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New technology and the urban environment
Pergamon
Futures, Vol. 30, No. 9, pp. 887–899, 1998 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0016–3287/98 $19.00 ⫹ 0.00
PII: S0016–3287(98)00091-3
NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT Graham H May Technology has always had an influence on the form of settlements, but only since the coming of Information Technology has it aroused much interest from academics and planners. The impact that IT is likely to have on urban areas is debated, some foreseeing decentralisation and the end of place, while others see evidence of the centralisation of control in a global economy. Other new technologies may also affect cities as new materials provide the opportunity for different styles of building. As we enter the 21st century, however, we do so with the largest stock of urban capital ever, much of which is ageing and in need of maintenance. Technology is part of a complex interrelationship of influences on urban areas and much of it will have to be retrofitted on to the pre-existing environment. 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Until relatively recently, urban scientists and planners seem to have taken technology as a given. Other issues, such as economic and social change and providing space for employment, housing and transport, occupied most of the pages of plans and academic writings on urban areas. The advent of information technology and telecommunications has brought a change as several academics, including Brotchie,1–3 Castells,4–6 Mitchell7 and Graham and Marvin8 have turned their attention to the impact of this new technology on cities and the UK Open University is to launch a new course on Technology and the City. This attention is both welcome and overdue, as cities have long reflected the technology of the societies which constructed them. Gideon Sjoberg,9 the American Sociologist, pointed this out in his study of the pre-industrial city. He argued that most pre-
Gordon H. May is Principle Lecturer in Futures Research and Course Leader of the Masters in Foresight and Futures Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University, School of the Built Environment, Centre for Urban Development and Environmental Management, Calverley Street, Leeds, LS1 3HE, UK (Tel.: ⫹ 44 (0)113-2832600; fax: ⫹ 44 (0)113-2833190; email: [email protected]).
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industrial towns were similar because, despite being constructed by different cultures, they shared a common level of technology. The Industrial Revolution, though significantly influenced by economic, social and political factors, could not have occurred without the developments in technology, as studies of the history of the period indicate.10,11 Steam power based on coal and the replacement of wood by iron and steel, produced significant changes to the urban environment. The massive mills of Northern England, and other 19th century industrial areas, as big or bigger than the cathedrals and castles of the medieval era, dominated the urban areas that grew from villages to cities, tripling their populations in 50 years. Technology also played its part, through the mechanisation of agriculture, which reduced the need for labour in the countryside and encouraged migration to the cities. The second half of the 20th century has seen similar changes as two major technologies have changed the appearance of most western cities and are now affecting the cities of south-east Asia and China. Transport and building technology have had a major impact on the form and appearance of our cities. Few European cities had buildings taller than five or six stories in 1950; few now lack such buildings, either in the centre, as in London, or in purpose built business areas on the edge of the centre, as at La Defense in Paris. Developments in building technology have played an important part in the changes. Transport has also been influential. First the railways and then the car gave greater mobility to the middle classes, enabling them to live further from their work places, which themselves could remain central or move to the suburbs or the new ‘edge cities’. There is, then, nothing new in the idea that technology plays an important role in influencing the shape of our cities and the way we live; we only have to compare the pre-industrial city with the late 20th century city to see that. With hindsight we can examine the history of the city and analyze the influences that have led to its current form. Not that it is a simple matter to identify cause and effect, as cities result from a complex interrelationship of forces which often cannot be separated. Technology is not a force on its own. Just like cities, technology only exists because we humans have brought it into existence. Which technologies are developed and how they are used results from human decision. The same will be true for the new technologies; they will not just happen, but be developed in response to economic, social and political demands, and they again will play their part in changing the form of the city in the 21st century.
Information technology In many ways, if cities did not exist, it would now not be necessary to invent them.12
The technology that has attracted most public and academic attention is information technology, but there are also other technologies, particularly related to new materials, that have attracted less attention but which may have a larger effect on the way our cities look in the future. At least since the publication of Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave, there has been a view that information technology would effectively reverse the urbanisation process that began with the Industrial Revolution and bring about, “a return to cottage industry on a
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new, higher, electronic basis, and with it a new emphasis on the home as the centre of society”.13 Toffler coined the phrase “electronic cottage” to encapsulate this new form of settlement he envisaged. The clear implication was a more rural, almost pre-industrial pattern. One of the most extreme expressions of this opinion is James Snider’s article ‘The Information Superhighway as an Environmental Menace’,14 in which he foresees an increasingly footloose population moving to the more rural parts of the United States. The population would become footloose because the information superhighway would enable, ‘anything, anywhere, anytime’. As a result, employment would no longer be restricted to centres of population and employees could make their residential location decisions on the basis of non-work preferences, such as environment, access to local services and facilities like schools and freedom from crime. Snider quotes friends of his in Manhattan who would move to Vermont, perceived as “the best place in the United States to raise a family”, if good employment opportunities were available. John Naisbitt is already an example, “Five years ago we moved to Telluride, Colorado, a tiny mountain village (population 1,200) in the southwest corner of the state$Although we are six hours from Denver (by road, but quicker by air) with our computers, telephones, fax machine and Federal Express we are as in touch with the rest of the world as if we were in downtown London or Tokyo”.15 Information technology, it is argued, effectively eliminates the economic importance of space and time and, as a 1997 advert for BT (British Telecom) suggested, “Geography is History.” Some jobs have even become ‘space-less’, being conducted from a mobile office, otherwise known as a car, through the use of cellular communications and portable computing.16 The result could be major shifts of population to areas considered attractive for environmental, social or other reasons. But all jobs, at least at present, would not appear suitable for teleworking, though estimates of those that are vary. A Dutch study suggested that only 37% of all current jobs, mostly medium or higher qualified ones, could reasonably be expected to be carried out through telework for at least 20% of working hours.17 In the US, Handy and Mokhtarian18 estimated that 57% of the workforce were in telecommuting-conducive occupations in 1990, an increase from 53% 10 years earlier. That may indicate a potential to increase as the nature of jobs changes. A major attraction of teleworking for the employee is the time saving and reduced stress arising from the absence of the need to physically commute, the result ironically of the success of earlier transport technologies, especially the car, in enabling the separation of home from work. Telework may also allow those unable to travel to gain employment, to start their own enterprise or increase household income.19 This, it is suggested, can lead to improved family life and greater opportunity for involvement with, and hence the reinvigoration of, the local community, which would become less of a dormitory and more like a traditional village or small town. Employers may also benefit through: 쐌 increased worker productivity, up to 15–20% is quoted in some examples, 쐌 reduced business costs, US$2 for every dollar invested in telecommuting, 쐌 real estate savings of between 25% and 90% as expensive city centre offices are no longer required,20 쐌 the retention of skilled workers, 쐌 improved quality of customer service, 쐌 quality work at lower cost,
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쐌 improved recruitment, 쐌 greater use of freelance labour, 쐌 and greater flexibility in dealing with peak loads.21 One company in New Jersey estimated that the cost of providing office space was US$20 000 per employee and although providing the facilities for telecommuting are significant, they are considerably less than that.22 By relocating, particularly the so-called back-office functions, in places away from the larger cities, employers are also able to reduce office costs and employ cheaper labour. “According to one study in 1991, locating a 300 000 square foot facility that employs 1,000 clerical personnel in the Phoenix area rather than San Francisco would save $6.35 million annually in space and payroll costs.”23 In another example, parking controls in part of London are administered electronically from Forres in the Highlands of Scotland by staff earning half the going rate in London in a building which cost a fifth of equivalent accommodation in London.24 Environmentally, telecommuting is also claimed to offer benefits by reducing travel and, consequently, oil consumption and pollution. Even if only 20% of the currently commuting work force were able to telecommute on average for 2.5 days per week, work trips would be reduced by 10%.25 The 11% of the workforce of metropolitan Phoenix—about 100 000 workers—who were telecommuting one day a week in 1993 resulted in a saving of 1.8 million miles of travel daily, and if 5% of Los Angeles commuters worked at home one day a week, it has been estimated that they would save 9.5 million gallons of petrol and reduce atmospheric pollution by 94 million tons a year.26 In the light of such potential benefits Lake27 has argued that, in the interests of sustainability, public policy should: 쐌 쐌 쐌 쐌
integrate information technology into transport policies, give incentives to new ways of working that reduce travel, run awareness campaigns on teleworking, set an example with all government offices implementing teleworking schemes with annual targets for trip reduction.
Estimates of the number of telecommuters in the United States suggest an increasing trend: 1985: 10–30,00028 1991: 5.5 million29 1993: 6.1 million30 1995: 8 million31 2002: 15 million projected by the Department of Transportation, about 10.5% of the workforce32 These figures suggest significant growth, but it has not so far been as rapid as some predicted. Toffler33 predicted that 15 million Americans would telecommute from their ‘Electronic Cottages’ by 1995. It is also unlikely that these jobs are conducted exclusively by telecommuting and more likely that some work still requires commuting to the traditional office. Castells,34 quoting Qvortup, identifies three types of telecommuter. 쐌 substitutors who are working at home in place of the office, 쐌 self-employed who work from home, and 쐌 supplementers whose work at home supplements office work.
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To this might be added teleworkers who work from telecentres in suburban locations rather than at home. Of the 5.5 million teleworkers in 1991, only 16% telecommuted for more than 35 h per week. Two days per week was the most common, with 25% telecommuting less than one day per week. Only between 1% and 2% of the total labour force were telecommuting at any one time. Similar projections are made for the UK. British Telecom has predicted that by the year 2000 3.3 million people, around 17% of the workforce, will be teleworking from home.35 Such a shift will be encouraged, the British Road Federation believes, by gridlock arising from the lack of new road building, a trend reinforced by the government’s environmental policy. By 2010 it is predicted that journeys to work and shop will have been reduced by 43% and social journeys by 20%, but this contrasts with Department of Transport predictions of traffic more than doubling by 2020.
Limitations Several factors appear to constrain the shift of even information work, the most easily adapted, to telecommuting. “With its social rituals, human interest and politics, office life retains a strong attraction”.36 At an individual level, working at home lacks the social contact of the office. After 5 years of teleworking Wallis37 was glad to be back in the office, the novelty of homeworking having warn off. She missed the social life of the office, the opportunity to bounce ideas off colleagues and working as a team. The trend towards smaller and even single households may also limit people’s willingness to lose the camaraderie of the office, unless they can replace the social contact in some other way. Women, in particular, who for the first time have recently ‘escaped’ from the home into the world of employment on a much greater scale than before, may not welcome teleworking if it has the effect of returning them whence they have come. Huws38 confirms this, arguing that much of the hype about teleworking has been anti-feminist, suggesting that it portrays women as being able to fit their work, “between emptying granny’s bedpan and washing the baby’s nappies”. Employers too are not necessarily keen to exploit the potential savings in office space and labour costs, preferring to ‘keep an eye’ on their employees through traditional supervisory methods. New ways of working require a change of attitudes and new management structures that existing managers do not find easy to adopt. Paradoxically, trade unions are concerned about the potential for exploitation of home workers because they are often poorly paid and forced to work long hours to achieve unreasonable targets. Home working has always been a feature of some industries, notably the clothing trade, where exploitation is rife. Teleworking may be different, but the experience of homeworking and the potential for electronic surveillance makes the unions suspicious. Salomon39 questions the benefits to be gained from reductions in travel, pointing out that people may relocate further from their original workplace and consequently increase the length of less frequent trips or replace work journeys with more trips for other purposes. They may also increase energy consumption in other ways, such as home heating. To have a significant effect, telecommuting must replace car journeys and experience in the Netherlands suggests that telecommuting has increased most among public transport users and cyclists rather than car drivers.
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Other factors potentially constraining the development of teleworking include taxation structures, health and safety legislation and planning controls that are all designed for the Industrial model of society. If firms do not draw up new service contracts and ensure proper safety and insurance cover for teleworkers they could encounter legal challenges in case of accident.40 Property taxes are frequently structured differently for residential and commercial property. In the United Kingdom, for example, residential property pays a tax based on its estimated capital value in residential use whereas commercial property pays a Business Rate. Teleworking could clearly complicate matters. Much urban planning since the Industrial Revolution has been based on the segregation of land uses on the assumption that employment, then mostly manufacturing, and housing do not make good neighbours because the former pollutes that latter. The information based work that characterises the postindustrial world does not, but the established concepts of planning still hold sway. An attempt in the 1980s to modify English planning controls by amending the General Development Order to allow small businesses, employing up to six people, in residential areas was withdrawn after a hostile reception. Most opposition centred on the potential for traffic generation and the consequent disturbance of the residential environment. Use of a residential building for commercial purposes may therefore be refused planning permission because it constitutes a non-conforming use. A further difficulty may arise from the nature of the residential accommodation built over the last 50 or so years. In the UK this has characteristically been in residential estates of semi-detached or detached houses built for the nuclear family. This will normally consist of one or two living rooms and between two and four bedrooms. Government publications from the 1960s make clear the assumptions under which this type of house was built, it was essentially a dormitory, which is empty during the day while the occupants are at work or school and only used for eating and recreation in the evening and sleeping at night. There is little room for workspace, except in the bedrooms, and often little space for extension of the dwelling to provide an office. Apartments and flats are unlikely to offer greater potential. In the UK case it is somewhat ironic that some older houses built for the larger families of the 19th century probably offer better potential for mixed office and residential use than more modern homes, though smaller households may lead to spare rooms which can be converted for workspace. Many large Victorian and Edwardian villas adjacent to existing town centres have already been converted from homes to offices. Other tele-operations Employment is not the only land use subject to potential change as the result of information technology. Education from school to University may also be affected. The Internet and CD-ROMs already provide sources of information that exceed the capabilities of many school libraries, and University courses are beginning to appear on the Internet to supplement those already available by conventional methods and paper based distance learning. The potential exists, according to the UK Technology Foresight Leisure and Learning Panel,41 for: 쐌 much learning in further and higher education to be independently undertaken through interactive learning technology via the information superhighway,
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쐌 substantial use of video-conferencing as a learning tool and 쐌 teaching by experts whose work can be electronically accessed. If we can access the wisdom of the world’s leading scholars in Harvard, Tokyo or Cambridge, which will be automatically translated into our own language, why should we crowd together in Leeds? As long ago as 1983, Tom Stonier was predicting that most learning would be done from home with children going to ‘school’ to interact with their peers and engage in sports, laboratory exercises and dramatics.42 Perhaps that is why many students in the UK prefer to go to University already, to enjoy the social life away from parental sight. If that is the case, studying electronically from home may not be popular. Other factors, such as increased costs, may however be more important in encouraging home based study, which information technology can enhance. Shopping in many cities has already followed the American pattern, leaving downtown for the suburbs and out-of-town. The city centres traditional appeal was based on accessibility; it was the focus of public transport routes bringing people from all around to the most accessible place. The use of the car has changed that. The most accessible places by car are not the city centre, where congestion and lack of parking space bring frustration and expense, but the regional shopping centres and malls on the ring road or motorway junction with their plentiful free parking. Again the potential for tele-shopping is considerable and several experiments are now being carried out. The weekly trip to the supermarket can be replaced by an electronic order delivered to the door and the potential reductions in cost from tele-mail order may prove attractive as centralised warehouses undercut traditional suppliers. Just imagine: the washing machine has packed up and you need a replacement quickly. Go to the house terminal; call up shopping–washing machines; set your price bracket; call up the consumer reports; ask all the questions you can think of; check availability and prices; make the order and pay. Two days later the new machine is delivered and fitted; does it matter if it came direct from the factory in Italy or Germany, as long as you got it when you wanted it at a competitive price? Perhaps, but that vision of future shopping does not tie in with the apparent enjoyment that many shoppers gain from seeing, touching and trying the goods or even just being there and looking. Television and the video have affected the cinema and theatre, but they have not killed them off as some prophesied. Indeed, there has been something of a resurgence of both, particularly the cinema with the development of the multi-screen complex. Multichannel interactive digital television available in the home may be expected to have some attraction but, particularly if it is only available on a pay-to-view basis, the takeup may not be that great. The availability of major sporting events on satellite and cable television has ironically increased the trade of pubs as fans go out to watch the match on large screens in a social atmosphere rather than subscribe at home. The availability of the technology may not lead to the apparently obvious result if people decide that they prefer to go to school and University and to the shops and pubs than stay at home. Or perhaps it will not happen until the infrastructure has developed further and the generation which has been brought up with information technology becomes the main consuming group. It must also be remembered that the potential of information and communications technology is global, and consequently the impact on location of work and education is not restricted to the local or regional environment. Radermacher43 argues that work may
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relocate to developing countries where labour is cheaper, whereas education provision could be monopolised by a few suppliers, most probably in the USA. Centralisation There is another feature of the impact of information technology that should not be forgotten. Paradoxically, it appears to centralise as well as decentralise. It is the instant communication that is now available through information technology that has assisted the growth of global markets and global companies. Harvey44 pointed out that it is now possible to trade currencies, stocks and shares and other financial products over a 24 h period from just three locations, New York (Los Angeles would actually be better), Tokyo and London, each working an eight hour day. The result has been the growth of World Cities in which financial and business control has concentrated. Many cities have seen local firms that grew with them from the early days of the Industrial Revolution either taken over by national or international conglomerates headquartered in the country’s commercial capital or beyond, or closed in the face of foreign competition. Such developments have been made easier by instant global communications. A further feature of this concentration has been the investment in telecommunications, which has, not surprisingly, followed the business market where the best profits can be earned, thereby creating a self-reinforcing concentration of economic control in those places with the most modern systems.45 Only where specific policy initiatives have been taken to invest in the latest technology, as in the Highlands of Scotland, have remoter areas been able to compete. When such communications follow the mobile phone and become wire-free, the situation will change again, but even mobile phone connections are available first and at a higher level in more populated areas. Neither should we forget the cautionary tale of the early predictions of the impact of the telephone. Mokhtarian46 reminds us that by the late 1870s letters in London newspapers were speculating on the potential of the telephone to replace face-to-face meetings and that in 1914, after similar comments from H.G. Wells and E.M. Forster, the Scientific American “predicted that telecommunications would reduce transit congestion.” Empirical research and the future Graham47 has argued that, although there is a general awareness of the importance of telecommunications to the future of cities, there is relatively little, detailed, well-theorised, and sophisticated empirical analysis. What research there has been tends to question the speculations of those who believe ICT will lead to a major rearrangement of settlement patterns and the demise of the city. It is at this point that we encounter a problem associated with most academic research and the needs of those concerned with the future. The empirical research that Graham and others call for is necessary and valuable, but it only tells us what has happened, because it relies on empirical evidence, or facts, that can only collected from the past. As Bertrand de Jouvenel48 noted, although we can have such positive knowledge only of the past, the only ‘useful knowledge’ we have relates to the future, because the future is the only period of time about which we can do something. Facts are the raw material out of which the mind makes estimates for the future. That some, or many, of these estimates prove eventually to be inaccurate does not reduce the necessity to make
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them. In order that our decisions and actions can be as effective as possible we need to have some idea about what the future may hold, in other words to speculate or anticipate what may happen. Without anticipation we are like a driver travelling on the motorway looking out of the back window: we can see clearly where we have been, but are unlikely to get much further unless we look where we are going. The impact of information technology on the urban environment may not have been very significant so far, but does that mean it will not be in the future, as some researchers seem to assume? Makridakis49 has shown that technologies take time to have an impact and has drawn an interesting parallel between mechanical power and computer power. The car took around 70 years from its invention to have a major impact on European cities and a slightly shorter time to impact on American cities. In Britain, the growth of concern about the impact of the car really became apparent with the publication of the Buchanan Report of 1963, though even then many considered its recommendations extreme. Looking back they may have helped us avoid some of the difficulties we have experienced in the last 30 years. On an equivalent timescale the major impact of information technology would be still to come in about 20 years time around 2015–2020, which will be just as the ‘Nintendo Generation’ reach early adulthood. Other technologies It was noted earlier that the appearance of urban areas has been significantly influenced by changes in building technology. This may be expected to continue as new construction methods and new materials become available. It is likely to be possible to build taller buildings as some of the limitations of current technologies are overcome. Such buildings will probably be constructed in cities where space is at a premium, in Japan, China and south-east Asia, rather than in Europe. The Japanese are also investigating the potential for underground cities50 and cities either on artificial islands, like the new Kansai Airport in Osaka Bay, or built over water.Coates et al.51 suggest that by 2025 there will be smart, lightweight, polymer and composite materials in most construction. A smart device will be able to do three things:52 쐌 check if it is working properly, 쐌 check if it is carrying out its tasks properly, 쐌 if the answers to these are no, it will initiate repair or call for help. Coates suggests that such smart devices will be applied to everything, including street intersections, sewers, buildings, homes, and offices. Drexler et al.53 claim that, “nanotechnology will make possible revolutions in the construction of buildings. Superior materials will make it easy to construct tall (or deep) buildings to free up land, and strong buildings that can ride out the greatest earthquake without harm. Buildings can be made so energyefficient and so good at using solar energy falling on them that most are net energy producers. What is more, smart materials can make it easy to build and modify complex structures, such as walls full of windows, wiring, plumbing, data networks and the like”. Technology and the 21st century city Technology is only one of the factors which influence the shape of urban areas, but particular technologies do make possible features of cities that were not feasible before
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it was available. The car and the steel frame have been shown to be past examples. What impacts then will new technologies have on the form of cities in the 21st century? First, the impact they have will depend on the decisions made by people from the captains of industry and property developers to politicians and consumers. Technology, which is usually developed for a purpose, makes new ways of doing things possible, rather than inevitable. Second, we must recognise that cities, in the absence of catastrophic events, change relatively slowly. Building projects take anything from 5 years upwards to complete and major construction projects much longer. The Channel Tunnel between France and England was first muted in 1802. It was opened almost 200 years later. Third, our generation has the largest stock of urban capital ever, much of which has been built up over a century and more. It would not be physically possible to replace it all, even with modern building technology, in a short space of time. A simple example will indicate the problem. In 1993, nearly 48% of the housing stock of Great Britain had been in existence over 50 years. At the current rate of building it would take about 135 years just to replace the existing stock of houses in the United Kingdom. When other factors, such as declining household size, increasing longevity and other population changes are considered estimates increase to 800 or 4000 years! This means that in many respects the cities of the 21st century will be like those of the 20th, because a large proportion of what will exist then has already been built. We must remember, however, that buildings, once constructed do not remain unchanged. Brand54 has made it abundantly clear that almost immediately a building is finished the users begin to adapt it to their own requirements and as the years evolve so do buildings, as successive users modify them in appearance or add to or subtract from them. Much of the new technology will therefore be ‘retrofitted’ to existing structures, much as steam railways were electrified. This is particularly true of residential building where the financial structure of the market makes frequent rebuilding uneconomic. In the commercial sector, as the redevelopment of sixties office blocks, makes clear building life has decreased. Within urban areas, change will continue as buildings and infrastructure are adapted to meet changing requirements and taste. This could well involve changes to the appearance of buildings as smart materials are incorporated into their structures, though it must be remembered that we are in a period where conservation of the historic aspects of buildings and cities is increasingly valued. We might consequently expect more examples of facadism as the outward appearance of buildings is kept but the interior completely remodelled. In some cases the new materials, which will produce new possibilities for designers and shock-horror reactions from a conservative public, will be seen. Kelly55 has suggested that the result may be not unlike some of Antonio Gaudi’s work. “Imagine if Gaudi did not have to stop with the static face of a stone veneer, but could endow his building with organic behaviour over time. His building would thicken its hide on the side where the wind blows most or rearrange its interior as its inhabitants shifted their use of it. Imagine if Gaudi’s city not only stood by organic design but adapted and flexed and evolved as living creatures do, forming an ecology of building”. This is taking things beyond current capability or smart materials, but technological convergence of information technology, materials science and bio-technology could lead to such developments. Despite the scepticism about the claims of the Futurologists, there seems to be an emerging consensus among researchers of the impact of information technology that we
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are moving into an era of, “a more spatially diverse and complex ordering of economic space where some cities and suburbs thrive and others do not”.56 The form of this space is likely to be more dispersed; there is likely to be increasing pressure for suburbanisation and growth of settlement in the outer urban fringe. Whether this leads to a reduction in commuting to central cities and/or an increase in inter-suburban traffic is an open question. Such developments would have significant implications 쐌 for public transport, which is better at serving high capacity routes between outlying areas and the centre, 쐌 for increasing use of personal transport, principally the car, which allows the flexibility inter-suburban movement requires, 쐌 for environmental policies intended to promote sustainable development, which are aimed at encouraging public transport and reducing car use, and 쐌 for the future of town centres, where office blocks could become the textile mills and steel works of the 21st century.
Conclusion Cities have always changed in response to the demands of the societies that construct and live in them. They will continue to do so. New technologies, just as earlier technologies have done, are playing a part in those changes. One of the challenges is to our conception of the city as a bounded physical construct and the impact of telecommunications which, “as real-time networks$enable users$to transcend the limits of such bounded pieces of territory”.57 Traditionally we went to the city to transact business, shop and be entertained. If that ‘journey’ is virtual, are we any less part of the city, even if the means of the interaction is different? We may have to some extent, as Naisbitt suggested, outgrown the city as we know it, but it is unlikely to disappear, rather we will redefine what we perceive the city to be, and that is likely to include the virtual as well as the physical.
Notes and references 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
Brotchie, J. et al., The Future of Urban Form: The Impact of New Technology. Croom Helm, London, 1985. Brotchie, J. et al., The Spatial Impact of Technological Change. Croom Helm, London, 1987. Brotchie, J. et al., Cities in the 21st Century: New Technologies and Spatial Systems. Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1991. Castells, M., High Technology Space and Society. Sage, Beverly Hills, 1985. Castells, M., The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring and the UrbanRegional Process. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1989. Castells, M., The Rise of Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. 1. Basil Blackwell, Malden, MA, 1996. Mitchel, W. J., City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995. Graham, S. and Marvin, S., Telecommunications and the City: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places. Routledge, London, 1996. Sjoberg, G., The Pre-industrial City Past and Present. Glencoe, Illinois, 1960. Ashton, T. S., The Industrial Revolution. Oxford University Press, London, 1947. Court, W. H. B., A Concise Economic History of Britain: From 1750 to Recent Times. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1954. Naisbitt, J. and Aburdene, P., Megatrends 2000. Pan, London, 1990. Toffler, A., The Third Wave: The Revolution that will Change our Lives. Collins, London, 1980.
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14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.
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Snider, J. H., The information superhighway as an environmental menace. The Futurist, 1995, 29(2), 16–21. Naisbitt, op cit, ref. 12. Blais, P., How the information revolution is shaping our communities. http://www.plannersweb.com/ articles/bla118.html. Planners Web, Planning Commissioners Journal, 1996, 24, 16. Weijers, T., Telework remains made to measure: The large-scale introduction of telework in the Netherlands. Futures, 1992, 24(10), 1048–1055. Handy, S. L. and Mokhtarian, P. L., The future of telecommuting. Futures, 1996, 28(3), 227–240. European Telework Development, European Telework: What’s the Real Position. http://www.eto. org.uk/etd/media/bgrounds/bgtw01.htm, 1997. PS Enterprises, On Telecommuting: A PS Enterprises Research Paper. http://www.com/ user/pse/telecom.htm, 1995. European Telework Development, op cit, ref. 19. Becker, F., What’s “Real” about Corporate Real Estate? Telecommuting Review, September, 1995. ftp://ftp.popcp.com/pub/gilgordon/corp.txt Atkinson, R., The rise of the information age metropolis. The Futurist, 1996, 30(4), 41–46. Bibby, A., Outsourcing in the Scottish Highlands. In Teleworking: Thirteen Journeys to the Future of Work. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London. 1995. McQuay Technologies, Phoenix AZ. http:/ /www.eclipse.co.uk/pens/bibby/forres.html Quay, R., Telecommuting: Possible Futures for Urban and Rural Communities, McQuay Technologies, Phoenix AZ, 1995. http://www.asu. edu/caed/...ic/elecvilg/telecom.html PS Enterprises, op cit, ref. 20. Lake, A., New Ways of Working and Sustainability (2). Flexibility: The Interactive Forum on New Ways of Working, Cambridge, 1997. http://www.flexibility.co.uk/sustpol2.htm Castells, op cit, refs 4–6. Castells, op cit, refs 4–6. Mitchel, op cit, ref. 7. Blais, op cit, ref. 16. PS Enterprises, op cit, ref. 20. Toffler, op cit, ref. 13. Castells, op cit, refs 4–6. Wynne-Jones, R., End of the Traffic Jam is nigh The Independent, 1996, April 15. Crainer, S., Virtual dream or nightmare?: Death of the office will prove a myth. The Observer Business, 1995, November 26, p. 18. Wallis, L., The day I went back to the rat race The Independent, City ⫹ , 1997, October 1, p. 7. Huws, U., Telework: projections. Futures, 1991, 23(1), 19–31. Salomon, I., Telematics, travel and environmental change: what can be expected of travel substitution. Built Environment, 1996, 21(4), 214–222. Milne, S., Teleworkers pay as firms make modem savings. The Guardian, 1995, November 11, p. 21. Office of Science and Technology, Progress through Partnership: Report of the Leisure and Learning Panel. HMSO, London, 1995. Stonier, T., The Wealth of Information: A Profile of the Post-Industrial Economy. Methuen, London, 1983. Radermacher, Telework: Its Role in Achieving a Sustainable Global Economy. Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing, Ulm, Germany, http://www.faw.uniulm.de/deutsch/literatur/ Radermacher/Telework.html Harvey, D., The Condition of Post-Modernity. Blackwell, London, 1989. Sassen, S., On concentration and centrality in the global city. In World Cities in a World System, eds. P. L. Knox and P. J. Taylor. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995. Mokhtarian, P. L., Now that travel can be virtual, will congestion disappear. Scientific American, 1997, October, p. 61. Graham, S., Cities in the real time age: the paradigm challenge of telecommunications to the conception and planning of urban space. Environment and Planning A, 1997, 29, 105–127. de Jouvenel, B., The Art of Conjecture. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1967. Makridakis, S., The forthcoming information revolution: Its impact on society and firms. Futures, 1995, 27(8), 799–821. Zey, M. G., Seizing the Future: How the Coming Revolution in Science, Technology and Industry will Expand the Frontiers of Human Potential and Reshape the Planet. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1994. Coates, J. F. et al., 2025 Scenarios of US and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology. Oakhill Press, Greensboro, 1997. Coates, J. F., The future of stable cities. In Fremtidsorientering Special Issue: The Future of the City in Post-Industrial Societies. Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, Copenhagen, 1996, pp. 10–13.
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53. 54. 55. 56. 57.
Drexler, K. E. et al., Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution. Simon and Schuster, London, 1992. Brand, S., How Buildings Learn: What Happens after they are Built Viking, New York, 1994. Kelly, K., Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines. Fourth Estate. London, 1994. Marshall, A., Technology transforms the places we live. Metropolis, 1996. http://www. metropolismag...archives/960301-003.html Graham, op cit, ref. 47.
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NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT Graham H May Technology has always had an influence on the form of settlements, but only since the coming of Information Technology has it aroused much interest from academics and planners. The impact that IT is likely to have on urban areas is debated, some foreseeing decentralisation and the end of place, while others see evidence of the centralisation of control in a global economy. Other new technologies may also affect cities as new materials provide the opportunity for different styles of building. As we enter the 21st century, however, we do so with the largest stock of urban capital ever, much of which is ageing and in need of maintenance. Technology is part of a complex interrelationship of influences on urban areas and much of it will have to be retrofitted on to the pre-existing environment. 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Until relatively recently, urban scientists and planners seem to have taken technology as a given. Other issues, such as economic and social change and providing space for employment, housing and transport, occupied most of the pages of plans and academic writings on urban areas. The advent of information technology and telecommunications has brought a change as several academics, including Brotchie,1–3 Castells,4–6 Mitchell7 and Graham and Marvin8 have turned their attention to the impact of this new technology on cities and the UK Open University is to launch a new course on Technology and the City. This attention is both welcome and overdue, as cities have long reflected the technology of the societies which constructed them. Gideon Sjoberg,9 the American Sociologist, pointed this out in his study of the pre-industrial city. He argued that most pre-
Gordon H. May is Principle Lecturer in Futures Research and Course Leader of the Masters in Foresight and Futures Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University, School of the Built Environment, Centre for Urban Development and Environmental Management, Calverley Street, Leeds, LS1 3HE, UK (Tel.: ⫹ 44 (0)113-2832600; fax: ⫹ 44 (0)113-2833190; email: [email protected]).
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industrial towns were similar because, despite being constructed by different cultures, they shared a common level of technology. The Industrial Revolution, though significantly influenced by economic, social and political factors, could not have occurred without the developments in technology, as studies of the history of the period indicate.10,11 Steam power based on coal and the replacement of wood by iron and steel, produced significant changes to the urban environment. The massive mills of Northern England, and other 19th century industrial areas, as big or bigger than the cathedrals and castles of the medieval era, dominated the urban areas that grew from villages to cities, tripling their populations in 50 years. Technology also played its part, through the mechanisation of agriculture, which reduced the need for labour in the countryside and encouraged migration to the cities. The second half of the 20th century has seen similar changes as two major technologies have changed the appearance of most western cities and are now affecting the cities of south-east Asia and China. Transport and building technology have had a major impact on the form and appearance of our cities. Few European cities had buildings taller than five or six stories in 1950; few now lack such buildings, either in the centre, as in London, or in purpose built business areas on the edge of the centre, as at La Defense in Paris. Developments in building technology have played an important part in the changes. Transport has also been influential. First the railways and then the car gave greater mobility to the middle classes, enabling them to live further from their work places, which themselves could remain central or move to the suburbs or the new ‘edge cities’. There is, then, nothing new in the idea that technology plays an important role in influencing the shape of our cities and the way we live; we only have to compare the pre-industrial city with the late 20th century city to see that. With hindsight we can examine the history of the city and analyze the influences that have led to its current form. Not that it is a simple matter to identify cause and effect, as cities result from a complex interrelationship of forces which often cannot be separated. Technology is not a force on its own. Just like cities, technology only exists because we humans have brought it into existence. Which technologies are developed and how they are used results from human decision. The same will be true for the new technologies; they will not just happen, but be developed in response to economic, social and political demands, and they again will play their part in changing the form of the city in the 21st century.
Information technology In many ways, if cities did not exist, it would now not be necessary to invent them.12
The technology that has attracted most public and academic attention is information technology, but there are also other technologies, particularly related to new materials, that have attracted less attention but which may have a larger effect on the way our cities look in the future. At least since the publication of Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave, there has been a view that information technology would effectively reverse the urbanisation process that began with the Industrial Revolution and bring about, “a return to cottage industry on a
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new, higher, electronic basis, and with it a new emphasis on the home as the centre of society”.13 Toffler coined the phrase “electronic cottage” to encapsulate this new form of settlement he envisaged. The clear implication was a more rural, almost pre-industrial pattern. One of the most extreme expressions of this opinion is James Snider’s article ‘The Information Superhighway as an Environmental Menace’,14 in which he foresees an increasingly footloose population moving to the more rural parts of the United States. The population would become footloose because the information superhighway would enable, ‘anything, anywhere, anytime’. As a result, employment would no longer be restricted to centres of population and employees could make their residential location decisions on the basis of non-work preferences, such as environment, access to local services and facilities like schools and freedom from crime. Snider quotes friends of his in Manhattan who would move to Vermont, perceived as “the best place in the United States to raise a family”, if good employment opportunities were available. John Naisbitt is already an example, “Five years ago we moved to Telluride, Colorado, a tiny mountain village (population 1,200) in the southwest corner of the state$Although we are six hours from Denver (by road, but quicker by air) with our computers, telephones, fax machine and Federal Express we are as in touch with the rest of the world as if we were in downtown London or Tokyo”.15 Information technology, it is argued, effectively eliminates the economic importance of space and time and, as a 1997 advert for BT (British Telecom) suggested, “Geography is History.” Some jobs have even become ‘space-less’, being conducted from a mobile office, otherwise known as a car, through the use of cellular communications and portable computing.16 The result could be major shifts of population to areas considered attractive for environmental, social or other reasons. But all jobs, at least at present, would not appear suitable for teleworking, though estimates of those that are vary. A Dutch study suggested that only 37% of all current jobs, mostly medium or higher qualified ones, could reasonably be expected to be carried out through telework for at least 20% of working hours.17 In the US, Handy and Mokhtarian18 estimated that 57% of the workforce were in telecommuting-conducive occupations in 1990, an increase from 53% 10 years earlier. That may indicate a potential to increase as the nature of jobs changes. A major attraction of teleworking for the employee is the time saving and reduced stress arising from the absence of the need to physically commute, the result ironically of the success of earlier transport technologies, especially the car, in enabling the separation of home from work. Telework may also allow those unable to travel to gain employment, to start their own enterprise or increase household income.19 This, it is suggested, can lead to improved family life and greater opportunity for involvement with, and hence the reinvigoration of, the local community, which would become less of a dormitory and more like a traditional village or small town. Employers may also benefit through: 쐌 increased worker productivity, up to 15–20% is quoted in some examples, 쐌 reduced business costs, US$2 for every dollar invested in telecommuting, 쐌 real estate savings of between 25% and 90% as expensive city centre offices are no longer required,20 쐌 the retention of skilled workers, 쐌 improved quality of customer service, 쐌 quality work at lower cost,
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쐌 improved recruitment, 쐌 greater use of freelance labour, 쐌 and greater flexibility in dealing with peak loads.21 One company in New Jersey estimated that the cost of providing office space was US$20 000 per employee and although providing the facilities for telecommuting are significant, they are considerably less than that.22 By relocating, particularly the so-called back-office functions, in places away from the larger cities, employers are also able to reduce office costs and employ cheaper labour. “According to one study in 1991, locating a 300 000 square foot facility that employs 1,000 clerical personnel in the Phoenix area rather than San Francisco would save $6.35 million annually in space and payroll costs.”23 In another example, parking controls in part of London are administered electronically from Forres in the Highlands of Scotland by staff earning half the going rate in London in a building which cost a fifth of equivalent accommodation in London.24 Environmentally, telecommuting is also claimed to offer benefits by reducing travel and, consequently, oil consumption and pollution. Even if only 20% of the currently commuting work force were able to telecommute on average for 2.5 days per week, work trips would be reduced by 10%.25 The 11% of the workforce of metropolitan Phoenix—about 100 000 workers—who were telecommuting one day a week in 1993 resulted in a saving of 1.8 million miles of travel daily, and if 5% of Los Angeles commuters worked at home one day a week, it has been estimated that they would save 9.5 million gallons of petrol and reduce atmospheric pollution by 94 million tons a year.26 In the light of such potential benefits Lake27 has argued that, in the interests of sustainability, public policy should: 쐌 쐌 쐌 쐌
integrate information technology into transport policies, give incentives to new ways of working that reduce travel, run awareness campaigns on teleworking, set an example with all government offices implementing teleworking schemes with annual targets for trip reduction.
Estimates of the number of telecommuters in the United States suggest an increasing trend: 1985: 10–30,00028 1991: 5.5 million29 1993: 6.1 million30 1995: 8 million31 2002: 15 million projected by the Department of Transportation, about 10.5% of the workforce32 These figures suggest significant growth, but it has not so far been as rapid as some predicted. Toffler33 predicted that 15 million Americans would telecommute from their ‘Electronic Cottages’ by 1995. It is also unlikely that these jobs are conducted exclusively by telecommuting and more likely that some work still requires commuting to the traditional office. Castells,34 quoting Qvortup, identifies three types of telecommuter. 쐌 substitutors who are working at home in place of the office, 쐌 self-employed who work from home, and 쐌 supplementers whose work at home supplements office work.
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To this might be added teleworkers who work from telecentres in suburban locations rather than at home. Of the 5.5 million teleworkers in 1991, only 16% telecommuted for more than 35 h per week. Two days per week was the most common, with 25% telecommuting less than one day per week. Only between 1% and 2% of the total labour force were telecommuting at any one time. Similar projections are made for the UK. British Telecom has predicted that by the year 2000 3.3 million people, around 17% of the workforce, will be teleworking from home.35 Such a shift will be encouraged, the British Road Federation believes, by gridlock arising from the lack of new road building, a trend reinforced by the government’s environmental policy. By 2010 it is predicted that journeys to work and shop will have been reduced by 43% and social journeys by 20%, but this contrasts with Department of Transport predictions of traffic more than doubling by 2020.
Limitations Several factors appear to constrain the shift of even information work, the most easily adapted, to telecommuting. “With its social rituals, human interest and politics, office life retains a strong attraction”.36 At an individual level, working at home lacks the social contact of the office. After 5 years of teleworking Wallis37 was glad to be back in the office, the novelty of homeworking having warn off. She missed the social life of the office, the opportunity to bounce ideas off colleagues and working as a team. The trend towards smaller and even single households may also limit people’s willingness to lose the camaraderie of the office, unless they can replace the social contact in some other way. Women, in particular, who for the first time have recently ‘escaped’ from the home into the world of employment on a much greater scale than before, may not welcome teleworking if it has the effect of returning them whence they have come. Huws38 confirms this, arguing that much of the hype about teleworking has been anti-feminist, suggesting that it portrays women as being able to fit their work, “between emptying granny’s bedpan and washing the baby’s nappies”. Employers too are not necessarily keen to exploit the potential savings in office space and labour costs, preferring to ‘keep an eye’ on their employees through traditional supervisory methods. New ways of working require a change of attitudes and new management structures that existing managers do not find easy to adopt. Paradoxically, trade unions are concerned about the potential for exploitation of home workers because they are often poorly paid and forced to work long hours to achieve unreasonable targets. Home working has always been a feature of some industries, notably the clothing trade, where exploitation is rife. Teleworking may be different, but the experience of homeworking and the potential for electronic surveillance makes the unions suspicious. Salomon39 questions the benefits to be gained from reductions in travel, pointing out that people may relocate further from their original workplace and consequently increase the length of less frequent trips or replace work journeys with more trips for other purposes. They may also increase energy consumption in other ways, such as home heating. To have a significant effect, telecommuting must replace car journeys and experience in the Netherlands suggests that telecommuting has increased most among public transport users and cyclists rather than car drivers.
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Other factors potentially constraining the development of teleworking include taxation structures, health and safety legislation and planning controls that are all designed for the Industrial model of society. If firms do not draw up new service contracts and ensure proper safety and insurance cover for teleworkers they could encounter legal challenges in case of accident.40 Property taxes are frequently structured differently for residential and commercial property. In the United Kingdom, for example, residential property pays a tax based on its estimated capital value in residential use whereas commercial property pays a Business Rate. Teleworking could clearly complicate matters. Much urban planning since the Industrial Revolution has been based on the segregation of land uses on the assumption that employment, then mostly manufacturing, and housing do not make good neighbours because the former pollutes that latter. The information based work that characterises the postindustrial world does not, but the established concepts of planning still hold sway. An attempt in the 1980s to modify English planning controls by amending the General Development Order to allow small businesses, employing up to six people, in residential areas was withdrawn after a hostile reception. Most opposition centred on the potential for traffic generation and the consequent disturbance of the residential environment. Use of a residential building for commercial purposes may therefore be refused planning permission because it constitutes a non-conforming use. A further difficulty may arise from the nature of the residential accommodation built over the last 50 or so years. In the UK this has characteristically been in residential estates of semi-detached or detached houses built for the nuclear family. This will normally consist of one or two living rooms and between two and four bedrooms. Government publications from the 1960s make clear the assumptions under which this type of house was built, it was essentially a dormitory, which is empty during the day while the occupants are at work or school and only used for eating and recreation in the evening and sleeping at night. There is little room for workspace, except in the bedrooms, and often little space for extension of the dwelling to provide an office. Apartments and flats are unlikely to offer greater potential. In the UK case it is somewhat ironic that some older houses built for the larger families of the 19th century probably offer better potential for mixed office and residential use than more modern homes, though smaller households may lead to spare rooms which can be converted for workspace. Many large Victorian and Edwardian villas adjacent to existing town centres have already been converted from homes to offices. Other tele-operations Employment is not the only land use subject to potential change as the result of information technology. Education from school to University may also be affected. The Internet and CD-ROMs already provide sources of information that exceed the capabilities of many school libraries, and University courses are beginning to appear on the Internet to supplement those already available by conventional methods and paper based distance learning. The potential exists, according to the UK Technology Foresight Leisure and Learning Panel,41 for: 쐌 much learning in further and higher education to be independently undertaken through interactive learning technology via the information superhighway,
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쐌 substantial use of video-conferencing as a learning tool and 쐌 teaching by experts whose work can be electronically accessed. If we can access the wisdom of the world’s leading scholars in Harvard, Tokyo or Cambridge, which will be automatically translated into our own language, why should we crowd together in Leeds? As long ago as 1983, Tom Stonier was predicting that most learning would be done from home with children going to ‘school’ to interact with their peers and engage in sports, laboratory exercises and dramatics.42 Perhaps that is why many students in the UK prefer to go to University already, to enjoy the social life away from parental sight. If that is the case, studying electronically from home may not be popular. Other factors, such as increased costs, may however be more important in encouraging home based study, which information technology can enhance. Shopping in many cities has already followed the American pattern, leaving downtown for the suburbs and out-of-town. The city centres traditional appeal was based on accessibility; it was the focus of public transport routes bringing people from all around to the most accessible place. The use of the car has changed that. The most accessible places by car are not the city centre, where congestion and lack of parking space bring frustration and expense, but the regional shopping centres and malls on the ring road or motorway junction with their plentiful free parking. Again the potential for tele-shopping is considerable and several experiments are now being carried out. The weekly trip to the supermarket can be replaced by an electronic order delivered to the door and the potential reductions in cost from tele-mail order may prove attractive as centralised warehouses undercut traditional suppliers. Just imagine: the washing machine has packed up and you need a replacement quickly. Go to the house terminal; call up shopping–washing machines; set your price bracket; call up the consumer reports; ask all the questions you can think of; check availability and prices; make the order and pay. Two days later the new machine is delivered and fitted; does it matter if it came direct from the factory in Italy or Germany, as long as you got it when you wanted it at a competitive price? Perhaps, but that vision of future shopping does not tie in with the apparent enjoyment that many shoppers gain from seeing, touching and trying the goods or even just being there and looking. Television and the video have affected the cinema and theatre, but they have not killed them off as some prophesied. Indeed, there has been something of a resurgence of both, particularly the cinema with the development of the multi-screen complex. Multichannel interactive digital television available in the home may be expected to have some attraction but, particularly if it is only available on a pay-to-view basis, the takeup may not be that great. The availability of major sporting events on satellite and cable television has ironically increased the trade of pubs as fans go out to watch the match on large screens in a social atmosphere rather than subscribe at home. The availability of the technology may not lead to the apparently obvious result if people decide that they prefer to go to school and University and to the shops and pubs than stay at home. Or perhaps it will not happen until the infrastructure has developed further and the generation which has been brought up with information technology becomes the main consuming group. It must also be remembered that the potential of information and communications technology is global, and consequently the impact on location of work and education is not restricted to the local or regional environment. Radermacher43 argues that work may
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relocate to developing countries where labour is cheaper, whereas education provision could be monopolised by a few suppliers, most probably in the USA. Centralisation There is another feature of the impact of information technology that should not be forgotten. Paradoxically, it appears to centralise as well as decentralise. It is the instant communication that is now available through information technology that has assisted the growth of global markets and global companies. Harvey44 pointed out that it is now possible to trade currencies, stocks and shares and other financial products over a 24 h period from just three locations, New York (Los Angeles would actually be better), Tokyo and London, each working an eight hour day. The result has been the growth of World Cities in which financial and business control has concentrated. Many cities have seen local firms that grew with them from the early days of the Industrial Revolution either taken over by national or international conglomerates headquartered in the country’s commercial capital or beyond, or closed in the face of foreign competition. Such developments have been made easier by instant global communications. A further feature of this concentration has been the investment in telecommunications, which has, not surprisingly, followed the business market where the best profits can be earned, thereby creating a self-reinforcing concentration of economic control in those places with the most modern systems.45 Only where specific policy initiatives have been taken to invest in the latest technology, as in the Highlands of Scotland, have remoter areas been able to compete. When such communications follow the mobile phone and become wire-free, the situation will change again, but even mobile phone connections are available first and at a higher level in more populated areas. Neither should we forget the cautionary tale of the early predictions of the impact of the telephone. Mokhtarian46 reminds us that by the late 1870s letters in London newspapers were speculating on the potential of the telephone to replace face-to-face meetings and that in 1914, after similar comments from H.G. Wells and E.M. Forster, the Scientific American “predicted that telecommunications would reduce transit congestion.” Empirical research and the future Graham47 has argued that, although there is a general awareness of the importance of telecommunications to the future of cities, there is relatively little, detailed, well-theorised, and sophisticated empirical analysis. What research there has been tends to question the speculations of those who believe ICT will lead to a major rearrangement of settlement patterns and the demise of the city. It is at this point that we encounter a problem associated with most academic research and the needs of those concerned with the future. The empirical research that Graham and others call for is necessary and valuable, but it only tells us what has happened, because it relies on empirical evidence, or facts, that can only collected from the past. As Bertrand de Jouvenel48 noted, although we can have such positive knowledge only of the past, the only ‘useful knowledge’ we have relates to the future, because the future is the only period of time about which we can do something. Facts are the raw material out of which the mind makes estimates for the future. That some, or many, of these estimates prove eventually to be inaccurate does not reduce the necessity to make
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them. In order that our decisions and actions can be as effective as possible we need to have some idea about what the future may hold, in other words to speculate or anticipate what may happen. Without anticipation we are like a driver travelling on the motorway looking out of the back window: we can see clearly where we have been, but are unlikely to get much further unless we look where we are going. The impact of information technology on the urban environment may not have been very significant so far, but does that mean it will not be in the future, as some researchers seem to assume? Makridakis49 has shown that technologies take time to have an impact and has drawn an interesting parallel between mechanical power and computer power. The car took around 70 years from its invention to have a major impact on European cities and a slightly shorter time to impact on American cities. In Britain, the growth of concern about the impact of the car really became apparent with the publication of the Buchanan Report of 1963, though even then many considered its recommendations extreme. Looking back they may have helped us avoid some of the difficulties we have experienced in the last 30 years. On an equivalent timescale the major impact of information technology would be still to come in about 20 years time around 2015–2020, which will be just as the ‘Nintendo Generation’ reach early adulthood. Other technologies It was noted earlier that the appearance of urban areas has been significantly influenced by changes in building technology. This may be expected to continue as new construction methods and new materials become available. It is likely to be possible to build taller buildings as some of the limitations of current technologies are overcome. Such buildings will probably be constructed in cities where space is at a premium, in Japan, China and south-east Asia, rather than in Europe. The Japanese are also investigating the potential for underground cities50 and cities either on artificial islands, like the new Kansai Airport in Osaka Bay, or built over water.Coates et al.51 suggest that by 2025 there will be smart, lightweight, polymer and composite materials in most construction. A smart device will be able to do three things:52 쐌 check if it is working properly, 쐌 check if it is carrying out its tasks properly, 쐌 if the answers to these are no, it will initiate repair or call for help. Coates suggests that such smart devices will be applied to everything, including street intersections, sewers, buildings, homes, and offices. Drexler et al.53 claim that, “nanotechnology will make possible revolutions in the construction of buildings. Superior materials will make it easy to construct tall (or deep) buildings to free up land, and strong buildings that can ride out the greatest earthquake without harm. Buildings can be made so energyefficient and so good at using solar energy falling on them that most are net energy producers. What is more, smart materials can make it easy to build and modify complex structures, such as walls full of windows, wiring, plumbing, data networks and the like”. Technology and the 21st century city Technology is only one of the factors which influence the shape of urban areas, but particular technologies do make possible features of cities that were not feasible before
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it was available. The car and the steel frame have been shown to be past examples. What impacts then will new technologies have on the form of cities in the 21st century? First, the impact they have will depend on the decisions made by people from the captains of industry and property developers to politicians and consumers. Technology, which is usually developed for a purpose, makes new ways of doing things possible, rather than inevitable. Second, we must recognise that cities, in the absence of catastrophic events, change relatively slowly. Building projects take anything from 5 years upwards to complete and major construction projects much longer. The Channel Tunnel between France and England was first muted in 1802. It was opened almost 200 years later. Third, our generation has the largest stock of urban capital ever, much of which has been built up over a century and more. It would not be physically possible to replace it all, even with modern building technology, in a short space of time. A simple example will indicate the problem. In 1993, nearly 48% of the housing stock of Great Britain had been in existence over 50 years. At the current rate of building it would take about 135 years just to replace the existing stock of houses in the United Kingdom. When other factors, such as declining household size, increasing longevity and other population changes are considered estimates increase to 800 or 4000 years! This means that in many respects the cities of the 21st century will be like those of the 20th, because a large proportion of what will exist then has already been built. We must remember, however, that buildings, once constructed do not remain unchanged. Brand54 has made it abundantly clear that almost immediately a building is finished the users begin to adapt it to their own requirements and as the years evolve so do buildings, as successive users modify them in appearance or add to or subtract from them. Much of the new technology will therefore be ‘retrofitted’ to existing structures, much as steam railways were electrified. This is particularly true of residential building where the financial structure of the market makes frequent rebuilding uneconomic. In the commercial sector, as the redevelopment of sixties office blocks, makes clear building life has decreased. Within urban areas, change will continue as buildings and infrastructure are adapted to meet changing requirements and taste. This could well involve changes to the appearance of buildings as smart materials are incorporated into their structures, though it must be remembered that we are in a period where conservation of the historic aspects of buildings and cities is increasingly valued. We might consequently expect more examples of facadism as the outward appearance of buildings is kept but the interior completely remodelled. In some cases the new materials, which will produce new possibilities for designers and shock-horror reactions from a conservative public, will be seen. Kelly55 has suggested that the result may be not unlike some of Antonio Gaudi’s work. “Imagine if Gaudi did not have to stop with the static face of a stone veneer, but could endow his building with organic behaviour over time. His building would thicken its hide on the side where the wind blows most or rearrange its interior as its inhabitants shifted their use of it. Imagine if Gaudi’s city not only stood by organic design but adapted and flexed and evolved as living creatures do, forming an ecology of building”. This is taking things beyond current capability or smart materials, but technological convergence of information technology, materials science and bio-technology could lead to such developments. Despite the scepticism about the claims of the Futurologists, there seems to be an emerging consensus among researchers of the impact of information technology that we
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are moving into an era of, “a more spatially diverse and complex ordering of economic space where some cities and suburbs thrive and others do not”.56 The form of this space is likely to be more dispersed; there is likely to be increasing pressure for suburbanisation and growth of settlement in the outer urban fringe. Whether this leads to a reduction in commuting to central cities and/or an increase in inter-suburban traffic is an open question. Such developments would have significant implications 쐌 for public transport, which is better at serving high capacity routes between outlying areas and the centre, 쐌 for increasing use of personal transport, principally the car, which allows the flexibility inter-suburban movement requires, 쐌 for environmental policies intended to promote sustainable development, which are aimed at encouraging public transport and reducing car use, and 쐌 for the future of town centres, where office blocks could become the textile mills and steel works of the 21st century.
Conclusion Cities have always changed in response to the demands of the societies that construct and live in them. They will continue to do so. New technologies, just as earlier technologies have done, are playing a part in those changes. One of the challenges is to our conception of the city as a bounded physical construct and the impact of telecommunications which, “as real-time networks$enable users$to transcend the limits of such bounded pieces of territory”.57 Traditionally we went to the city to transact business, shop and be entertained. If that ‘journey’ is virtual, are we any less part of the city, even if the means of the interaction is different? We may have to some extent, as Naisbitt suggested, outgrown the city as we know it, but it is unlikely to disappear, rather we will redefine what we perceive the city to be, and that is likely to include the virtual as well as the physical.
Notes and references 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
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14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.
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