"Few people understand the challenges and opportunities of emergingnetwork society better than William J. Mitchell. A visionary with aprogram, Mitchell not only points us toward a new future but also showsus how to get there. Anyone interested in the shape of life in the 21stcentury should read this book." -- Mark C. Taylor, Director of theCenter for Technology in the Arts and Humanities, Williams College
The global digital network is not just a delivery system for email, Webpages, and digital television. It is a whole new urbaninfrastructure--one that will change the forms of our cities asdramatically as railroads, highways, electric power supply, andtelephone networks did in the past. In this lucid, invigorating book,William J. Mitchell examines this new infrastructure and itsimplications for our future daily lives.
Picking up where his best-selling City of Bits left off, Mitchellargues that we must extend the definitions of architecture and urbandesign to encompass virtual places as well as physical ones, andinterconnection by means of telecommunication links as well as bypedestrian circulation and mechanized transportation systems. Heproposes strategies for the creation of cities that not only will besustainable but will make economic, social, and cultural sense in anelectronically interconnected and global world. The new settlementpatterns of the twenty-first century will be characterized by live/workdwellings, 24-hour pedestrian-scale neighborhoods rich in socialrelationships, and vigorous local community life, complemented byfar-flung configurations of electronic meeting places and decentralizedproduction, marketing, and distribution systems. Neither digiphile nordigiphobe, Mitchell advocates the creation of e-topias--cities that worksmarter, not harder.
