ABSTRACT
What is the future for cities in an increasingly digital world? In 1995 alarm ists told us that it was just a matter of time before fiber-optic infrastructure and digital capacity made central cities obsolete (Peters and Gilder 1995, Negroponte 1995, Naisbitt 1995). In the same way that technological inno vations in transportation had facilitated the movement of people and then manufacturing to more distant suburban locations, digital technology would free business from its urban moorings (Cohen 2000). As business became more “footloose,” central cities would cease to be “central.” The inner city, as Anthony Downs (1994) points out, would be caught in a spatial and social gap between low-income people stuck within the city limits and jobs moving beyond the city limits. Technology, in this view, exacerbates problems of sprawl and punctuates the ongoing plight of inner-city residents left behind.
