Cybercities reader

For too long information and communications technologies have been lazily portrayed as means to simply escape into a parallel world - to withdraw from the body, or the city, in some utopian, or dystopian, stampede on-line.

Such perspectives deny the fact that the so-called 'information society' is also an increasingly urban society.

They ignore the ways in which new technologies now mediate every dimension of the fabric of everyday urban life. And they tend to obscure a key question : how do the multifaceted realities of city regions interrelate in practice with new technologies in different ways in different places ? The Cybercities Reader explores this question. With its related web site, it is the most comprehensive, international and interdisciplinary analysis yet of the relationships between cities, urban life and new technologies.

The book incorporates detailed discussions of cybercity history, theory, economic processes, mobilities, physical forms, social and cultural worlds, digital divides, public domains, strategies, politics and futures. The book includes coverage of post modern technoculture, virtual reality and the body, global city economies, urban surveillance, E-Commerce, teleworking, community informatics, digital architecture, urban technology strategies, and the role of cities and new technologies in the 'war on terrorism'.

Detailed case-studies include 'virtual cities' in Amsterdam, Internet cabins in Lima, back offices in Jamaica, 'smart' highways in Melbourne, technopoles in New York, mobiles in Helsinki, e-commerce convenience stores in Tokyo, high-tech business parks in Bangalore, public spaces in Mexico City, and urban ICT strategies in Kuala Lumpur, California and Singapore. The Cybercities Reader has 31 of the best published writings in the field and 32 specially commissioned pieces, with the work from writers from 12 nations and 12 disciplines and over 50 pictures, tables, and diagrams.

The Cybercities Reader will be essential reading for anyone interested in how cities and new technologies are helping to remake each other at the start of this quintessentially urban digital century. John Adams * Philip Agre * Yuko Aoyama * Nick Barley * Anne Beamish * Benton Foundation * Deirdre Boden * Stefano Boeri * Andreas Broeckmann * Tim Bunnell * Thomas Campanella * Zac Carey * Man