatial structure of places. Saskia Sassen coined the term the New Geography of Centrality and Marginality. The concentration of the global economy on a few cities results in the fact that these international finance and economic centers become the basis for a transnational city system. Global cities become increasingly disconnected from their national contexts and new marginalities come into being: The former North-South gradient disappears as peripheral regions of highly technological industrial cities develop. In addition, the level of the city region from world cities can be increasingly considered as a gradient, in that global functioning business centers are increasingly confronted with economically and socially challenged city quarters. The goal of this special issue of DISP is to enlighten the theme Information and Telecommunication Technologies and their Effect on the City. Stephen Graham determines that urban places, thanks to worldwide networks, organize the global-oriented transportation of people, goods and information and develop into enclaves, which with increased global networking simultaneously disassociate themselves with the urban areas where they are located. In her paper Susan Fainstein shows that global city-regions in wealthy countries do display high levels of income inequality (focusing on New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, and the Randstad (Netherlands)). She concludes by examining the reasons for inequality in such regions and the effects of public policy on it. Drawing upon an interdisciplinary design orientation, Tom Horan outlines several principles for creating digital places that are both wired and livable. After first defining the concept of digital places and the scales at which they operate, Tom Horan suggests how these digital places should be designed to embrace multiple uses, connect with traditional space, link to community networks, and involve diverse parties. Armin Rücker, Klaus R. Kunzmann and Bruno Heinz Brödner give an overview of communal websites in Germany and their impact on participative processes at the city-regional level. Building on this analysis, they make ten recommendations on how to design network-based information and communication platforms in order to effectively support local democratic processes. Michael Gisler gives his insights on the general discussion and on the use of egovernment, which he separates from the ebusiness phenomenon. Increasingly, spatial here, for the most part urban systems are damaged by risks that result from the use of technical systems. Ralf Mock presents an overview of modern methods for calculating the risks of complex systems with special consideration to the use of Petri Nets in system modeling. To supplement the main articles of this issue, we have added a series of themerelated book reviews in the service section of DISP. In addition, our Internet version DISPlus offers a collection of relevant links. And regarding the Internet site, you will find us at our new Internet address under

3 Stephen Graham DISP FlowCity Networked Mobilities and the Contemporary Metropolis This paper argues that contemporary cities can be understood as socio-technical constructions supporting mobilities and flow to more or less distant elsewheres: flows of people, goods, services, information, capital, waste, water, meaning. As such infrastructurally mediated flows are enrolled into the reconfiguration of urban spaces, a logic of intense geographical differentiation is underway. Within this people, institutions and places are enrolled in very different ways into the broadening circuits of economic and technological exchange that support processes of globalization. Networked infrastructures, far from somehow equalizing geography, as so often portrayed in the business press, are actually being organized to exploit differences between places, within ever-more sophisticated spatial divisions of labour. Following an introduction which explores the links between technological mobilities and flows and the restructuring of contemporary urban space, the paper analyzes in detail the emerging networked configurations of four of the most salient types of networked mobility space emerging in the contemporary metropolis. These are: e-commerce spaces, passenger airports and fast rail stations, export processing zones, and multi-modal logistics enclaves dedicated to freight. 1 Introduction: Cities as Socio-Technical Mobilities National borders have ceased being continuous lines on the earth s surface and [have] become nonrelated sets of lines and points situated within each country (Andreu, 1997, 58). Contemporary cities can be understood as socio-technical constructions supporting mobilities and flow to more or less distant elsewheres: flows of people, goods, services, information, capital, waste, water, meaning. According to Manuel Castells, as cities become enmeshed in what he calls the variable geometry of the internationalising Network Society (1996, 145 7), so technological and economic integration via what he terms the space of flows is taking place in virtually all cities. But this is happening in extremely partial, uneven, and diverse ways. A logic of intense geographical differentiation is underway, within which people and places are enrolled in very different ways into the broadening circuits of economic and technological exchange. Networked infrastructures, far from somehow equalising geography as so often portrayed in the business press, are actually being organised to exploit differences between places within ever-more sophisticated spatial divisions of labour. In such a context, this paper seeks to explore how a widening range of urban spaces are being constructed as sociotechnical assemblies to organise, manage and synchronise the precise and rapid shipment of goods, freight and people across the planet between various transport modes, along with supportive information and energy exchanges. There is currently a proliferation of such spaces across the world. This is being driven by the imperative of securing what we might term economies of conjunction (Rondinelli, 2000). These are the efficiencies that arise when firms operate within premium network spaces which seamlessly interconnect virtual and physical systems of movement, allowing the precise and agile coordination of all forms of flow and transaction at the same time and space. Keller Easterling believes in fact that virtually all contemporary urban developments transport interchanges, ports, airports, malls, economic franchises can best be understood as dynamic sites for organising logistical processes. The primary means of making space, at least in contemporary America, she believes, they can be thought of as a special series of games for distributing spatial commodities (1999, 113). However, she also notes that the critical architectures of these spaces are not visible but are woven into their extended technical and information systems and often hidden infrastructure networks. The real power of many urban organizations, she continues, lies within their relationships between distributed sites that are disconnected materially, but which remotely affect each other sites which are involved, not with fusion or holism, but with adjustment (ibid.). If the widening range of powerful glocal infrastructures can be considered as amounting to a widening set of tunnel effects, bringing distant sites into close relational proximity, then these spaces are the points at which the tunnels stop or interconnect: the global airports, major sea ports, teleports, rail stations, e-commerce hubs and so on. The challenge for the developers and managers of such places is to make the transition from the tunnel of the global airliner, freight transporter, telecoms link or fast-rail network, either to the next tunnel, or to the selected, valued elements within the regional hinterland, as seamless an experience as possible. In such a context it is no surprise that supply-chain management is moving to the top of the corporate agenda (Bachelor, 1998, 1). Reflecting the shift towards extremely volatile, international markets and production techniques for high-value added and relatively lowweight logistics flows microchips, scientific instruments, media products, technological equipment emphasis now falls on combining highly flexible production strategies with the logistics capability to deliver goods very quickly and accurately on a global basis from a series of logistic enclaves (OTA, 1995). As such, logistics enclaves of all types for the shipment of information and people as well as goods and products obviously require privileged and high quality infrastructural connectivity, especially for transportation and telecommunications, with the emphasis on global connectivity to strategic centres and distribution. To the architect Paul Andreu, the issue of how to enhance the value of such ruptures opens a huge field of reflection for developers and planners. He continues: With cities coming undone and losing their coherence, such points of interchange constitute

4 DISP lively sites full of energy and new possibilities. Projects abound in the field, whether they involve train stations, subways, bus or airport terminals, or any combinations thereof. For cities, such interchange points provide an occasion for reflecting upon and modifying themselves, for devising new models of organisation and new spaces (1998, 43). Using the latest information technologies, combined with advanced logistics management techniques (notably Justin-Time and Zero Inventory approaches), leading distribution hubs for road, rail, sea and air logistics (and the crucial connecting flows between these different modes) are emerging as minicities in their own right. At the same time they have a tendency to delink from the immediate spaces around them. Such spaces and buildings, in effect, are one-stop-shops which concentrate the service capabilities to help direct and organise the trade flows for the entire planet. They have ceased to be an investment and are simply expandable containers, linked to a chain of networks (Bosma, 1998, 12). To succeed, they require intense concentrations of highly capable, interlinked, infrastructure networks. In what follows I seek to explore in detail the emerging networked configurations of four of the most salient types of networked mobility space emerging in the contemporary metropolis: E-Commerce spaces, passenger Airports and fast rail station, Export Processing Zones, and multi-modal logistics enclaves dedicated to freight. 2 E-Commerce Spaces and the Contemporary Metropolis The first networked mobility zone we need to explore is that which inevitably burgeons with the explosive international growth of on-line retailing and e-commerce: the digitally-connected Internet and electronic transaction facility. Such spaces are a reaction to the exponential growth of Internet traffic and electronic commerce which is projected to double globally every year for the next ten years. Three types of space are emerging here. 2.1 Location, Bandwidth, Location : Optic Fibre Lines and the Customisation of Urban Telecom Hotels First, and against the rhetoric that the Internet is somehow anti-spatial (Mitchell, 1995), secure developments for the mushrooming telecommunications industry are proliferating, clustered around the invisible terminals to super-high capacity inter-urban optic fibre trunk lines. These, in turn, tend to be laid along highways or railway tracks to minimise construction costs. As development concentrates around such optic fibre points of presence, the edges of major global city cores are now being equipped with portfolios of anonymous, windowless buildings massive, highly fortified spaces which house the computer and telecommunications equipment for the blossoming commercial Internet industry. Akamai, for example, one of the world s largest Web server management companies, operates the largest, most global network of servers in the industry, deployed across multiple carriers. Its state-of-the-art server farms are housed in highly-secure building complexes located in the major global cities of the worlds. This offers the closest proximity to users possible, a factor of continuing importance in the location of heavilytrafficked web sites because of Internet congestion, bandwidth bottlenecks and the dominance of global telecoms capacity by major metropolitan regions (see What s critical to these companies is access to business centers, access to fibre routes, and access to physical transportation, write the New York Times, (21 March, 2000, 4). For example, as with other major US cities, many Telecom hotel projects centres for the telecom switching and equipment of multiple competitors, housed in new and refurbished factory buildings are now being built in and around the Boston area. They house the region s fastexpanding Internet operators, web providers, and telecom and multimedia firms; they cluster around the City s major optic fibre terminals, such as the Prudential Centre over the Massachusetts turnpike highway. This reflects the new mantra of many real estate providers for IT-intensive users, a slight variation on the one for the industrial age: location, bandwidth, location (Evans, 1999). To occupying companies, the physical qualities of the chosen buildings (high ceiling height, high-power and back-up electricity supplies) need to be combined with nodal positions on fibre networks. Whose fibre (and what type of fibre for that matter) will be a major consideration in the site selection process. A perfectly built building in the wrong part of town will be a disaster (Bernet, 2000, 17). In a frenzied process of competition to build or refurbish buildings in the right locations, a New York agent reported recently that if you re on top of a fibre line, the property is worth double what it might have been (ibid.). 2.2 E-Commerce Distribution Hubs The wider explosion of e-commerce mediated by Internet or telephone transactions, and underpinned by advanced logistics systems distributing goods to customers, is leading to the proliferation of a second type of classic glocal network spaces where connections elsewhere are far more important than links to the local urban landscape. Across the western world, in fact, declining warehouse parks are being gradually reconstituted as virtual warehouses automated spaces, close to major mail and highway hubs, that are linked seamlessly into the just-in-time logistics systems designed to serve national and even continental markets for Internet-sold goods. In the US alone it has been estimated that million square feet of new warehouses, sited on major distribution hubs, will be needed between 2000 and 2003, to meet the exploding demands of business to consumer ( B2C ) and business to business (B2B) e-commerce companies (New York Times, 2000, 8). Often, such spaces are

5 DISP gravitating to piggy back on existing UPS or Federal Express hubs. As with other digital economy complexes, multiple fibre loops, high capability electrical infrastructure, and back-up power are mandatory for e-commerce warehousing, both for major single-occupant centres and multi-tenant developments. Such demands for customised network spaces for e-commerce seem likely to continue growing: by 2010 it has been estimated that one third of the world s $60 trillion B2B economy will operate on-line, mediated by Intra and Internets, and organised through e-commerce warehousing and logistical systems (Lohse, 2000, 21). E-commerce distribution hubs are also growing rapidly in Europe. Slough, in the South-East of England, for example, is already emerging as a national and international e-commerce distribution hub. The town houses the UK version of Amazon.com the major e-commerce bookseller. As e-commerce explodes with the mass diffusion of the Internet, and the growing sophistication of virtual malls and on-line grocery shopping, the physical, hidden support, storage and transaction-processing systems for virtually-sold goods are likely to become an ever-more important examples of urban space. 2.3 Data Havens: The Emergence of Ultra-Secure E-Commerce Enclosures Finally, the imperative of security for data storage amongst many e-commerce and corporate firms is such that a wide range of peripheral, isolated and ultra-secure spaces are currently being configured as spaces for remotely housing the computer and data storage operations of major e-commerce operators (a process known as colocation ). There are several elements of this process. In the first element, a variety of offshore small island states Anguilla and Bermuda to name two are currently packaging themselves as free Internet zones secure locations for web server platforms which conveniently minimise corporate taxation liabilities, vulnerabilities to Internet regulation, and operating costs. In the second part of the process, old disused sea forts and oil rigs are now being actively reconfigured by e-commerce entrepreneurs, in attempts to secede from the jurisdictions of nation states altogether. For example, the selfstyled Principality of Sealand a disused world war II anti-aircraft fort 6 miles off the coast of Essex, England is being touted as an ultra-secure space for corporate web servers and e-commerce platform. Were the developers plans to be realised, the platform would escape intervention, taxation or regulatory powers of all nation and supranational bodies and states. It would also be beyond interference from any company, pressure group or hacker, whilst maintaining high-capacity 20 millisecond links with all the world s data capitals (Garfinkel, 2000, see co.com). The Oceania Project, a much larger proposed new island city-state in the Caribbean, is also being mooted, aimed at creating an unregulated e- commerce space (see nia.org). But perhaps even more bizarre is the third part of the process: the reconstruction of old cold-war missile launch sites to offer the ultimate in security against risks of both electronic and physical incursion (D Antonio, 2000, 26). Developers of an old Titan facility a Moses Lake in Washington State, for example, are exploiting the old ICBM launching and control bunkers to offer square feet of the most dependable and secure data storage spaces on the planet. The buildings are tremor proof, fireproof and impervious to even the most powerful tornado. Their three-foot thick concrete walls, reinforced with steel and lead, could withstand a truck bomb the size of the one that brought down the Murrah building in Oklahoma City or a 10-megaton atomic explosion just one quarter-mile away (ibid.). All infrastructures are backed-up for guaranteed uninterrupted supplies. The space s computers are separated from the public Internet to deter hackers; the service and manufacturing firms that use the space are required to have private intranets that offer the best electronic firewalls available. 3 Partial Articulations for the Kinetic Elite : Airport Cities, Fast Rail Stations and the Wider Metropolis Our third type of logistics enclave has perhaps the most dramatic contrasts between intense global connectivity and the increasingly careful filtering of local connectivity: the international hub airport or rail terminal. These are customised spaces par excellence for organising and housing global flows. In particular, such spaces are designed and regulated very carefully to meet the needs of affluent business and leisure travellers: the 600 million or so airline arrivals per year; the people that are in the air at any one time above the US (Urry, 2000, 50). Borrowing from the German Philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, Rem Koolhaas calls these people the kinetic elite (see Wolf, 2000). In configuring themselves to meet these people s needs for seamless flow and painless interconnection to distant elsewheres, global network spaces like airports and fast rail stations start to show ambivalent relationships within their host city. Contemporary international airports concentrate a remarkable range of facilities and services within a spatial setting that is similar to that of an island connected with other distant regions only through very selective specialized systems of transportation (Ezechieli, 1998, 18). Because it articulates more closely to the global flight-path network than to the surrounding city space, as Friedman suggests, today s airport is only partially connected to the environment around it. It is directly connected with other airports with which it is linked in an increasingly vital network (1999, 14). Reflecting on this trend, Hans Ibelings believes that nowhere is the process of enclave formation stronger than in the world of airport architecture. All over the world, the major airports have grown into complex and multifaceted mega-structures that not only offer space for more terminals, piers and hangers than ever before, but also accommodate a growing number of functions that have nothing whatever to do with aviation. In many cases, these

6 DISP other functions make a bigger contribution to airport turnover than activities directly related to air travel (1998, 78). As Markus Hesse suggests, the tendency for the new logistics nodes and airport complexes to gravitate to the metropolitan periphery is helping to support a restructuring in broader urban forms: New transportation concepts prove to be new locational concepts. And where transportation becomes the new bottleneck factor in regional development, those nodal points that promise frictionless movement of traffic are booming. [As a result] urban structures are being shifted: The center is wandering to the periphery, tertiary uses are moving magnetically to these locations (1992, 53). In what follows I explore a few examples of how mega-airports are starting to emerge as exemplars of secessionary and premium network spaces. 3.1 Bypass Immigration for Premium Passengers In the first example, highly mobile and affluent business travellers can, increasingly, directly bypass normal arrangements for immigration and ticketing at major international airports. This allows them to seamlessly, and speedily, connect between the domains of ground and air, and through the complex architectural and technological systems designed to rigidly separate air side and ground side within major international airports (Virilio, 1991, 10). In fact, travel on an international airliner, with its portholes closed and movie screens on can itself now be likened to a travelling segment of a tunnel (Andreu, 1998, 59). The increasingly close integration of the air and ground experience means that this tunnel can, in effect, extend right through the airport to highway or rail links with as little delay and as great a comfort as possible for selected, generally powerful, people. After a pioneering agreement, for example, biometric hand geometry scans for the most frequent business travellers are now in operation in major airports linking the US, the Netherlands, Canada and Germany and other OECD nations under the INSPASS (Immigration and Naturalization Service Passenger Accelerated Service System). Selected premium travellers are issued with a smart card that records their hand geometry. Each time the traveller passes through customs, they present the card and place their hand in a reader that verifies their identity and links into international databases, allowing them instant access to the plane (Banisar, 1999). In 1999, the scheme had participants and the INS were already planning to extend the system globally. Such systems, of course, back up the extending infrastructure of highly luxurious airport lounges and facilities that are only accessible to elite passengers carrying special passes. 3.2 Local Bypass and Seamless Connection to Dominant Consumption and Business Spaces Second, major international hub airports are increasingly connected up seamlessly with the major corporate and consumption spaces of the host city, many of which now tend to cluster around them. Thanks to all the offices, banks, hotels, restaurants, conference facilities, casinos and shopping centres in the immediate vicinity, the airport has developed into a significant economic centre that is sometimes so large that the airport starts to compete with the very city it was intended to serve (Ibelings, 1998, 80). As Gary Hack suggests: New business centers which are evolving in many cities have the tendency to spur the creation of elite corridors, with housing, entertainment uses and educational facilities oriented to high income groups. Virtually every city has such a new center, and often they are located near regional airports. In Santiago [Chile], such a cluster is emerging along the Americo Vespucio beltway. In the Randstad, the area around Schiphol Airport is beginning to take this form. In Manila, the Makati area is becoming a new city center [...]. Often these new centers are the city s window to the international economy, and the preferred location for regional headquarters of multinational corporations (1997, 8 9). As some key airports are developed on reclaimed islands (Osaka, Hong Kong), so they start to demonstrate even greater tendencies to bundle uses and functions to emerge as self-standing global business cities in their own right. Rem Koolhaas s studio, the OMA, for example, has proposed the building of an entirely new airport city off the western coast of the Netherlands to replace the increasingly congested Schiphol airport at Amsterdam. Geared specifically as a home base for high frequency business travellers, the island would encompass the largest malls in Europe, beach resorts, a theme park, a technology park and elite housing. Walled off by the ocean, connected by a bridge, and governed by a charter, the airportisland [concept] is both futuristic and feudal (Wolf, 2000, 310). Developers and operators of key hub airports are also finding ways of connecting more seamlessly to valued spaces further afield across the metropolitan area. This is occurring in three ways. First, in many cases, local trains to airports, which stop at intervening stations, are being replaced by premium trains which connect airports directly with valued, downtown, locations, without stopping at intervening spaces. Such local bypass is occurring in Paris where SNCF, the rail operator, has dramatically improved non-stop services between Roissy airport and Gare du Nord in the city centre. The declared aim is to prevent train robberies caused by criminals from intervening poor suburbs boarding trains packed with affluent tourists and business people. But the reality is a classic example of urban bypass through network redesign. This decrease in local trains has added to the isolation of the poor suburbs near the airport and has made it particularly hard for residents of those places to access the abundant jobs created around the airport space (Olivier Coutard, personal communication). Second, we are seeing the construction of new traveller surveillance systems covering the key transport links

7 DISP between valued city cores and airports. In 1997, for example, British Airways tested a smart card system that locates passengers coming in to Gatwick airport from London s Victoria rail station in real time. The idea is to try to improve the smoothness of flow through the rail transport system and the airport gate corridors, so improving the seamlessness of the airport s connection with London s West End (Lyon, 2000, 20). Finally, some airport operators are going further and are constructing private, new, dedicated rail links that carry passengers much more directly between the premium city core and the airport. Unlike previous generations of subway and rail connections these are, quite literally, hermetically sealed from all intervening places, embedding a profound logic of glocal bypass into their design and operation. An excellent example of this logic is the new, privately developed, Heathrow Express link, which opened in January. Developed by the operators of Heathrow, British Airports Authority, at a cost of 450 million, this new rail link offers a airline style ambiance with 1st class space (complete with TVs and telephones). It connects all four of Heathrow s terminals direct with Paddington in West London a journey of 15 minutes compared to the hour or more on the underground and offers a 24 hour a day frequency of every 15 minutes. No stops exist between the airport and the West End of London, totally bypassing intervening spaces. Automated baggage check-in at the stations allows seamless interconnection with the airport for air travellers (Spark 1998). 3.3 The Integration of Airports with Fast Rail Networks In the longer run, BAA want to extend this logic of glocal bypass by connecting more distant business enclaves seamlessly with Heathrow. Their first target is to extend the link to the City of London, substantially adding to the glocal connectivity of the heart of London s finance district. Then they aspire towards connecting Heathrow to the growing European network of Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV) rail links (a connection that has already happened at Frankfurt and Paris Charles de Gaulle airports). This, in turn, is all part of the wider project of selectively integrating Europe s glocal infrastructures to support economic integration. The increasing interconnection between fast rail and air travel promises an increasingly seamless interchange for valued spaces and travellers between air and ground transportation (with integrated ticketing, ownership, marketing and baggage forwarding under development). In fact, the Trains a Grande Vitesse and fast rail infrastructures of Europe and Japan provide our final example of how super-fast glocal infrastructure networks only partially articulate with the landscapes and socio-economies of the cities through which they pass. This is because, as John Whitelegg argues: High-speed rail developments pick out a few favoured parts of cities from a much larger number of possibilities and confer on them additional advantages in terms of accessibility and investment. Any re-sorting of the space economy which produces such a rush of new investment inevitably leaves somewhere else high and dry. Building high speed rail links is of little relevance to the vast majority of women, the young, the elderly, the poor and the unemployed (1993, 10). Thus, such TGV networks tend to use massive public subsidies to benefit only small parts of a few cities. They overwhelmingly benefit largely the affluent, white, male users of the network. They underpin a polarisation of the space economy within and between cities because intervening spaces remain unconnected and can actually experience much worsening accessibility (because local and regional trains are reduced to allow the fast ones to operate). Not surprisingly, given the stretching and warping of space economies that accompanies TGV construction, highly customised spaces are tending to emerge at key connection nodes. The EuraLille complex in Lille, Northern France is perhaps the best example of the ways in which Europe s growing fast rail network has provoked the customisation of adjacent business enclaves. Set at the heart of the network, at the centre of gravity between Paris, London and Brussels, the 120 hectare site has been equipped with all the necessary networked infrastructures and developments which are necessary for a communication interchange of this kind : intelligent office spaces, a TGV station, luxury business and hotel accommodation, and dedicated telecoms, power and water infrastructure with back up facilities and advanced technical control. The design of the space has taken into account all the essential elements for the smooth running of companies operating at a European scale (Newman and Thornley, 1995, 244). 4 Export Processing Zones and the Infrastructural Imperative The third world has always existed for the comfort of the first (Klein, 1999, xvi). As Kessides suggests, the exigencies of modern logistical management in developed industrial countries pose similar requirements on developing countries wishing to compete in these markets (1993, 13). The second emerging logistics enclave, long a mainstay of the development strategies for Developing and Newly Industrialising cities, is a reflection of widening efforts to attempt just this: The Export Processing Zone (EPZ) or Free Trade Zone (FTZ). Essentially a low-tax and reduced-regulation haven for global trade and rudimentary production and processing, EPZs of which there were around 850 in 1999 are attempts to equip cities, and parts of cities, with the high quality infrastructural connections necessary to position them within global flows of trade and transaction. EPZs and FTZs are also being adopted widely by cities in the developed world, as the Transpark example above demonstrates. Thirty of the US states now have EPZs, for example (Chen, 1995, 587). 4.1 Routinised Production in EPZs: Work Boiled Down to a Brutal Essence As with customised spaces for Foreign Direct investment in manufacturing,

8 DISP EPZs are generally constructed to combine low costs and minimised regulations and taxes, with an adequate supply of (cheap) labour and the best possible infrastructural connections, to allow the space to be integrated within global trade flows (Klein, 1999). It is in such spaces, far away from the corporate logos and post modern style battles of consumption markets in the North, that many leading transnationals locate their sub-contracted manufacturing work. Such distant grey sheds in the Far East and Central America offer work boiled down to a brutal essence (Beckett, 2000, 17). In 1999 over 27 m people, usually young and unmarried women, worked in such closed off places across the world, where taxes and unions and regulations and the attentions of local politicians barely reach (ibid.). In south-east Asia hundreds of workers burn to death every year because their dormitories are located upstairs from firetrap sweatshops (Klein, 1999, xvi). Such spaces are therefore emblematic are the use of corporate networks to exploit spatial separation and geographical division. Talking to a seventeen year old woman in an IBM CD- ROM plant in Manila, for example, Naomi Klein told her she was impressed at the woman s skills in making such intricate machines. We make computers, but we don t know how to operate computers was the reply. Reflecting this, Klein urges us to debunk the corporate fetishism of globalization that bring us the endlessly-repeated ideologies of the global village and collapsing world. Ours, she writes, is not such a small world after all (1999, xvii). Whilst the poor infrastructural connections of many developing and newly industrialising cities often acts as a deterrent to investment by global trade operators, the concessions and publicly supported infrastructure in EPZs works to enrol them into multinational locational decisions of shippers, transnational corporations and manufacturers. EPZs are therefore logistics enclaves whose high levels of infrastructural servicing, and connectivity elsewhere, tends to contrast sharply with their disconnections from their surrounding city or region and its poor infrastructure. This is especially the case in export-processing, Sub Saharan economies. In Ghana in 1995, for example, international telecommunications infrastructure was limited to highly expensive, glocal connections for a few key players in international business enclaves in the capital city: There were only ten kbit/s leased lines linked to the UK costing about US $7500 per month each. One was used by the interbank clearing system SWIFT and another by the air traffic control network SITA. By early 1996, a private network computer systems host in the capital city had 140 subscribers paying US $1300 each a year the annual income of a Ghanaian journalist (Mansell and Wehn, 1998, 106). The planning of EPZs invariably emphasises the modernity and quality of infrastructural connections, compared with the surrounding city (along with, of course, the low operating costs and flexible on-site labour force). In the new Jinqiao EPZ, a 20 km 2 zone near Shanghai s port, for example, a whole suite of special advanced infrastructure networks have been put in place to tempt foreign capital, and foreign business people, to the enclave: a line capacity telephone and optic fibre grid; a dedicated satellite earth station; eleven dedicated electricity substations with back up; and customised water, gas, road and public transport connections. Modern, garden-city styles residential and commercial spaces are being constructed, backed by intense security, as living spaces for foreign executives and business travellers. As well as enhanced transport and infrastructure connections, EPZs tend also to be provided with extra services befitting a modernised enclave such as 24-hour security, garbage collection, maintenance systems, and, in he case of emergency, water supplied from wells belonging to EPZ administration (Brenes et al, 1997, 61). 5 Multi-Modal Logistics Enclaves: Constructing Freight Exchange Cities Reflecting the fact that 50% of global trade by value now goes by air, a range of specialist spaces are being constructed around the world to handle and organise the world s burgeoning aerial trade. Gethin (1998, 19) predicts that the next century will see just a few air cargo superhubs at strategic points across different continents. Offering rapid freight services to connect seamlessly with Just-in-Time production methods, major logistics nodes offer direct links between air, land and sea transportation. As Easterling suggests, new airport cities and superhubs that concentrate the intermodal transfer and storage of global or domestic goods, and that act as centers of distribution, have helped relocate a set of exurban switches for exchange between rail, highway, land and sea (1999, 120). Centred on the US, for example, major international freight companies like Federal Express, DHL and UPS already run their own networks of massive multi-nodal logistics centres on a global hub and spoke format, sometimes using freight-only airports. UPS employs over at its Louisville base, for example, the central hub in a global operation network that delivers 3.1 billion items per year to over 200 nations and 600 airports via 500 aircraft (OTA, 1995, 155). Such places are, in effect, freight exchange cities and they are forming at critical junctures of the Interstate highway and global airline systems (Easterling, 1999, 120). 5.1 The De-Linking of Major Seaports Major sea ports, like Rotterdam, meanwhile, are also gradually delinking from their surrounding hinterland in a struggle to emerge as global main port hubs linking trans-continental systems of road, rail and air fright seamlessly onto the world s major sea-lanes (Drewe and Janssen, 1996). Such IT-intensive container ports are now being transformed into largely silent and invisible operating environments with ever-more precarious relationships with their adjacent cities and immediate hinterlands (Tav-

9 DISP erne, 1998, 85). The hinterland from which the port draws its cargo or sends it is not secure. Ports on one side of a continent are in competition with ports on the other side as they both try to serve the shipping needs of inland areas (McCalla, 1999, 248). Such tenuous links are likely to become more unstable with the latest developments that will use jet boats to guarantee ontime international cargo delivery in any weather, imposing just-in-time manufacturing from Houston to Kuala Lumpur (Mau, 1999, 204). Massive new port systems, laced with the latest electronic management infrastructures and meshed into close alliances with major shipping and inland transfer firms, are the ways in which major ports are attempting to project their competitive power. The objective is to emerge as a node of seamless and ultra cost-effective intermodal transfer between sea, land and, increasingly, air. Some cities have already developed logistics complexes, and the specialised infrastructures that underpin them, that far exceed the scale and sophistication of Teeside s plans. Seattle, for example, has built a dedicated sea-air logistics hub which now organises 23% of the entire world s seaair shipments (Kasarda and Rondinelli, 1998). 5.2 The Global Transpark Phenomenon But it is the municipalities and development agencies in North Carolina who have developed perhaps the most ambitious project of all the North Carolina Global Transpark (GTP) (Kasarda et al, 1996). This acre complex integrates sea, road, rail and air within a single, massive complex ( Its dual long-range airport runways offer 24 hour access to the world s freight aircraft fleets which can offload efficiently on to highway, rail and sea transporters. Customised information systems, telecommunications grids, water and energy services are designed, through service agreements with chosen operators, to meet the highest specifications for global business operators. Internal operations are supported by dedicated monorail, electronic point of sale, and IT and back up power systems. Local tax breaks and reduced import duties apply. The ultimate aim of the Transpark is to be connected to the world through state-of-the-art communications, utilities and transportation infrastructure (promotional web site). The end result, developers hope, will be a seamless environment for manufacturing and international distribution (ibid.). Through imitation of the GTP concept, it is hoped to develop a network of transparks throughout the economic hot spots of the world. Already, the GTP developers have reached agreement to develop similar facilities in the Subic bay area of the Philippines, and also in Thailand (a former B-52 base at U-Taphao) and Germany (Mecklenburg) (Kasarda et al, 1996, 39). 6 Conclusions A broadly parallel logic seems to characterise the changing economic geographies and socio-technical arrangements of cities in the so-called developed, developing, newly industrialising and post-communist worlds. This is of the increasingly defensive, self-contained and glocally-oriented networked enclave, surrounded by social and economic spaces from which it seems increasingly disconnected. In many cases these divisions are increasingly salient and visible as walls, ramparts, fences, security cameras and public and private police forces attempt to secure and police the intervening boundaries, whilst at the same time maintaining the security and sanctity of the glocal infrastructural connections that traverse such boundaries. The glocally connected enclaves discussed in this paper, organised to support and synchronise diverse socio-technical mobilities, increasingly define themselves by the power of their connections elsewhere. At the same time they secure their relationships with surrounding cityscapes seem to be more and more problematic and tenuous. From the above examples it is strikingly clear that networked infrastructures of all sorts are providing nothing less than the socio-technical armoury which underpins and perpetuates these highly uneven urban development logics. It is the subtle, invisible, but highly powerful configuration of the technologies and social practices of networked infrastructures that allows glocal enclaves to reach out to seamless interconnection with each other, across the polynuclear fields of the metropolis and the wider urbanising world. It is the bypass configurations of water, road, rail, airport, power and telecommunications connections that allow the manufacturing spaces, the technopôles, the back office zones, the logistics enclaves, the airport zones, and the e-commerce spaces to remove themselves from the surrounding social worlds of the city with such apparent ease. And it is the parallel erosion, withdrawal or neglect of the infrastructural fabric of peripheral cities and spaces that further undermines the economic prospects of such areas. This is the case even though such spaces may, geographically, be cheekby-jowl with the gleaming glocal enclaves of the splintering city, and when the high quality glocal infrastructures that interconnect such enclaves may actually pass above, through, within, or underneath them. Adding the apparently pervasive shifts towards private policing, the application of intense electronic surveillance, and customised, closed access roads, and a heady cocktail of attempted economic secession and local disconnection emerges. But the key word here is attempted. For, cities continue to be mixed economic and social spaces within which attempts at pure economic and technological secession and control are ambivalent, contradictory practices that are open to resistance and challenges. Cities can not be programmes like computers; physical and socio-technical boundaries remain porous and open to contestation. Strategies to assert the need for continued mixity and ambivalence the very essence of the city offer a key hope to any attempt at working towards the democratisation of the 21st century metropolis, in the face of such splintering tendencies.

10 DISP Note This paper is adapted from parts of the book Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition by Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin (Routledge, London and New York, June 2001). References ANDREU, P. (1997), Borders and borderers, Architecture of the Borderlands, London: Wiley/Architectural Design, ANDREU, P. (1998), Tunneling. In C. Davidson (ed.) Anyhow, Cambridge: MIT Press, BACHELOR, C. (1998), Moving up the corporate agenda, Financial Times: Supply Chain Logistics Survey, December 1st, 1. BANISAR, D. (1999), Big brother goes high tech, CAQ Magazine (available at html) BECKETT, A. (2000), Hate the firm and buy its products, Guardian Weekly, January 27 February 2, pp. 17. BERNET, B. (2000), Understanding the needs of telecommunications tenants. Development Magazine, Spring, BOSMA, K. (1998), Functional wrapping, Archis, December, BRENES, E., Ruddy, V., and Castro, R. (1997), Free zones in El Salvador, Journal of Business Research, 38, CASTELLS, M. (1996), The Rise of the Network Society, Volume 1 of The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Oxford: Blackwell. CHEN, K. (1995), The evolution of free economic zones and the recent development of cross-national growth zones, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 19(4), D ANTONIO, M. (2000), Bunker mentality, New York Times Magazine, 26th March, 26. DREWE, P. and Janssen, B. (1996), What port for the future? From mainports to ports as nodes on logistics networks. Mimeo. EASTERLING, K. (1999), Organization Space, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. EVANS, M. (1999), It s a wired world, Journal of Property Management, November/December, EZECHIELI, C. (1998), Shifting boundaries: territories, networks and cities. Mimeo. FRIEDMAN, K. (1999), Restructuring the city: Thoughts on urban patterns in the information society. Mimeo. GETHIN, S. (1998), Winning cargo business, Jane s Airport Review, March, HACK, G. (1997), Infrastructure and regional form. Mimeo. HESSE, M. (1992), Logistik: Zauberwort der Raumpolitik, Kommune, 10(3), IBELINGS, H. (1998), Supermodernism: Architecture and Globalization, Rotterdam: Nai Publishers. KASARDA, J. and Rondinelli, D. (1998), Innovative infrastructure for agile manufacturers, Sloan Management Review, Winter, KASARDA, J., Rondinelli, D., and Ward, J. (1996), The global transpark network: Creating an infrastructure support system for agile manufacturing, National Productivity Review, Winter, KESSIDES, C. (1993), The Contributions of Infrastructure to Economic Development: A Review of Experience and Policy Implications, World Bank Discussion Papers 213, Washington D.C.: The World Bank. KLEIN, N. (1999), NoLogo, New York: Picador. LOHSE, G. (2000), The state of the web, Wharton Real Estate Review, Spring, LYON, D. (2000), Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life, Buckingham: Open University Press. MANSELL, R. and WEHN, U. (1998), Knowledge Societies: Information Technology for Sustainable Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press. MAU, B. (1999), Getting engaged. In C. Davidson (ed.) Anytime, Cambridge: MIT Press, McCALLA, R. (1999), Global change, local pain: intermodal seaport terminals and their service areas, Journal of Transport Geography, 7, MITCHELL, W. (1996), City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. NEWMAN, P. and THORNLEY, A. (1995), Euralille: Boosterism at the heart of Europe, European Urban and Regional Studies, 2(3), Office of Technology Assessment (1995), The Technological Reshaping of Metropolitan America, Congress of United States: Washington DC. RONDINELLI, D. (2000), Cutting edge infrastructure and economic competitiveness. Mimeo. SPARK, S. (1998), Rail beats road congestion, Jane s Airport Review, April, 19. TAVERNE, E. (1998), Havens in a heartless world. In C. Davidson (ed.) Anyhow, Cambridge, MIT Press, URRY, J. (2000), Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century, London: Routledge. VIRILIO, P. (1991), The Lost Dimension, New York: Semiotext(e). WHITELEGG, J. (1993), The conquest of distance by the destruction of time, In J. Whitelegg, S. Hultén and T. Flink (eds.), High Speed Trains: Fast Tracks to the Future?, Hames: Leading Edge, WOLF, G. (2000), The unmaterial world, Wired, June,

11 Thomas A. Horan DISP Digital Places Design Considerations for Integrating Electronic Space with Physical Place While less visible than the artifacts of the industrial era, digital technologies and infrastructures represent a major new force in the design of homes, communities and cities. Drawing upon an interdisciplinary design orientation, the author outlines several principles for creating digital places that are both wired and livable. After first defining the concept of digital places and the scales at which they operate, the author suggests how these digital places should be designed to embrace multiple uses, connect with traditional space, link to community networks, and involve diverse parties. Based on these principles and supporting case applications, the author then outlines several specific actions that can be taken to support digital places at the setting, community and regional scale. These actions include enhancing wired live-work designs, creating collaborative and seamless work environments, linking bricks to clicks through local e-commerce, creating connected learning communities, ensuring community access through local institutions, pushing local government to offer e-services and e- forums, and linking high-tech growth to smart growth designs. The author concludes with comments about the need for policy leadership to forge public-private partnerships in enacting new digital place designs. 1 Introduction The flight into a major city airport provides a visual occasion for detecting the impact of industrial infrastructure on urban design. If the airport is on a seacoast, the rugged machinery of goods shipping can usually be seen nearby; if inland, similar industrial apparatus stands near railroad yards. Invariably there is a highway system, with homes of various densities dotting the nearby landscape. As the airport approaches, the cargo and commercial elements of the terminal become clear. The plane touches down, and you complete the journal by getting into your car, traveling over the highway, by or around the downtown and into your home. The industrial infrastructure designed to deliver atoms rather than bits has performed its duty. Its impact is readily detectable in both what you see and what you do. But what about the information revolution? Can the impact of this emerging and more invisible set of technologies and infrastructures be detected? And perhaps more importantly, can their impacts be guided to produce a physical landscape that satisfies our various demands for place? In this article, I review the concept of digital places as an organizing construct for detecting the intersection of electronic and physical place, and then proceed to several high-level design considerations (as well as some specific actions) that can be taken to produce satisfying digital places at various scales. 2 Emerging Places In Digital Places: Building Our City of Bits, I introduced the concept of a digital places these are hybrid places that have both physical and electronic characteristics (Horan 2000) [1]. I envision these to be not stable end-states but rather dynamic settings that evolve over time. At one end of the digital place continuum are unplugged designs that manifest little or no digital technology in their appearance and construction. Toward the middle of the continuum are various adaptive designs, representing modest attempts to visibly incorporate electronic features into physical spaces. Occupying the far end of the spectrum are transformative designs: rooms, buildings or communities composed of truly interfaced physical and electronic spaces. Despite what cyber-enthusiasts may proclaim, unplugged places are still quite common and enjoyable, as digital technology has yet to significantly impact many settings. For example, the bustling cafes that line the streets of Paris remind us of the enduring social and cultural value of such unplugged settings. Moving across the continuum of digital places, we find many designs that have been modestly altered to incorporate some level of technology, but which retain their original organization and atmosphere. A common example of adaptive design would be a modest reconfiguration of an office or classroom to accommodate personal computers. A defining feature about this modest design adjustment is that it typically does not attempt to integrate a full social and electronic program; that is, very little thought has been given to how the activities conducted using the digital technology can best be supported through a supportive physical design (re)arrangement. But the introduction of digital technology into the physical environment does indeed necessitate a more fundamental rethinking of the set of activities to be conducted in the setting. At the far end of the digital place spectrum are such "transformative" designs, which are fundamentally organized around the demands of digital technology systems. Still relatively new, and occasionally provocative, these are comprehensive designs that interweave electronic and physical components specifically in response to ongoing and emerging social interests and market demands for a more unified physical and electronic interface. Because these arrangements are new, there is value in developing models that can inspire integrated design. One such model has been the Office of the Future in Seattle, Washington [2]. This exhibit has featured state of the art physical and electronic designs. Key features include informal village green space for face-to-face interaction, convertible executive offices into high-tech workrooms and dedicated space for heads down work. All of these elements are supported by a high-bandwidth electronic architecture that includes seamless wireless connectivity (both inside and outside of the office) and seamless wireline connectivity to support telework. During the initial three-year installation of the exhibit, several thousand visitors explored the exhibit and considered the

12 DISP concepts for their own commercial office design. While these new reconfigurations have been advocated for some time by architects such as Francis Duffy, only now are they beginning to emerge in the high-technology landscape (Duffy 1997) [3]. Innovative digital place designs are emerging not only in the office environment, but also in residential and civic environments. A central objective of this article is to outline directions and principles that can guide these more transformative approaches to digital place design so as to ensure comprehensive integration of technology, people and place. 3 The Scales of Digital Places Before proceeding with a discussion design guidelines, it is important to clarify the scales at which digital places operate. While the above vignettes of digital space design are at the scale of setting (e.g. workplace) digital places occur on multiple scales: homes and workplaces, communities, entire cities. And the scales interrelate; a digital setting can be part of larger digital community located within a digital region. The most intimate scale that concerns us, as in the case of the classroom, is known to ecological psychologists as a behavioral setting. At the scale of the setting, a key design consideration is between people and their immediate built environment. Alternative configurations can be devised to address the relationships of these spaces to the activities within them, the overlay of digital technology, and the social desires of the users of the space. A key objective is achieving, through function and aesthetics, a sense of place. Despite the rise of intoxicating virtual places, social science research continues to find that the built environment plays a key role in defining our sense of self identify (Stokols 1999). We have our favorite spots and they mean a great deal to us. At the scale of a neighborhood or community, the design emphasis moves from fostering a sense of place to enhancing a sense of community. The critical role for digital technology at this level is to enhance the effectiveness of various community institutions (e.g. schools, libraries, community centers) as they seek to meet community needs and enhance the fabric of local interactions (Horan, 2000). Electronic community networks can better link residents to these institutions and their services. More provocatively, these digital villages can provide new agoras for encouraging cultural, educational and social interactions among community members (Wellman 1999). Early examples of electronic communities suggest that they can be deployed in a manner that stresses community building. For example, the Blacksburg Electronic Village in Blacksburg, Virginia, provides a well documented example of how a local university (in this case, Virginia Polytechnic Institute) can foster a local community network that connects schools, businesses and residents and help to build a sense of community through its educational, social and neighborhood-based content (Cohill and Kavanaugh, 2000). Digital places at the regional scale are tremendously influenced by the overall character of the region s economic performance, digital infrastructure, amenities and supporting public policies. Not every region has the same technical, financial and educational infrastructure as in Silicon Valley, California. Rather, high-technology development tends to identify the comparative regional advantage of an area (such as economic assets in banking, technology or new media) and then forging public-private partnerships to enhance high-bandwidth infrastructures and supportive soft infrastructures such as education (Saxanion 1996). Based on their analysis of several cities, the Collaborative Economics group, for example, has also found that successful regions exploit not only their unique economic and technological assets, but also aggressively develop their business networks, their regional culture and the quality of the community in which the technological and economic development is to occur [4]. In short, the digital technology revolution is creating new digital places at the setting, community and regional levels. The challenge before us is to move from a passive observance of this phenomenon into a more active role in their design and development. Based on a review of approximately two dozen developments, principally but not exclusively in North America, I offer the following as general design guidelines [5]. 4 Designing for Multiplicity Digital technologies are changing the spatial locations of where we work, play and engage in civic activities. The fluid nature of electronically-mediated activity highlights the importance of understanding how these arrangements change and complicate the notion of distinct places for distinct activities. This fluidity is expected to only increase, with the advent of new wireless services promising an era of digital ubiquity. One consequence of this electronic blanket of access is the need to design for a more complex assortment of activities across the spectrum of building and community types in other words, designing for multiplicity. Beginning with the home, the range of homebuyer demands have grown to include computer-related workspace as well as other leisure and entertainment function [6]. Some of these changes were featured in a recent exhibition by the Museum of Modern Art. Entitled the Un-Private House, the twenty six homes in the exhibit exemplify a redefinition of public and private space; a redefinition that can vary by client interests but that in general calls into question the notion of the home as simply places of private retreat (Riley 1999). Paralleling this rise in multiple function designs is the onset of residential networks to support access throughout the homes. Specific wiring guidelines are available to facilitate the installation of high-bandwidth residential infrastructure in new developments, and wireless networks are increasingly available existing homes and developments all of which promote flexible use of residential space [7]. While the telecommunications industry has struggled to succeed in marketing home (retrofit) wiring products, the general trend is clear: as broadband becomes available to the

13 DISP Factors Affecting High-Tech Business Location Talent 75% Founder's Location/Ties 63% Proximity to Core Businesses 52% home (e.g. the last mile problem is solved), homes will increasingly include networks for distributing this bandwidth throughout the domicile. For the workplace, the notion of designing for multiplicity suggests rethinking the functions of the office in light of new electronic possibilities and related knowledge-work demands for working and collaborating. New work arrangements need to facilitate different functions concentrated work, small group discussions and informal collaborations. These arrangements can include seamless digital connections to the home office environment, because work or some form of computer/internet use is spilling into the home. High bandwidth corporate Internets and Intranets facilitate a fluid connection between the home and work environments. A noteworthy example of transformative office design is the Nortel Networks Headquaters outside of Toronto, Canada. Rather than looking to a virtual metaphor of electronic space, the city as served as an overarching metaphor for organizing Nortel s space. Designed by Houston, Obata, and Hellmuth (HOK), the layout is organized around various urban landmarks (avenues, parks), with workspaces that are divided into color-coded neighborhoods and mixed with a number of functions including cappuccino and sandwich shops, a travel agency, and a full service bank branch. As Nortel s Eugene Roman observed the city draws people out and creates interactions that wouldn t happen in our buildings [8]. Moreover, this multi-faceted physical interaction is reinforced with a highspeed network that links the various corporate functions, as well as supports tele-working worldwide. Established Infrastructure Proximity to Customers Venture Capital Educational Institutions Fig. 1: Factors Affecting High-Technology Location. (Source: Joint Venture, 1999) 5 Designing with Traditional Place Most places are meaningful for reasons that have little to do with digital technology. They evoke a subjective sense of place or community. They convey a circumstance, memory or purpose. Sometimes these are highly personalized, like a location that served as a setting for a personal life event. Sometimes these are widely shared, such as a major landmark a bridge, a square or a promenade. Temple University s Magali Sarfatti Larson observes the delicate balancing act that confronts the designer: Architecture is a public and useful art. An art that cannot disguise its social and collective origins, for it must convince a client, mobilize the complex enterprise of building, inspire the public and work with the cultural and symbolic vocabulary not of the client only but of its time [9]. Digital places represent functionality and a symbolic vocabulary that can be used for linking technology with broader design objectives for fostering a sense of place and community. Digital technologies should be introduced into the home in a manner that respects our comfort desires for decompressing, pursuing personal hobbies, or enjoying family time. Digital technologies can be introduced into the workplace in a manner that facilitates but does not replace the value of spaces for face-to-face encounters and group collaborations. Digital technologies can be introduced into the community in a manner that reaffirms the important role of institutions like libraries and schools in creating public spaces. It is important to stress that, in terms of design, the concept of digital places does not erase the need for meaningful building types that pervade everyday life. Rather, the objective is to consider new combinations of electronic and physical place that can accent the various meanings of physical place while introducing a new layer of electronic presence. Homes become places of comfort and electronic engines of 26% 25% 37% 45% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% Top Factors production; libraries become storers of print knowledge and community entry points to the electronic world; downtowns become vibrant mixed-use environments and electronically mediated entertainment zones. In terms of public policy, incentives should be enacted that support the adaptive reuse of historic buildings and districts so that the historical character of local communities can be preserved, while new economy development activities are pursued. At this regional scale, the politics of place and fluidity mingle with each other, producing a complex relationship between traditional and emerging regional values. While the nature of hightechnology business might suggest considerable spatial looseness, findings such as by Silicon Valley s Joint Venture effort, reveals how dynamic of fluidity intersects with traditional place values. As indicated in the Figure 1, their Cluster Study found a region s talent-base, the personal locational ties of the founder, other hard and soft infrastructures play a critical role in determining where high-tech businesses will locate [10]. Related studies by Richard Florida at Carnegie Mellon confirm this phenomenon: indigenous regional ame-nities and values play a pivotal role in attracting high-tech workers that in turn give rise to or attract high-tech companies (Florida, 2000). 6 Designing for Community The widespread diffusion of internet access has given rise to concerns about the internet s impact on community (Kraut, 1999). However, there is reason to believe that technology systems can

14 DISP be deployed in a manner that uses technology to build connections within local communities. Public spaces both real and virtual have the capacity to provide a perceptual and functional meeting grounds for friends and strangers alike. These unifying connections, both real and virtual, can help transform a sense of place into a sense of community. Early community networks such as in Blacksburg, Virginia, have convincingly demonstrated how community technology infrastructures can aid in making these connections (Cohill and Kavenaugh 2000). And a number of community uses are being tested, from connecting neighborhood streets to connecting cultural groups (Horan 2000). By using digital technologies to reinvent public institutions, we can help overcome our increasingly fractionalized approach to urban design and planning [11]. A daunting challenge for planners is to use the digital technology to forge new alliances among schools, libraries, museums, and other civic entities in a manner that enhances local interaction. This can take several forms. Traditional civic institutions (libraries, schools, community centers) can facilitate local information exchange, communication and Internet access. In North America, several major cities (e.g. New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver) have embarked upon ambitious library building programs to link electronic and physical access for residents. Equally important are the many community groups that have created community access centers. For example, the PUENTE Learning Center in Boyle Heights, California, provides internet access, training and computer-based educational programs for approximately 2000 residents of this predominately Hispanic community (Wilson 1998) [12]. There is an important and continuing social purpose to creating accessible digital places. Similar to the geographically selective diffusion pattern of electricity and the telephone, not all communities are aggressively being wired by the private sector; telecommunications deregulation continues to disproportionately benefit the high-income sector. The provision of access to all income groups will be a public policy concern for the foreseeable future. Left strictly to market forces, inner-urban and rural areas will be slow to receive high bandwidth, will not be a magnet for new economy jobs and risk lagging in related economic developments. The recent enactment of several public policies to encourage or subsidize the integration of digital technologies into schools and libraries is recognition by policymakers that some form of government intervention is required to fulfill a social compact on technological advancements [13]. Fig. 2: Gap E-Marketing. (Photograph by Author) 7 Designing Across Architectures We increasingly live our day-to-day lives by moving back and forth across the digital threshold between electronic and physical space. For the retail industry, business-to-consumer electronic commerce is providing the most visible interweaving of physical and electronic space. In some cases, points of sale have moved from physical stores to electronic locations, and marketing functions have moved from traditional e- lectronic means to include physically based experiences. Retail purchasing has become an interspaced activity that includes electronic and physical browsing and electronic and physical buying what real estate analyst Dale Anne Reiss refers to as clicks and mortar operations [14]. Educational activities are moving to the interspace as well, with distance learning and electronic discussions integrated into place-based activities. While the electronic and physical layers of experience are moving together, there is no one design solution for this interweaving. Some, like product designer and writer Donald Norman, prefer simplified intelligent appliances that is, making the technology invisible and as a part of each component of the build environment, whether it is the television, the refrigerator or the clock (Norman 1998). These stripped down single function devices tend understate the technology-aesthetic, focusing instead on the function to be accomplished. Others, like architects Gisue and Mojgan Hariri, propose a transformative fusion between the physical and electronic aesthetic in their imagined Digital House; rather than a traditional design filled with smart devices, the entire house is designed as a billboard for the information age [15]. These competing views one stressing the invisible nature of the technology and the other suggesting a distinctive information-age aesthetic are but two approaches to designing a digital aesthetic. One thing is certain: there is no one stylistic approach that fits all situations. For every traditional library remodeling that quietly incorporates digital feature, there is a late-modernist office complex that visibly celebrates digital uses. For some traditional home additions that include an expanded office and home theater, there will be others that choose a new, completely wired digital house. The concept of digital threshold connections does not advance a particular design aesthetic but highlights the need to think through the electronic-physical interface to achieve a desired function and look. The dot-com sector is grappling with this threshold within the context of business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce. During the initial wave of e-commerce activity, there was considerable speculation on the value of exclusive electronic transactions, such as had been successfully implemented by the Dell Computer corporation. However, the dot-com shakeout of 2000 has lead to a reassessment of electronic versus physically based distribution channels.

15 DISP Emerging out of this period is a renewed understanding of the role in traditional bricks and mortar operations in branding, marketing and (not to be understated) impulse buying and returning. New combinations across the architectures are also emerging, whereby the retail location becomes the marketing arm in support on online transactions (see Fig. 2). In a related fashion the Chicago suburb of Evanston is taking advantage of the regions emerging network (see below) to feature a community electronic site E-tropolis Evanston that includes e-commerce with local vendors [16]. 8 Designing in Collaboration The experiences of place are not bound by academic or professional discipline; day-to-day activities are a manifestation of our individual and group interests, tastes and policies. Yet, a common characteristic of modern-day urban planning and public policy is specialization, with coordination across disciplines coming at considerable expense. Such is often the case for digital and telecommunications planning. Observers like University of New Castle s Stephan Graham and Marvin Simon have found that the design of electronic networks often emanates from a perspective that is narrowly focused on technology, with little regard to related economic, community and infrastructure issues (Graham and Marvin, 1996). What is needed is a reflective design approach to overcome these artificial barriers by focusing on the desired solution in an integrated manner. First advanced by Donald Schon and colleagues in books such as The Reflective Practitioner, the policy design approach is aimed at bringing together an interdisciplinary group of thinkers and practitioners reflective practitioners to create inventive solutions to complex situations (Schon 1983) [17]. Within the context of digital places, the policy design approach suggests the need to involve a range of orientations and constituencies in crafting innovative combinations of physical and electronic space, be it a residential design, a community center, a mixed use redevelopment or a greenfield master planned community. For example, a recent design studio was undertaken to examine the planning of community digital places. As part of this effort, four electronic services (telework, telemedicine, distance education and smart travel) were considered, as was the range of infrastructures and service providers that were needed to deliver these services. Over the course of two focus group design studio meetings, stakeholders from various public and private organizations provided recommendations for implementing such high-bandwidth services and systems throughout the study area (Minnesota, US). A central recommendation of the group was isolated approaches would be insufficient, and that those communities that were succeeding or held promise had developed an action oriented forum for engaging stakeholders and implementers (Horan and Wells 2000). Digital place planning can be done within the context of a master plan or a facilities or telecommunications plan. An important question to ask early in the process is the scale of the vision, as this will, among other items, determine the range of participants to be involved in the visioning process. The vision can be small scale, like a computer center in a campus facility, or large scale, such as the design of regional technology infrastructure. The corresponding visions can include, for example, creating a hightech-friendly, mixed-use development (including high-bandwidth connectivity), designing a college campus to feature ubiquitous Internet access and communal face-to-face gathering, or developing a new housing mix that features street-side home offices to encourage informal gathering during the day. 9 Actions For Linking Space to Place Regardless of scale, it is at the applications level that the attributes of desired physical places are salient. Digital place design should identify key sectors that will be affected (residential, commercial, civic cultural), and then work with those sectors to identify desired services and applications. While each community needs to arrive at their own priorities, the following actions are offered as a sampling of the actions that can be taken to enhance digital places at the setting, community, and regional level in a manner consistent with the design themes noted above. Promote Wired Live-Work Options Homeowners, developers and architects can consider how telecommuting or telework should be integrated into the design of residential housing and urban live-work projects. This would include the nature, size and location of space for conducting home-based computer work as well as the distribution of highbandwidth access in the home. As one illustration, the placement of home offices in a manner that has greater street orientation can facilitate digital technology use and an informal public presence [18]. In terms of policy, there may be a need attend to issues or concerns about ubiquity of residential access across geographic locations and lowincome areas so as to ensure last mile connectivity. Create Collaborative and Seamless Working Environments Knowledge work companies can reestablish the value of physical place by designing workplaces that take stress valuable face-to-face activities, such as small group and informal collaboration. Heads-down, more private workspaces can complement these club-oriented designs. Information architecture, such as corporate Intranets can enhance the collaborative dimensions and do so across corporate and residential locations. Innovative examples of collaborative environments and seamless electronic environments such as Nortel networks noted above represent the cutting-edge of thoughtful designs for work. Steps can also be taken to better link high-technology work designs to the community fabric. Adaptive reuse of historic areas, such as is being done in

16 DISP several North America and European cities can help integrate the thriving new economy with the street economy of existing communities. Link Bricks to Clicks Through Local E-Commerce Local businesses need to determine the level of their e-commerce presence. The relationship of the bricks and clicks sales and supply channels need to be clarified in their business plans to articulate the role of each in advancing the business mission and sales goals. Local businesses and Chambers of Commerce need to consider innovative partnerships to combine electronic and local commerce. Developments such as e-tropolis Evanston provide innovative examples for how local businesses can exploit the World Wide Web to gain local market share [19]. This would be helpful for many reasons, including the need to understand and plan for fiscal implications of retail e-commerce on local tax revenues. Create Connected Learning Communities School officials should consider the community connections that can be enhanced by combining school network development and lifelong learning to support regional competitiveness and other civic uses. The electronic architecture of the educational sector can represent an important cornerstone in the provision of high-bandwidth network services throughout the community. Teachers can exploit these new bandwidth connections to the home to enhance their connection with children and parents in the community. Institutions of higher education can explore new technology-infused partnerships with businesses and students to reassert their role in providing service to the community in terms of extended training and learning. Build Community Through Local Community and Cultural Institutions Local libraries can consider how new and innovative designs can help these institutions reassert their spatial and electronic presence in the community, including providing universal access to all community members. The library has evolved from a repository of basic print information to a disseminator of a complex assortment of print and electronic information, the latter requiring a digital planning process of its own. To devise innovative new electronic and physical digital places, this process would need to include a range of partnerships with other community resources such as museums, schools, and community centers. These community resources can become important third places for enhancing access to digital technology services and resources (Oldenberg 1997). Community and cultural groups can develop new interactive aspects of their programs to enhance local electronic cultural presence and community. Many museums have already taken the first step toward developing a digital connection to their exhibitions and collections. Less common is expanding these networks to feature the work of local artists and topics of interests to arts enthusiasts. This can include taking an active role in getting local artists represented on the Internet as well as connecting citizens and visitors to local cultural museums and organizations. Push City Hall to Offer E-Services and E-Forums Digital Technologies provide a host of opportunities for local government to make the land-use and related policy decision process more interactive. Many local units of government now utilize visualization software such a geographic information systems. These platforms, especially when combined with bulletin boards, can facilitate dialogue about new developments, including high-technology and mixed uses developments. Due to the widespread growth of the Internet, online civic forums and other community networks can now be implemented in a wide variety cities and towns. Moreover, local governments should determine which of their services can be provided electronically. Unfortunately, a recent review of thirty-five cities in the U.S. by the Maxwell School at Syracuse University revealed that most cities have spent the last few years struggling with Y2K instead of conducting more strategic planning and applications development [20]. The timing is now right to extend a range of e-services to citizens, including community news, interactive forums, city council registration processes, ballot information and, in some instances, voting. Make Fast Growth Smart Growth Local economic development authorities and business interests have the opportunity to consider those high-tech segments that would complement the economic goals of the community. New partnerships could be explored with both telecommunication providers and regional planning organizations to coordinate economic growth with regional land-use plans. Possible improvements to the soft infrastructure (e.g. schools, housing stock, cultural amenities) as well as hard infrastructure (telecommunications, transportation) can be considered to enhance regional competitiveness for high-tech jobs. Smart growth policy can provide positive incentives for high-technology industries to locate in places that not only make economic sense, but environmental sense. There are, unfortunately, few examples of major high-technology companies embracing such efficient land use. While downtown areas do provide attractive places for many start-up companies, major high technology corporations seem to prefer the campus park settings, albeit within major metropolitan areas. While such developments provide pedestrian-friendly environments (that is, once you are there), they appear less likely to embrace mixed-use and alternative-transportation friendly designs. Fortunately, a number of corporations such as starting to adopt a more land-use sensitive policy [21]. A major and exciting challenge exists to bring high-technology corporations into the fold of the smart growth policy movement. 10 Need for Policy Leadership These actions are offered as sampling of how the general digital place design

17 DISP Fig. 3: Metropolitan Chicago Network. (Source: Widmayer and Greenberg, 1998) principles can be translated into actions. To proceed with any of these applications, the vision must be squared with the reality of resources and opportunity. The vision and application provide the demands upon the system that citizens, businesses, schools and institutions bring to the technologists and information architects who will design our digital places consistent with our various and collective desires. While many of the key actions to creating digital places reside in the hands of consumers, citizens and businesses, there is much that can be done in the public sector to facilitate innovative digital place design. The overriding public policy need is for leadership in creating a cohesive framework for public and private investment in digital technology systems for communities. Within this framework, various sectorial actions in educational, infrastructure, and governance provide opportunities for innovative urban design. Local communities may take action for any number of reasons, including telecommunications regulation, Internet access, and transportation. While the circumstances may vary, the need is the same: a desire for timely, accessible, and useful digital services and facilities. While it is true that in the many countries the prevailing policy sentiment is that of telecommunications deregulation, there is still a need for policy leadership to ensure equal access, including supporting civic institutions in providing this access. While bandwidth availability will eventually make its way into most communities, the need for stewardship in ensuring fairness of access remains high. For at least the short term, the markets have expressed a very strong interest in focusing the design of digital places on those communities that can afford it. Consequently, public and private sectors need to cooperate in the planning and execution of broadband systems. A recent example of this publicprivate partnership approach is the Metropolitan Chicago initiative [22]. This Technology Development Plan builds on a previous study sponsored by the regional planning agency, and includes a set of actions to ensure highbandwidth connectivity, as well as the development of parallel civic applications and networks (see Fig. 3). 11 Conclusion: Wired and Livable Digital technology systems are now being planned with several design objectives in mind: reliability, scalability and affordability, to name a few. The idea of digital place design is a new objective: livability. While implicit in many strategic telecommunications planning efforts, these guidelines brings this quality-of-life issue to the fore. And it does so with special attention to the relationship between the electronic and the physical interface. While the flurry of electronic space (e.g. e-commerce) development makes it tempting to dismiss the physical arena, there is every reason to believe that functional, enjoyable, and meaningful places will continue to be valued. Indeed, ongoing research on the psychological impact of the Internet suggests that we must pay close attention to nurturing social interaction and overcoming the isolating consequences of the technology (Kraut, 1999). Robert Putnam concludes his influential Bowling Alone with the following recommendation: The key, in my view, is to find ways in which Internet technology can reinforce rather than supplant placebased, face to face, enduring social networks (Putnam, 2000) [23]. In conclusion, the need for physical place and human activity is not going to vanish, but will evolve within the context of digital activities and technologies. Physical place settings can now play an important role in integrating technologyinfused activities with the range of other place-based interactions. Multimedia learning environments can encourage electronic and face-to-face communications. Public library-based community access stations facilitate access to printed and electronic information for all residents. Innovative telework arrangements facilitate working online at home and spending more time with family and friends. In sum, the proper physical design can become an integral part of deliberately crafting a set of circumstances that facilitate social and community connections. There is no doubt that digital technologies will impact our social and community relations, but how well they integrate with these relations will depend on how well we build our city of bits. Thomas Horan is Executive Director of the Claremont Information and Technology Institute and Associate Professor, School of Information Science, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California.

18 DISP He has authored over a dozen articles and chapters on the impacts of digital technology and telecommunications. This article is adopted from his most recent book Digital Places: Building Our City of Bits (Washington, D.C. Urban Land Institute, 2000). Additional information about the book (including an interactive forum) can be found at Notes [1] The term digital place is also used in Michael Curry, Digital Places: Living With Geographic Information Technologies (London: Routledge, 1998), though the reference here is on the connection between geographical information systems and geography. [2] Information on the Office of the Future can be found at org/ [3] For a recent summary of new office developments see M. Wallace. See Complexity of New Office Designs: Thinking Through Your Future Workplace Wallace Research Group. [4] Collaborative Economics, Innovative Regions: The Importance of Place and Networks in the Innovative Economy, Palo Alto: CA, October [5] These case studies are summarized throughout Digital Places: Building our City of Bits (ULI, 2000); the design guidelines presented here adapted from Chapter 5. [6] According to the 1998 Consumer Preference Survey by the Professional Builders Association, the single most requested residential space was for preplanned space for home computer, followed by kitchen upgrade and integrated great room requests. [7] Residential wiring guidelines are available from a number of commercial portals, such as home-automation.org/ [8] Quoted in Lisa Chadderdon, Nortel Switches Cities, Fast Company, August 1998, p [9] Magali Sarfatti Larson, Behind the Postmodern Façade: Architectural Change in the Late Twentieth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 16. [10] For additional information see Joint Venture, Internet Cluster Analysis (San Jose: Joint Venture), July 1999 at jointventure.org/ [11] See also Douglas Schuler, New Community Networks: Wired for Change (New York: Addison Wesley, 1996), Stephan Graham and Simon Marvin, Planning Cyber- Cities: Integrating Telecommunications into Urban Planning, Town Planning Review, 70(1), p , [12] Information on the PUENTE Learning Center can be found at: org/ [13] Current information about public and foundation efforts to bridge the digital divide can be found at dividenetwork.org/ [14] See Dale Anne Reiss, From bricks and mortar to clicks and bricks : companies face challenge of adapting real estate to ecommerce, at gcr.nsf/international/clicks_and_bricks_-_ Real_Estate. [15] Project Information on the Digital House can be found at exhibitions/un-privatehouse/project_05.html. [16] Additional information on E-tropolis Evanston can be found at evanston.lib.il.us/community/technopolis/ about_bkgd_01.html [17] See also Donald Schon, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, (New York: Jossey- Bass 1987), Donald Schon and Martin and Rein, M. Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies (New York: Basic Books, 1994). [18] An example of this home office design would be the live-work lofts at Orenco Station, Oregon where the home offices are located on the ground level and face the street. See: www. orencostation.com [19] See [20] Maxwell School, Syracuse University, Government Performance Project: Information Technology, at edu/gpp/index.htm [21] Examples would include the Computer Sciences in Austin, Amazon.com in Seattle, and Sun Microsystems in Burlington/Boston. [22] Information about the initiative can be found at [23] Putnam, R., Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000, p References COHILL, A, and KAVENAUGH, A. (EDS.) (2000), Community Networks: Lessons from Blacksburg, Virginia, Boston: Art-Tech DUFFY, F. The New Office (1997) London: Conran Octupus FLORIDA, R. (2000) Competing in the Age of Talent, Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie Mellon GRAHAM, S. and MARVIN, S. (1996) Telecommunications and the City, London: Routledge HORAN, T. (1999) A New Civic Architecture, Journal of Urban Technology, Vol 7, no. 2, p HORAN, T. (2000) Digital Places: Building Our City of Bits, Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute HORAN, T., WELLS, K. (2000) Design Studio Report, Prepared for Humphrey Institute, Claremont, CA, 2000 NORMAN, D. (1998) The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press OLDENBURG, R. (1997) The Great Good Place, New York: Marlowe & Company, 2nd ed. PUTNAM, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster RAPOPORT, A. (1990) The Meaning of the Built Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach, Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press RILEY, T. (1999) The Unprivate House, New York: Museum of Modern Art SAXANION, A. (1996) Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press SCHON, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner, New York: Basic Books STOKOLS, D. (1999) Human development in the age of the internet: Conceptual and methodological horizons. In S. L. Friedman & T. D. Wachs (Eds.), Measuring environment across the lifespan: Emerging methods and concepts. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, WELLMAN, B. (1999) The Networked Community, in Networks in the Global Village: Life in Contemporary Communities (Boulder, CO: Westview Press WIDMAYER, P., and GREENBERG, G., (1998) Putting Our Minds Together: The Digital Network Infrastructure and Metropolitan Chicago, Chicago: The Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago WILSON, K. (1998) The PUENTE Learning Center: A Building and A Program, Journal of Urban Technology, Vol. 5, No.2, p

19 Susan S. Fainstein DISP Inequality in Global City-Regions Within the developed countries, business and governmental leaders of large cities typically aspire to reach global-city status. Yet no convincing evidence shows that the inhabitants of global cities and their surrounding regions fare better than the residents of lesser places. Indeed the globalcity hypothesis argues that these metropolises are especially prone to extremes of inequality (Friedmann 1986). Despite being, in aggregate, the wealthiest areas of their respective nations, global-city regions tend to have large, dense groups of very poor people, often living in close juxtaposition with concentrations of the extraordinarily wealthy. According to Sassen (1991), the particular industrial and occupational structure of global cities produces a bifurcated earnings structure that in turn creates the outcome of the disappearing middle. This paper shows that global-city regions in wealthy countries do display high levels of income inequality (although not necessarily of class polarization), but that the explanation given by global-city theorists in terms of earnings is not wholly satisfactory. It further indicates that the five wealthy global-city regions of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, and the Randstad (Netherlands) vary in terms of the extent of inequality. It concludes by examining the reasons for inequality in such regions and the effects of public policy on it. This article is reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press from Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy, edited by Allen J. Scott, The Skewed Earnings Curve Argument Crudely put, global-city theory makes the following argument: Global flows of capital produce similar economic structures in those few cities where the industries that control these flows have their home. Such control rests preeminently with financial institutions, business-services firms, and corporate headquarters (Friedmann 1986; Sassen 1991, 1994, 1998); thus, the mark of a global city is its disproportionate share of finance and business services and corporate headquarters. In Sassen s terms, global cities constitute strategic sites in which leading-edge global functions are performed. Moreover, the most significant linkages between these cities leading industries and other economic enterprises are international rather than national. Because the sectors of the economy performing global roles dominate the economic base of the affected cities, the cities display similar labor markets. In turn, these produce similar occupational and earnings hierarchies resulting in similar social outcomes. In Sassen s view, the economic structure of the global city leads to social polarization, as the leading sectors, on the one hand, employ a group of extraordinarily highearning individuals and, on the other, create a demand for low-paid, lowskilled service workers. Global-city theory implies that such cities will have similar social characteristics, despite differing culture, history, governmental institutions, or public policy. This outcome is not just the product of a globalized world in which all cities increasingly look alike, but rather of ineluctable economic forces that impose a particular economic and social structure on these nodal sites. 2 The Empirical Evidence Analysis of the social structures of the global city-regions of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, and the Randstad supports an argument of increasing inequality, but it is much more ambiguous on the issues of the declining middle and of growth at the bottom. Global-city theory, as noted above, predicts that the income distribution in global cities will become increasingly polarized i.e., not only will the relative shares of total income attained by different strata of the population shift, but the numbers of people at the top and bottom will increase relative to the modal point in the income distribution curve. Testing this hypothesis, however, is a complicated proposition. First, there is the question of what to measure: earnings, income (of individuals, families, or households), occupation. Global-city theory is based on an argument concerning earnings that the types of industries which cluster in global cities disproportionately hire high- and lowwage workers. But much of the evidence that has been used to support it consists of household income data rather than earnings data. Second, measures of income distribution only take into account income that is realized in any particular year as a result of earnings, transfers, dividends, and interest. Thus, unrealized capital gains are not included, even though in the last twenty years a small group of people has become enormously richer as a consequence of soaring growth in equity markets. The fact that these gains have not been cashed out does not prevent them from being used as collateral for loans or differentiate them from earnings that have been used to buy equities. What is clear is that incomes within the five city-regions are becoming more unequal as the upper strata receive an increasingly large share of earnings. In all five regions most of the cause of growing inequality is very large increases in both individual earnings and household incomes at the top (if unrealized capital gains were included, the skew would be even greater). To put this another way, only a small proportion of households is profiting very much from the growth in aggregate income that has occurred in these regions over the last twenty years. The argument of the disappearing middle does not seem to hold up except in the sense that the shares of all income quintiles are declining relative to the top. In New York, Tokyo, and the Randstad, where there has been a steady outmigration of middle-class families to the suburbs, this statement applies more to the metropolitan region as a whole than to the central cities. Although inequality increased in all five global city-regions, the extent of the increase, and especially the situation of those at the bottom, varies. The contrast is most marked between New York City and the Randstad. As Table 1 shows, in

20 DISP New York City Randstad New York City Randstad (%) (%) (%) (%) Share of bottom 20% Share of middle 60% Share of top 20% Notes: Figures for New York are families with children; figures for the Randstad are households. New York: Data are combined for 3-year periods, and Sources: Fiscal Policy Institute, The State of Working New York: The Illusion of Prosperity: New York in the New Economy (New York: Fiscal Policy Institute, September 1999); data supplied by the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics, Division Social-Economic Statistics. Fig. 1: Income Distribution: New York City and the Randstad both cases the relative share of the bottom diminished during the last two decades, while the proportion of income captured by the top quintile grew. In New York, however, the bottom quintile lost more than half its share, and the top 20 percent gained 25 percent; the comparable figures for the Randstad were about a 10 percent loss for the bottom and approximately 5 percent increase for the top. Moreover, the 1997 share of the Randstad's bottom quintile is 2.7 times that of New York City s. A brief individual look at each cityregion permits a better picture of their social structure. 3 The City-Regions 3.1 New York Characterizations of the income structure of New York depend on which years one chooses to analyze. During the 1980s the trend of declining median income that had characterized the previous decade in the city was reversed. According to Mollenkopf (1997), real median household income grew more than 28 percent compared to a national rate of 6.5 percent. The total real income of the bottom decile fell, but all other deciles gained, with the gains increasing as one went up the income scale. The principal reason for income gains was the upward movement of earnings in different economic sectors: health, education, and social service employment produced improved incomes in the middle ranks, while finance and business service earnings pushed up the top. Only the bottom decile had no increase in labor force participation. Most importantly the bottom suffered from a decline in the real value of retirement benefits and welfare payments. Thus, loss of income at the bottom resulted from social exclusion and the retrenchment of the welfare state, not globalization and downgraded jobs. A more recent study of the New York region (New York City Council 1997: 47 48) shows general improvement during the 1980s but reversal in the 1990s. In the period 1977 through 1989, poor households increased in number due to overall population growth, but they decreased as a proportion of total households. At the same time upper income households increased numerically as well as in the relative share of total income they received. The size of the middle class, defined in relation to a middle-class standard of living, also increased. Between 1989 and 1996, however, a period of sharp recession and slow recovery, almost all gains went to the upper income group, resulting in an aggravation of regional inequality and a hollowing out of the middle, especially in the city (New York City Council 1997: 13 14). (Manhattan, nevertheless, retained a dominant position within the region income losses in New York City were almost entirely in the four outer boroughs of Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island [Hughes and Seneca 1993: 21].) The result was that, in 1977, 41 percent of the city s population was classified as middle or upper class (based on standard of living); 48 percent were at this level in 1989; and in 1996 the figures had sunk back to the total of 1977 (but with a larger proportion classified as upper class). The explanation for this finding was the failure of the city to regain all the jobs it had lost during the recession. Since 1996, however, the regional labor market has improved substantially as both employment and wages have increased; improvement was especially sharp during 1998 (Crain s New York Business, 5 11 July 1999: 12). By 1999 all lost jobs had been regained, and unlike in the earlier period the city shared equally with its suburban areas in job growth (Port Authority 1999: 2). It is therefore likely that the situation of those at the bottom has improved in the last year, although income data are not yet available to allow a firm conclusion. 3.2 London The massive increase in income inequality that occurred in London during the period resulted almost wholly from increases in earnings at the top rather than loss at the bottom of the income distribution. Within London the share of the top income decile increased from 26 percent to 33 percent, as compared to Great Britain as a whole, where the shift was from 25 percent to 31 percent. Hamnett (1997) argues that even while the very top was increasing its share, there was an upward socioeconomic shift whereby the number and proportion of professional, managerial, and technical workers have been increasing, while the number and proportion of manual workers have been falling dramatically. Even within the service sector there has been a decline in clerical and blue-collar occupations, contravening the argument that globalization increases the demand for unskilled service workers. Hamnett finds that between 1979 and 1993 the number of people with a high standard of living (i.e., earning an amount that would have put them in the top 25 percent of earners in 1979, adjusted for inflation) had increased by fifteen times. Moreover, this growth was substantially greater for London than for Britain as a whole. Hamnett finds more evidence for polarization when examining household income rather than earnings, as a