ABSTRACT
The most useful sources on the historical relationship between the telephone and the development of the city are in the three books by Pool (1977, 1982 and 1990) and the reprint of an early paper by Gottmann (1990). All these provide a useful overview of the complex and contradictory nature of the impacts of the telephone on the city. Although now somewhat dated they provide an extremely good antidote to the Utopian and deterministic forecasts that we stand on the edge of urban dissolution.
