ABSTRACT
The major cities of Western Europe and North America changed dramatically in the last half of the twentieth century. The vast flows of people, capital, energy, goods, and information through ever expanding networks impressed themselves on – without eradicating – the older spatial patterns of the pre-war metropolis. The tasks of adapting old forms to new possibilities (and vice versa) demand a shift in the way that professional planners, and most importantly infrastructure specialists, describe their objectives and actions. Rather than focus just on mobility and communication demands, the deliberative process of the “network society” appropriately focuses on the complex interaction between the forms of movement and those of land use, environmental quality, and sustainability; on balancing the transformative claims of the extended networks and the conservative claims of local political jurisdictions and neighborhoods.
