Telecommunications and the City provides the first critical and state-of-the-art review of the relations between telecommunications and all aspects of city development and management. Drawing on a range of theoretical approaches and a wide body of recent research, the book addresses key academic and policy debates about technological change and the future of cities with a fresh perspective. Through this approach, the complex and crucial transformations underway in cities in which telecommunications have central importance are mapped out and illustrated. Key areas where telecommunications impinge on the economic, social, physical, enviromental and institutional development of cities are illustrated by using boxed extracts and wide range of case study examples from Europe, Japan and North America. Rejecting the extremes of optimism and pessimism in current hype about cities and telecommunications, Telecommunications and the City offers a sophisticated new perspective through which city-telecommunications relations can be understood.

Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin are both Lecturers at the Centre for Urban Technology, Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Newcastle.

1 INTRODUCTION Telecommunications and the city: parallel transformations; Telecommunications and urban transformations; The urban 'impacts' of telecommunications; The neglect of telecommunications in urban studies; The need for more sophisticated approaches to city-telecommunications relations; The transformation of telecommunications: from the 'Plain Old Telephone Service' (POTS) to telematics; The transformation of cities: towards planetary urban networks 2 TELECOMMUNICATIONS AS A PARADIGM CHALLENGE FOR URBAN STUDIES AND POLICY 3 APPROACHING TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND THE CITY 4 URBAN ECONOMIES 5 THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LIFE OF THE CITY 6 URBAN ENVIRONMENTS 7 URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE AND TRANSPORTATION 8 URBAN PHYSICAL FORM 9 URBAN PLANNING, POLICY AND GOVERNANCE 10 CONCLUSIONS