ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author introduces his approach to the study of urban infrastructure and applies it to the restructuring of telecommunications systems in global cities. He explores the linkages between the growth of a planetary network of global financial, corporate and media capitals, and the emerging global and urban information infrastructures that interlink, and underpin, such centers. The author develops an understanding by attempting to address intra-urban, inter-urban and transplanetary optic-fibre connections in parallel. It is clear that global cities grow by cumulatively concentrating the key assets which corporate headquarters, high-level service industries, global financial service industries, national and supranational governance institutions and international cultural industries rely on, within a volatile, globalising, operating environment. The activities, functions and urban dynamics which become concentrated in global city-regions rely intensely on the facilitating attributes of advanced telecommunications for supporting relational complexity, distance links and snowballing interactions, both within and between cities.
