ABSTRACT
The rest of this book will be concerned with exploring in detail how these technological and regulatory developments affect cities and urban development. Nevertheless, it is also necessary here to examine briefly the remarkable shifts in cities that have paralleled these radical changes in the telecommunications sector. A key argument of this book is that the complex development of telematics and their infusion into cities cannot be divorced from considering the parallel crisis and restructuring that is underway in western cities themselves. The last twenty years have witnessed remarkable changes in the economic, social and geographical makeup of western capitalist cities-and in their political and cultural dynamics (Moss, 1987; Healey et al., 1995).
