American Planning Association News and Views - April 1999

Telecommunications and Economic Development: The Challenge for Planners

Telecommunications technologies will transform urban life in the 21st century just as the automobile transformed cities in the 20th century. The cities of the next century will be defined by their capacity to produce, process and move information - both electronically and by skilled workers linked to high speed telecommunications networks. Already we can see the rapid growth of major metropolitan regions that lack traditional industrial-era infrastructure, such as deep-water ports, but which are able to compete effectively because of their capacity to attract and retain information intensive industries. In fact, the growth of Las Vegas, Orlando, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Dallas, highlight the way in which the capacity to process ideas and information has superceded the port as the vital element in urban economic growth.

Despite the rapid integration of information and telecommunications into everydaylife, planners concerned with economic development have yet to fully understand the role of information technology in urban growth and development. Information and telecommunications technologies have been considered threats to urban centers, by allowing electronic communications to replace face-to-face activities. But recent research indicates that technology can reinforce many urban centers and need not undermine urban economic activities. Certainly, telecommunications has not eliminated the need for face-to-face contact; if anything, the enormous growth of electronic communications has created an even greater value on meetings and conferences for the exchange of highly specialized information and the reinforcement of interpersonal linkages.

For the past century, planners have sought to control land use and guide economic development by designating areas for distinctly different types of activities. The zoning regulations that govern most cities and suburbs reflect the industrial-era value placed on the separation of activities into distinct zones for residential, commercial, and industrial uses. As we enter the 21st century, information-based activities will be the basis for urban economic growth, forcing planners to reconsider the traditional "brick and mortar" approaches to local economic development. New technologies are shaping manufacturing activities through the growth of customized products and just-in-time manufacturing while also redefining the role of banks and financial service firms, once key pillars of central city economies. At the same time, it is also important to recognize that cities with the human and technological infrastructure to harness new technologies will thrive in the next centuries while others are likely to decline and decay. To economically compete in an information age, cities must have an advanced telecommunications infrastructure, a highly skilled workforce, and a core of information-based activities that are able to take advantage of new technologies.

One way to understand the power of evolving information technologies is to develop new measures of information-based activity. Although the traditional centers of telecommunications and media dominate the nation as centers of internet activity, many small to mid-sized cities have rapidly moved to develop and utilize a sophisticated infrastructure for Internet communications. Some of these cities have emerged as important hubs of information flows on the Internet, rivaling the major information centers in density of development.

In a 1998 study at NYU's Taub Urban Research Center, New York City led the nation in the extent of its internet presence with 17,579 registered domains (internet addresses), followed by San Francisco at 7,718. Large, diversified regional service centers cities such as Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Dallas are also large centers of internet domains as is Los Angeles. These trends are not surprising, however, as these cities are also important world, national, and regional business centers with a large number of firms.

A surprisingly large number of medium-sized cities have a very large number of domains. Seattle, Boston, Washington, DC, Austin, Atlanta, Miami, Minneapolis, Portland, Denver, and even Pittsburgh all have approximately 500,000 residents yet hold as many domains as much larger cities like San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, and Philadelphia which each have over 1,000,000 residents. Many of these cities' large internet presence can be explained by clusters of technology industries which adopted internet use faster than other types of organizations. Several large cities are not significant centers for domain registrations, however. Philadelphia has fewer domains than Pittsburgh, despite the latter having only one quarter as many residents. Seattle, a city of some 500,000 residents has nearly ten times as many registered domains as Detroit. In Texas, El Paso and San Antonio are not participating in the internet revolution that is occurring in Houston, Dallas, and Austin. (See: http//:urban.nyu.edu/research/newcastle.)

The deployment of new telecommunications systems is also changing the activities that occur in the key elements of urban society: the home, the office, the automobile, and even the hotel room and public parks and streets. Telecommunications systems are blurring the separation between the home and the workplace, radically changing office design and function, transforming the automobile into an extension of the workplace, and moving street crime into the shadows of cyberspace.

For much of the last 100 years, the home has primarily functioned as a site for social-emotional functions of the family. A relic of Victorian-era philosophers, this separation of home and work is vanishing as new information technologies are becoming widely available. Information now brought into the home through satellite dishes, coaxial cable, and high-speed phone lines dramatically expands the number and type of activities that can occur within the confines of a residence. For many small businesses and self-employed individuals, personal computers equipped with modems, reliable overnight delivery services, sophisticated voicemail systems, and the proliferation of neighborhood office centers like Kinko's has allowed the home to become the firm's headquarters, workplace, and distribution center. In the twenty-first century, a home's attractiveness will be judged by the speed of its telecommunications connections and extent of its intelligent infrastructure, rather than conventional measures such as the number of bedrooms or bathrooms.

Telecommunications and Transportation

In contrast with the past half century which saw the development of new highway and road systems, the next century will witness the increased use of information technology to improve the efficiency of existing transportation systems: highways, ports, airports, and rail systems. Wireless telephony is transforming transportation and travel across the world, converting the automobile, the hotel room, and even the airport into an information-intensive infrastructure. It is conceivable that telecommunications will eventually make the automobile commute into a productive part of the workday, once it is possible to send and receive emails, faxes, and telephone calls from any street or highway. "Hands-free" voice recognition technology should overcome many of the safety concerns about mobile phones. Traffic jams and congestion may even be tolerated as a chance to catch up with telephone messages and email and may even intensify in cities and suburbs, as the automobile evolves into a communications as well as transportation device.

Public Life and Public Spaces

Cities have often been defined by their great public spaces, where people meet and share common experiences, whether in a stadium, a cathedral, or even a music club. Telecommunications systems are gradually affecting the activities and events that occur in those distinctly urban settings. For example, the ability to download music from internet sites may soon diminish the recorded music industry but could invigorate nightclubs and concert halls where live music is produced. Telecommunications technology makes it possible for every club and concert hall to be a site for transmitting music over the internet to audiences around the world. In this context, telecommunications becomes a way to enhance the geographic reach and economic productivity of concert halls and nightclubs. Airports and hotels are also being transformed into centers for information-based activities so that travelers can conduct business while waiting for flights or during layovers. Similarly, hotels now recognize the need to provide their guests with access to sophisticated information infrastructure. Hotel chains are increasingly providing a variety of telecommunications services, ranging from "virtual offices" in each hotel room to computing kiosks in public areas. The hotel room, once a place to rest, has also become a place to do business.

The character of urban street life is also changing due to the deployment of communications technologies by law enforcement agencies and criminal organizations. Telecommunications has always been an important tool in law-enforcement, but a broad array of new technologies is increasing the effectiveness of crime prevention and prosecution. New geographic information systems being used to map and identify crime-prone locations, and remote surveillance cameras being deployed to monitor drug-dealing in many cities are widely used in many urban precincts. Unlike previous upheavals that followed the advent of large-scale technological innovations like factory-based mass production or the interstate highway system, the transformation of the metropolis is being driven by the diffusion of intelligence across many components of urban life. Telecommunications technologies are changing the character of activities in the office, home, automobile, and even the street. Planners concerned with the future of cities and metropolitan regions should recognize the pervasive effects that new technologies have on economic activities and the need for new strategies that can harness those technologies to economic development.