Telecommunications: Shaping the Future

Introduction

More than fifteen years ago, The Public Interest published a pair of articles under the heading, "Is the Inner City Doomed?" by Norton Long and by George Sternlieb, that were equivalent to a funeral oration for central cities. While Long analyzed the political forces contributing to urban decline, Sternlieb declared that "The major problem of the core areas of our cities is simply their lack of economic value . . . the city has lost its raison d'être."(1) The race riots of the 1960s gave way to the fiscal crises of the 1970s, and by the end of the decade, higher oil prices, racial conflict, demographic shifts, and the decline of manufacturing were listed as contributors to the decline and fall of American cities. In the final days of the Carter administration, a presidential commission issued a celebrated report that sealed the city's casket, stating:

. . . the nation can no longer assume that cities will perform the full range of their traditional functions for the larger society. They are no longer the most desirable settings for living, working, or producing. They should be allowed to transform into more specialized service and consumption centers within [the] larger urban economic system.(2)

The principal source of hope for the revitalization of American cities was gentrificationthe return of the middle class to the cities, either as residents or shoppers. The industrial city was to give way to the city of consumption, warehouses were recycled into condominiums, piers were converted into "galleria," and factories were rebuilt as restaurants. James Rouse succeeded Frederick Olmstead as the leading force in shaping urban activity patterns, providing a new locus for commercial recreation alongside waterfronts where the sailing ship had evolved from a mode of transport to a tourist attraction.

In this essay, I argue that a handful of large central cities are still vital elements in America's economic landscape and that advances in telecommunications technology are strengthening the information-based activities of the largest urban centers. The essay consists of four parts. The first part briefly reviews the principal schools of thought on communications technology and urban growth. The next section discusses recent changes in telecommunications policy and the effects of deregulation on the nation's telecommunications infrastructure. In the third part, urban information flows and the penetration of new telecommunications systems in cities are analyzed. The final section proposes a new urban hierarchy based upon the role of cities as information-producing centers.

Cities and Information Technology

With the movement of manufacturing firms out of central cities, many scholars began to focus on the growth of the "service sector" in the urban economic system. Noyelle and Stanback emphasized the importance of "producer services" and described an "emerging pattern of metropolitan specialization:"

While there has been a considerable decentralization of manufacturing production and residential population both away from the older regions and away from the largest centers, activities of the corporate complex have decentralized little, and have grown disproportionately in a selected number of centers, mostly in the diversified and specialized service centers described above.(3)

While the "producer services" framework is a useful point of departure for studying urban functions, it is more accurate to treat cities as "information" rather than service centers. It is information, not services, that is the principal currency of cities. As Jean Gottmann noted in his classic, Megalopolis, "since the office industry is communications-oriented, its essential raw material is information."(4) Yet few scholars have sought to examine how information moves within and among cities. A notable exception is Pred, who has pointed out: "Perhaps the most telling inadequacy of classical theory is its neglect of information as a location factor."(5)

Information is transmitted in a variety of ways, in face-to-face encounters, on paper, over the telephone, and through computer networks. One of the central city's historic functions has been its ability to facilitate face-to-face contact among a large number of people with similar interests in close proximity to each other. Tobier's analysis of the New York City central business district recognizes the value placed on such direct contact for specialized business services. "The key individuals in such enterprises are concerned with the production of answers to unstandardized problems: problems that change frequently and unpredictably. . . . Because speed in decision-making is vital, even the swiftest means of travel may be too slow while the complex (and intangible) source of the problem often precludes the use of the telephone. Considerations such as these dictate that these offices, for efficiency's sake, cluster very close to each other and to those who service or supply them. . . . The reason for the existence of the CBD is the interaction it makes possible, and the most valued interaction, to put it crudely, is that which takes place between its highest paid workers."(6)

Despite the hyperbole of futurists about teleconferencing and the paperless office substituting for meetings and memos, new technology has done as much to reinforce traditional modes of communication as to undermine them. For example, the success of Federal Express demonstrates the high value that individuals and firms place on getting documents delivered overnight, and the capacity to use computer-dispatched trucks to pick up and deliver packages that are shipped by airplane and coordinated through a satellite network. With all the technological advances of the past decade, there is still no substitute for face-to-face contact to transmit timely information from trusted sources reliably and confidentially. Certainly, the growth of professional trade associations and lobbying firms in Washington, D.C., affirms the benefits of physical proximity in generating and obtaining information on public policy. Similarly, the "insider trading" scandals in the securities industry show that certain activities are best done in person, rather than over the telephone, where records of outgoing calls are a matter of public record. Meier has even suggested that the demand for urban transportation systems is closely associated with the use 'of the telephone in business activity.

The telephone system, therefore, is an important factor in the reduction of transport congestion on the streets in the built-up areas of cities. Its main contribution is in the period between rush hours during the day. Indirectly, however, the telephone system may actually exacerbate the traffic peaks. The heavy dependence upon a single, simultaneous daytime shift in the downtown areas may be attributed in part to the need for everyone to man his business extensions simultaneously in order to expedite the implementation of decisions and also not to miss the best oonortiinities.(7)

There are two approaches to the effects of communications technology on office location. The conventional wisdom is that new communications technologies will eliminate the need for central cities since technology makes it possible to transact business without requiring face-to-face contact. Representative of this thinking is Anthony Pascal, who states, "The newly emerging technologies will soon begin to provide excellent substitutes for face-to-face contact, the chief remaining raison d'être of the traditional city."

. . . Development of the electronic briefcase and the refinements of the cellular telephone promise even more disengagement between workers and fixed, centralized facilities. In the future then, many will be able to work virtually anywhere. Given a preference for low-density residence in amenity-rich areas, which a large fraction of the population expresses, further depopulation of cities seems inevitable.(8)

The appeal of telecommunications as a force for geographic dispersal fits into several ideological strands. First, certain corporations regard telecommunications as an opportunity to gain access to a low-wage, non-unionized labor force; second, residual hippies consider telecommunications as facilitating a return to nature; and three, futurists, always in search of a new technological fix, regard communications technology as a cure for the crime and congestion of the city. Richardson reflects the view of most regional development theorists who believe that telecommunications technology is reducing the importance of agglomeration economies and hence of central cities.

. . . rapid changes in telecommunications and computer technology are reducing the need for face-to-face contacts and eroding the benefits gained from minimizing communication costs. If spatial proximity is no longer a major efficiency factor for firms in interdependent industries and for departments within the same company, agglomeration economies are weakened and locational constraints are substantially relaxed.(9)

An alternative approach, taken by Jean Gottmann, argues that the telephone has had a "dual impact" on office location: ". . . first, it has freed the office from the previous necessity of locating next to the operations it directed; second, it has helped to gather offices in large concentrations in special areas."(10) Despite the fact that telecommunications has both centralizing and decentralizing tendencies, most writers have focused on the extent to which telecommunications has weakened, rather than strengthened, central city locations. The paucity of empirical research on the role of communications technologies in urban development is especially surprising, in light of Vernon's forecast, more than a quarter-century ago, that advances in air travel and communications would lead to an increased concentration of decision-making personnel in a handful of cities.

The most probable outcome of the increased freedom offered by swifter air travel will be the further concentration of the office elite at a few headquarters cities. This tendency will be fortified by the use of high-speed electronic data-processing machines. For these machines will contribute to the centralization of data-processing and decision-making at fewer points in the structure of the giant company. Though it is not a foregone conclusion that the data-processing activities will be located under the same roof as the decision-makers, there is typically a preference for locating them in some degree of proximity.(11)

Vernon's predictions about locational trends have turned out to be remarkably prescient. Advanced information systems allow a firm to control virtually all corporate activities around the world from a single point, whether in a central city or suburb. Peter Keen has described this process as "centralization within decentralization" and has noted that telecommunications may increase control through ownership of data and the ability to monitor decentralized units."(12) Further, with the rash of corporate takeovers and acquisitions, many small- and medium-size cities are losing their traditional role as headquarters sites to a handful of metropolitan centers. For those firms headquartered in large central cities, back office functions are increasingly located in separate facilities, typically at a lower-cost site on the periphery of the central business district or in a nearby suburban community with good access to the central city.(13)

It is noteworthy that a relatively small number of central cities continue to serve as magnets for office activities in an era when communications technology ostensibly makes all locations equal. The increased use of information and telecommunications technologies has not diminished the importance of the human and transportation infrastructure available in major metropolitan regions nor has it stimulated office activity in rural areas. Certainly, the availability of new telecommunications systems has not led to the mass migration of information-intensive activities to America's hinterland. Rather, the dispersion of computer-processing facilities and back offices has been to metropolitan sites that possess one or more of the following attributes: skilled, white-collar labor, access to major airports (for delivery of checks, payments, etc.), proximity to a Federal Reserve Bank or branch office, or to jurisdictions that offer firms a strategic advantage, such as deregulated banking services.

While routine clerical activities are moving out of cities, the non-routine, highly specialized information functions of certain cities are flourishing. Those cities whose economic life is based on the exchange of information, both face-to-face and electronically, are being enhanced by the capacity to participate in the increased global marketplace for business services through communications technologies. Indeed, Chinitz suggests that communications technologies will improve the efficiency with which information is transmitted in central cities: ". . . technological developments and capital investments which facilitate interaction within the CBD and reduce congestion favor the CBD by expanding its holding capacity. . . . the new CDP (computer and data processing] technologies, by facilitating communication within the CBD will expand its capacity."(14) The challenge for researchers is to determine how new communications technologies will influence the face-to-face activities that occur in cities, which cities will benefit from the increased use of information technologies, and why.

The New Urban Telecommunications Infrastructure

Until recently, the movement of voice and data messages was provided by the "Bell System," a fully-integrated communications company that consisted of AT&T Long Lines, twenty-two local telephone companies, Bell Laboratories, and Western Electric. AT&T - in cooperation with independent companies serving half of the nation's area but only 20 percent of its populationprovided what was known as "end-to-end" service that began with the highly reliable, if uninspired, telephone instruments manufactured by Western Electric. AT&T subsidiaries provided local service to homes or businesses, and AT&T Long Lines provided long-distance service to any point in the United States.

In contrast with the local power utility that simply provided electrical current, AT&T provided the telephone line plus the attachable equipment - the equivalent of Con Edison providing electricity, blenders, refrigerators, and all of the other appliances that can be plugged into an outlet. Unlike electrical appliances - which have been subject to considerable innovation - the choice of telephone equipment was highly restricted, and one paid a premium for anything beyond the basic black rotary telephone. AT&Ts control was so extensive that telephone answering machines (once they were allowed) initially had to be registered with the FCC and notification had to be given to the local telephone company. Can anyone imagine urban social life without the telephone answering machine? AT&T's control began to erode, and telephone equipment became the first part of AT&Ts business to be opened to other suppliers in 1968. This was followed by long-distance services in 1969, when MCI was authorized by the FCC to provide long-distance, private-line service along a microwave route between St. Louis and Chicago.

Subsequent deregulatory rulings by the Federal Communications Commission and the courts led to further competition in the telecommunications industry. These rulings culminated in the AT&T divestiture in 1984, which separated local and long-distance telephone service. Under the terms of the decree that approved the breakup, AT&T provides long-distance service and can manufacture and sell telecommunications and computer equipment and electronic data-processing services. The seven regional holding companies spun off by AT&Ta consolidation of the original twenty-two Bell telephone companiesare responsible for telephone service within Local Access and Transport Areas (LATA). In addition, they publish telephone directories, operate cellular mobile telephone systems, and are seeking to diversify into a broad range of new ventures.

The consumer who once relied on AT&T for telecommunications planning and procurement must now become an involved decision-maker. For small business and residential users, decisions concerning telecommunications equipment and long-distance service now require an assessment of competing alternatives. Large businesses no longer treat communications as just a cost of doing business, but as part of their corporate strategy; therefore, such firms are increasingly involved in developing their own proprietary networks as well as relying on major communications carriers. For example, telecommunications is now the third largest cost for Citicorp, after salaries and real estate. The deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the United States and the privatization of telecommunications in other advanced industrial nations is leading to the creation of a new telecommunications infrastructure designed to serve the information-intensive activities of large metropolitan regions. Decisions concerning investment in new telecommunications systems are no longer made solely by governmental agencies concerned with uniformity of service; rather, in today's competitive environment, decisions concerning telecommunications infrastructure are based upon market demand, and the largest, most information-intensive cities are the first to be equipped with the latest telecommunications transmission and switching equipment. New fiber optic systems favor heavily used communication routes, and they are typically being built along to link major cities, using the rights-of-way that were initially granted for the railroads of the nineteenth century.(15)

Although not commonly recognized, the economics of the telephone industry have long been distorted by regulatory policies. For example, it is cheaper to build and operate a telephone system to serve 10,000 urban households living within ten square miles than to provide equivalent telephone service to 100 households distributed across 1,000 square miles. Just imagine how much more efficient it is to spread the costs of a telephone company central office and equipment over 10,000 households in Washington, D.C., than over 10,000 households in West Texas. However, an elaborate system of cross-subsidies, based upon well-established federal and state government policies, has meant that the price of telephone service for the household has been roughly comparable across the country, with urban areas subsidizing rural areas. This policy stands in stark contrast to pricing policies for such important services as water supply and energy, where the price of service varies greatly across the nation, notwithstanding the enormous federal subsidies for the construction of dams and power facilities.

Telecommunications deregulation is gradually leading to the elimination of cross-subsidies and to a new telecommunications infrastructure, characterized by a multiplicity of telecommunications networks, where the choice and type of service will vary substantially, depending upon the size and scale of the market. Most important, the spread of fiber optic systems, "smart buildings," and national paging systems is already revealing that the new emerging telecommunications infrastructure will favor those metropolitan areas with information-intensive industries and lead to disparities between urban and rural telecommunications systems. For example, according to the Urban Land Institute, as of January, 1985, fifty-one buildings offered shared tenant services, and half of them were located in four metropolitan areasNew York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Dallas-Ft. Worth. Similarly, a national radio paging system is now being installed in thirty major metropolitan areas, with other regions to be served at a later date. The diffusion of new telecommunications systems is favoring the major metropolitan areas, and within the metropolitan regions, large central cities are the first to have choice and competition in business communirafinn services.(16)

Information Flows as a Measure of Urban Activity

It is ironic that the U.S. Census gathers more data about the number of households with indoor plumbing than the type of information systems in homes and offices. In an information age, we must look beyond traditional measures such as population size, land area, or employment.(17) The world's top ten cities in terms of population are not the principal world cities with regard to amount of economic activity, location of information industries, or the flow of communication messages. The number of people living in a city may be an adequate measure of a city's importance in a nation-state, but it does not fully measure the significance of a city in todays global economy. Population size was critical to city growth when the purpose of cities was to provide large numbers of laborers to work in factories devoted to the manufacture and assembly of goods; today, the location of foreign banks, number of long-distance telephone calls, and penetration of telex machines may be a more appropriate barometer of a city's economic health and vitality.(18) In order to look at information-based activity, multiple measures are needed: in this paper, the penetration of facsimile machines is used to measure the presence of telecommunications-intensive firms; the flow of private international mail is examined to show the sources and recipients of high value documents; and finally, the movement of international air passengers and airmail is examined as a means to depict the linkages with international cities.

An example of a measure that reflects the extent of a sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure is the presence of facsimile machines which deliver hard copies of documents instantaneously to physically removed locations. The basic technology has been in existence for decades and involves a device that reads the hard copy, transmits it by phone lines, and returns it to hard copy form at the other end of the phone line. Potentially, facsimile machines are available in any location where there is phone service. In reality, it is only available in unregulated form within national boundaries.

This analysis of the location of facsimile machines is restricted to cities in the United States with the largest concentration of such machines and compares these cities to the largest U.S. cities as measured by population. This discussion demonstrates that information infrastructure and population size are not necessarily correlated, and that information is a separate and distinct measure of the economic activity in a city. Cities with a high concentration of facsimile machines are likely to have firms that are information-intensive and invest in such equipment in order to facilitate ongoing contact with firms within the region or in other parts of the nation.

Facsimile machines are used by a diversity of industries and have a dispersed locational pattern, according to a survey of banking, communications, and business firms listed in The Official Facsimile Users Directory.(19) A comparison of cities by number of facsimile machines and population shows that several of the cities with large numbers of facsimile machines are cities with relatively small populations. As shown in Figure 9-1, the most striking cities with a high per capita number of facsimile machines are San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Boston, and Pittsburgh.

San Francisco is ranked third in number of facsimile machines for the industries examined, yet is ranked 13 in terms of population size. Washington, D.C. has the fifth largest number of facsimile machines and is seventeenth in population size. Atlanta ranks sixth for facsimile machines, but is the 31st largest city in the U.S. Boston ranks seventh in number of facsimile machines and 20th in population size. Finally, Pittsburgh has the tenth largest number of facsimile machines in the industries examined, but is only the 33rd largest city. Cities with the largest numbers of facsimile machines are not necessarily the same cities as those with the largest populations.

New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Dallas follow a more traditional pattern. Each of these cities is in the top ten for both incidence of facsimile machines and population. On the other hand, the cities of Phoenix, San Diego, Philadelphia, San Antonio, and Detroit are among the top ten in population, but do not appear in the top ten for number of facsimile machines. How far below the top ten is difficult to determine currently, but population levels for these cities do not appear to be directly related to this measure of information production and flow.(20)

PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL MAIL AS A MEASURE OF INFORMATION FLOW

Another important measure of information-based activity is the use of private mail services. While Federal Express is the largest firm in the United States, the largest private international firm for document and package delivery is DHL Worldwide Ltd. Unlike the previous measure of facsimile penetration, private mail is a direct measure of information flow, and because the cost to send a document is relatively high, approximately $50, most of the use is for business purposes rather than for personal correspondence.

Here we examine international communication from the United States to Japan and Southeast Asia to determine the major information sources in the U.S. and leading recipients of this information. Although this data set addresses states as information producers rather than urban areas as information producers, data available for Japan includes information on document deliveries both to and from Japan, and it provides information on the magnitude of deliveries to and from six U.S. cities as well as by state of origin or destination. A comparison of city and state totals provides some indication of how important these cities are as major information producers in their states.

Japan is the major recipient of DHL deliveries in Southeast Asia and receives almost twice as many documents as the next largest recipient, Hong Kong. Other Southeast Asian countries that receive significant numbers of DHL documents from the U.S. include South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and the Philippines. In all cases, California and New York are the origins of a significant proportion of the documents. Texas is also responsible for a significant proportion of the total number of documents Singapore receives from the U.S., and accounts for between 5 and 10 percent of the documents sent to other regions. Illinois and New Jersey consistently originate a moderate amount (between 5 and 10 percent) of documents sent to each region examined. All other states consistently provide less than 5 percent of the documents to each country.

Japan sent 325,469 documents to the United States in 1985. California received the greatest number of documents, and New York State was the second largest recipient (Figure 2). In fact, New York State and California received a total of 52.2 percent of the documents sent. The major metropolitan areas in those states account for the vast majority of the traffic (Figure 3). Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas each account for slightly more than 5 percent of the document traffic from Japan. The other 45 states account for less than 5 percent each - 30.4 percent in aggregate.

A comparison of metropolitan area data with the level of state traffic permits conclusions to be drawn about the importance of these cities as their states' central information producers or recipients. Information is available for six cities: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Memphis, Dallas, and Portland, Oregon. For the purpose of this paper, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco were examined in detail since these cities are in the two states that consistently have the greatest volume of document traffic with Japan and Southeast Asia. New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are the points of origin for 45 percent of all documents sent to Japan (Figure 4). Of all documents originating in California, San Francisco accounts for 51.2 percent, and Los Angeles accounts for 44 percent. Together, the two cities account for a total of 95.2 percent of all documents originating in California. New York City originates 94.7 percent of all New York State documents sent to Japan. This indicates that the majority of DHL traffic from New York and California destined for Japan is centered in the major urban areas.

Similar trends are apparent for traffic from Japan to the United States. In this case the traffic to the United States totals 325,469 documents. Almost 50 percent of the documents sent were destined for New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. New York City accounts for almost all traffic in New York State (97.2 percent). Los Angeles and San Francisco together account for 90.3 percent of deliveries made to California.

These comparisons of document flows to and from cities in the most important information states show that the major cities account for the majority of information flows observed. New York State and California are the points of origin for an overwhelming proportion of the total number of documents sent to Japan and Southeast Asia. For every significant destination in the region, New York State and California each provided 20 to 30 percent of the traffic received. In addition, the states of Texas, New Jersey, and Illinois are consistently the origin points for a moderate amount of the traffic (see Figure 5). Information flow from the United States to this region occurs predominantly in the states with the largest urban centers. Based upon preliminary evidence, the information flows to and from states identified as major information producers are primarily flows to and from the urban centers in those states. In both California and New York State, information flows to and from Japan were almost exclusively to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City.

It is important to note that mail traffic has always been an indicator of urban activity. Pred's study of information flows in the United States found a similar pattern of urban concentration in mail, though the specific cities were somewhat different. "In total terms, if not in per capita terms, New York and the other major northeastern ports dominated private information exchange through the mails in the final pretelegraphic decades."

. . . In the early 1820s, when New York had little more than 1.5 percent of the nations population, the city accounted for about 8.5 percent of all postal receipts. . . . In both the early 1820s and the early 1840s, as well as at every intervening date for which data has been found. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore took in close to one-quarter or more of United States postal receipts, although the four cities had only 3.92 percent of the nations population in 1820, and 4.94 percent in 1840.(21)

Figure 6 presents data on the leading international cities that originate private international documents. London is the leading producer of private international mail, followed by New York and Tokyo. The presence of Seoul, Singapore, and Hong Kong in this list may reflect the limits of telephone usage and time shifts but, nonetheless, it illustrates the prominence of these Pacific Rim cities as information capitals. What is most striking is the position of Los Angeles as the seventh-leading international information producer.

An Information-Based Urban Hierarchy

The preceding discussion has emphasized the need for new conceptual and empirical approaches to communications technology and urban development. Telecommunications is creating a new urban hierarchy, in which certain cities will function as international information capitals, with the most extensive electronic infrastructure and richest opportunities for human interaction. Other cities will serve as regional information hubs, linked to the principal international capitals, but with a less extensive geographic reach. In observing metropolitan dispersion, Castells also found a pattern of urban centralization.

. . . the new technologies also enhance, simultaneously, the importance of a few places as locations of those activities that cannot easily be transformed into flows and that still require spatial contiguity, thus, reinforcing considerably the intraurban hierarchy. In the informational city, spatial singularity and urban centrality become even more important than in the industrial-commercial city, precisely because of their unique locational requirements.(22)

Advances in communications technologies do not operate in a vacuum; rather, for those cities that already have a strong set of information-processing functions, technology can extend the boundaries of the markets that such cities serve. Further, technology has not eliminated the importance of direct human contact as a mode of information exchange in business and government. Even in the technologically intensive trading rooms of financial institutions, direct visual and audio contact is still essential, despite the extensive video displays and telephone lines that each trader relies on. As an article in the Financial Times stated, "Notwithstanding the sophisticated electronics, the most efficient way of announcing a market crisis fast is to stand up and shout. That's another reason for open plan floors with as wide as possible an area of vision and one presumes - good acoustics."(23) Moreover, the elaborate and expensive trading rooms designed for financial institutions are remarkably similar in certain ways to the informal markets and stock exchanges that once occupied street corners before there were skyscrapers.

The trading area can be thought of as a kind of theatre in which everyone is an actor and in which every actor needs to see what everyone else is doing.(24)

Telecommunications is not necessarily an anti-urban force; rather, it is fostering a new urban hierarchy of cities that are able to take advantage of the demand for information-based activities in a global economy. The strong real estate market that characterizes the downtown areas of New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. and the investment in new telecommunications systems to serve those cities, reflect what Kasarda calls "the transformation of older cities from centers of production and distribution of material goods to centers of information exchange and service consumption."(25) The engine of future urban economic development is information, and communications technology is saving, not destroying, those cities that are the leading information producers. Unfortunately, the human infrastructure to work in information-intensive industries has not kept up with the technological infrastructure. Finally, it is essential to recognize that the individuals and firms that choose to do business in the central city are not locating there in spite of telecommunications, but because telecommunications is able to enrich and extend the power of the ideas and decisions that are exchanged in face-to-face encounters.

 

NOTES

1. George Sternlieb, "The City as Sandbox," The Public Interest, Nc 25, Fall 1971; Norton E. Long, "The City as Reservation," The Public interest No. 25, Fall 1971.

2. President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties Report of the Panel on Policies and Prospects for Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan America, Urban America in the Eighties: Perspectives and Prospects. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980, p. 4.

3. Ibid, p. 5.

4. Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1961, p. 597.

5. Allan R. Pred, "Industry, Information, and City-System Interdependencies." In Spatial Perspectives on Industrial Organization and Decision-Making, " F.E. lan Hamilton (ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979, p. 105.

6. Emanuel Tobier, "Economic Development Strategy for the City." In Lyie C. Fitch and Annmarie Hauck Walsh (eds.), Agenda for a City. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, Institute of Public Administration, 1970, pp. 60-61.

7. Richard L. Meier, A Communications Theory of Urban Growth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1961, p. 100.

8. Anthony Pascal, The Vanishing City: How Technology Induces Urban Entropy and What's To Be Done About It? The Rand Corporation, 1985.

9. Harry W. Richardson, "Regional Development Theories," Economic Prospects for the Northeast, Temple University Press, 1985, p. 23.

10. Jean Gottmann, "Megalopolis and Antipolis: The Telephone and the Structure of the City." In lthiel de Sola Pool (ed.), The Social Impact of the Telephone. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977, p. 305.

11. Raymond Vernon, Metropolis 1985. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960, pp. 84-85.

12. Peter G.W. Keen, Competing in Time: Using Telecommunications for Competitive Advantage. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1986, p. 68.

13. Mitchell L. Moss and Andrew Dunau, "Will the Back Offices Leave the Central City?" Real Estate Review, Vol. 17, No. I, Spring 1987, pp. 62-68.

14. Benjamin Chinitz, "The Influence of Communications and Data Processing Technology on Urban Forms." In Robert D. Ebel and John P. Ross (eds.), Research in Urban Economics. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1984.

15. Mitchell L. Moss, "Telecommunications Policy and Cities," Intermedia, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 1986.

16. Mitchell L. Moss, "Can States Face the Future: A New Agenda for Telecommunications Policy?" New York Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1986.

17. George Sternlieb and James W. Hughes have discussed the limits of traditional measures of central city business and service demand in "The Uncertain Future of the Central City," Urban Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 4, June 1983, p. 470.

18. For a good discussion of computer networks in regional development, see Mark Hepworth, "The Geography of Technological Change in the Information Economy," Regional Studies. Vol. 20, No. 5, October 1986.

19. Facsimile Users Directory, Facsimile Directory of Publisher Associates, Stanley Greenfield (ed.). New York, 1986. The category of banking includes banks and credit unions. Communications firms include common carriers and equipment manufacturers. The business category includes management consulting firms, computer software and hardware firms, as well as a variety of miscellaneous categories of other firms.

20. One caveat to these findings is that they are based on three industries rather than incidence of facsimile machines as a whole. It may be that the data are capturing regional trends that have to do with locations of industry types rather than real differences in information needs. This objection will be addressed in the course of further research on telecommunications systems and cities.

21. Allan Pred, Information Circulation and the Process of Urban Growth: The U.S. System of Cities, 1790-1840. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973, p. 93.

22. Manuel Castells, "High Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-Regional Process in the United States," High Technology, Space, and Society, M. Castells (ed.), Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, Volume 28, Sage Publications, 1985, p. 18.

23. "Space Matters More Than Location," Financial Times, October 27, 1986, p. XL.

24. Accommodating the Changing City. Report prepared for Rosehaugh Stanhope Developments PLC by DEGW, Research Consultants and Space Planners, London, April 1985, p. 35.

25. John Kasarda, "Urban Change and Minority Opportunities." In Paul Peterson (ed.). The New Urban Reality. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1985, p. 43.

 

Originally published in America's New Market Geography,
James W. Hughes, George Sternleib, eds.
Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ 1988