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[RRE]International Workshop on Cities and Telecommunications
``` [Long-timers will remember the ad for Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin's "Telecommunications and The City: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places", that went out to RRE in October 1996. The ESRC, by the way, has just announced grants for a very interesting collection of research projects, headed by Steve Woolgar at Brunel, on the social aspects of information society. Details at http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/virtsoc/ . I have reformatted this to 70 columns.]
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Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 11:29:01 +0000 From: s.d.n.graham@ncl.ac.uk (Stephen Graham) Subject: International Workshop on Cities and Telecommunications
Announcing a Major International Workshop on Cities and Telecommunications
Cities in the Global Information Society: An International Perspective
A Workshop Sponsored by BT and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Organized by the Centre for Urban Technology (CUT) and the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) University of Newcastle, U.K.
22nd - 24th November 1999, Durham, U.K.
First Announcement and Request for Abstracts
Context
As we are about to enter the new millennium cities continue to dominate the global information society. The world is both urbanising rapidly and becoming more and more reliant on advanced telecommunications, media and computer communications technologies. In both advanced industrial nations and, even more so, in the so-called 'developing' world, many urban regions are continuing to grow at a rapid pace. Despite many predictions over the past twenty years that advances in communications will lead us to some 'post urban age', cities continue to dominate the economic, cultural and social dynamics of contemporary societies.
Yet cities are becoming more interconnected economically, culturally, and infrastructurally through the parallel development of global telecommunication and transportation networks. Much of the massive investment in new telecommunications and IT networks either takes place in dense urban regions or else interconnects cities together into global networks. As we shift from national telecommunications monopolies to an integrated, liberalised and global telecommunications marketplace, the dominance of cities as sites which articulate electronic networks seems to be growing further.
Urban regions, particularly 'global' cities, drive innovation in all leading-edge applications of new media and telecommunications technologies. The electronic contact potential that urban areas offer, both within the city and to far-off spaces, is being subtly combined with the traditional supports that cities offer for face-to-face contact and physical transportation. We can see this at the level of buildings (with 'intelligent' offices and 'smart' homes), districts (with new media clusters, teleport zones and heavily-wired financial services cores), and with cities as a whole (with city-wide Metropolitan optic fibre networks and the widespread labelling of cities as 'cyber' or 'silicon' places for marketing purposes).
Clearly, telecommunications do not simply substitute for face-to-face contact or dissolve the need for meeting in close proximity within cities. Complex synergies between electronically-mediated connection and physical connection are emerging. Electronic connections can substitute for some physical connections (telebanking), generate others (Internet place marketing), make physical congestion more bearable (mobile phones), and allow more and more physical movement to be squeezed onto congested transport networks (electronic route guidance, air traffic control).
Paradoxically, then, new communications infrastructures simultaneously facilitate the intense concentration of people and movement within extending urban regions, whilst allowing cities to control global business and service networks across international distances. On the one hand, by connecting the 'bits' of cities together, new communications technologies support urban regions of unrivalled size and complexity, allowing them to function dynamically. On the other, telecommunications can also collapse the barriers between the 'local' and the 'global', allowing some spaces within cities to be more globally connected than locally tied in to their urban milieu (e.g. fortressed communities and postmodern 'bunker' office buildings). Thus, electronic infrastructures and services are everywhere implicated in the growing social divisions that seem to be evident in all types of cities, as global connections are combined with local disconnections in complex ways.
Conference Themes
It is now clear that the interplay between cities and telecommunications is extremely complex ; relations are often subtle and counter-intuitive. Many of the early myths, hopes and aspirations that advances in telecommunications might lead us towards a more decentralised and utopian information age have been abandoned as simplistic, naive, and technologically determinist. Yet we still do not have a rich or full understanding of how telecommunications are involved in the development of contemporary cities around the world.
Much of the existing research and policy development remains focused on a very small number of IT applications within the cities of North America and Europe. But the subtle and multiple reworking of urban space through new IT infrastructures and services, across the full range of urban experiences, remains poorly understood. Urban literatures tend to remain almost besotted with iconic 'global' cities, or parts of cities, such as the interconnected financial cores of New York, London, and Tokyo. How IT is being used to reconfigure and rework the development of the full gamut of urban activities and development processes in more 'ordinary' city spaces remains very poorly explored.
>>> What is happening, for example, in the old industrial regions of >>>the North, or the 'mega cities' of the South, in new industrial >>>spaces, newly industrialising and globally peripheral cities ? >>>As a result of such neglect, we lack an integrated and holistic >>>understanding of how telecommunications are involved in the >>>development of cities in much of the post-socialist, newly >>>industrialising, developing and developed worlds.
This unique conference aims to address this deficit. Drawing upon the urban studies and urban policy-making communities from around the globe, the conference will address three themes:
1. Mapping Cities in the Information Age
The first theme of the Conference will examine the role of cities in the development of new IT, media and telecommunication networks. We need to develop an understanding of how telecommunication providers construct the notion of cities as places to serve and invest in, within globalising contexts of regulation and infrastructure development. What type of cities are most valued and which are being by-passed by internationalising telecommunications investment strategies? How are decisions made about the roll-out of networks within and between cities? Where is most investment in urban telecommunications networks directed? How can we simultaneously understand the emerging geographies of IT and telecommunications use and investment within cities, and the emerging infrastructural linkages that tie cities into urban networks and hierarchies at increasingly international and even global scales ?
2. Understanding Telecommunications-City Relations
The second theme will examine how new telecommunications networks are involved in the changing economic, social, cultural, physical and environmental development of cities. How do electronic connections co-evolve with traditional face-to-face ones based on physical movement ? How are the economic, social and cultural assets of cities being combined with electronic potential to link and relate with far-off places ? In what ways are the urban landscapes and development processes of contemporary cities being reconfigured by burgeoning telecommunications-based interactions, near and far ? How are patterns and processes of social division reflected and sustained by uneven access to electronic networks ? How can we understand the relations between intra and inter-urban electronically-mediated relationships ? How do experiences of IT-mediated urban change vary across different types of cities in different parts of the world? And can we build a comparative understanding of such diversity ?
3. Integrating telecommunications into urban policy and planning strategies
The final theme of the Conference will examine the capacity for urban governance and policy agencies to creatively shape the development of their telecommunications assets, to help achieve positive developmental solutions for their cities. What regulatory and informal structures do urban governance agencies have for shaping investment priorities of telecommunications providers? How can they work with media, IT and telecommunications providers ? How can the creative potential of IT-based innovation in cities best be harnessed to social, cultural and economic development and planning agendas ? Can urban policy makers position their cities' telecommunications assets to help capture comparative advantage in a globalising world? How are cities being marketed as 'cyber', 'smart' or 'tele'-rich places ? And how can policy makers integrate telecommunications within their landuse planning, economic development and environmental strategies and plans?
A Typology of Broad City Types
In order to stimulate the maximum spread of coverage of this wide research agenda, we are seeking abstracts from researchers and policy makers who are actively researching or developing initiatives in cities from the following typology of eight broad types of cities:
1. Old-Industrial Cities (e.g. Newcastle, Pittsburg, Essen) : How are the old industrialised cities of North America and Europe using telecommunications in adjusting to a service-driven economic future? Can such cities use telecommunications to overcome their relative geographical peripherality, developing new economic dynamics based on distributing services across distance? How might urban governments shape the roll-out of their new telecommunications infrastructure? What implications do telecommunications have for the economically marginalised and social equity in such cities?
2. 'Global' Cities (e.g. London, New York, Tokyo, Singapore etc.): How are the dominant, core cities of the global economy underpinned by advances in telecommunications and media infrastructures and services ? How is global liberalisation affecting the media and communications infrastructures of such global 'hot spots' ? How might telecommunications be used to cope with economic and environmental consequences of congestion and the heavy demands placed on urban services? What roles do telecommunications play in the social and spatial dualisation of the global cities ? How are telecommunications incorporated within the physical planning of city?
3. '2nd Tier' Regional and National Capitals (Amsterdam, Dublin, Milan, Taipei, Toronto, Sydney etc.): How do advances in media and telecommunications relate to the economic positions of 2nd tier national capitals within internationalising economies. Can such cities find economic niches without the higher order advantages of global cities ?
4. Newly-Industrialising Cities (Pearl River Delta etc.): How does the booming urbanisation and industrialisation of such places relate to advances in telecommunications and media infrastructure and services ? How are telecommunication and communications infrastructure used to capture new investment? Do the new networks have an internal or external orientation? What are the consequences for social and domestic users?
5. Former Communist Cities (eg. Moscow, Warsaw, Budapest etc.): How are the former communist cities of eastern Europe retrofitting new telecommunications infrastructure? What are the investment priorities of new telecommunications infrastructure? How are new services used to position these cities within global divisions of labour?
6. Globally Marginalised Cities (e.g. Soweto, Sub-Saharan African cities): Are cities like those in Sub-Saharan Africa effectively media and telecommunications "black holes" in the urban system by-passed by even most basic telephony services? What potential is there for the roll-out of new mobile services? How are new technologies linked with wider social and economic development strategies?
7. Information-Processing Cities (e.g. Sunderland, Bangalore, Kingston, Jamaica): What are the social and economic consequences of using telecommunications to capture routine back office functions? How significant are these initiatives in the economic development strategies of their countries? What linkages are made between highly-serviced enclaves and the remaining city?
8. Resort and Tourism Cities (Palma, Orlando etc.): Can telecommunications help tourist-dominated cities to position themselves and their cultural assets as sites for periodic work by information professionals, so diversifying their local economies into higher value-added domains ? How can IT be used to sustain and boost the cultural economies of tourist cities ?
9. Logistics Cities (e.g. Kingston, North Carolina, Rotterdam): How can IT and telecommunications be used to configure urban spaces as global logistics and freight movement centres ? (air hubs, Just In Time distribution centres, 'smart' freight ports, 'global transparks' etc.).
10. New Planned Cities and Urban Spaces: How can advanced media and telecommunications be integrated into planned new communities ? Can new technologies and the 'new urbanism' be planned in a synergistic and fully integrated way ? Can ambitious urban corridors and projects like Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor and Japan's technopoles succeed in implanting globally innovative and sustainable IT-based industries ? What are the implications for such strategies for urban planning, social divisions, and local-global relations?
Conference Organisation
The conference is co-sponsored by BT, one of the leading global players in the telecommunications sector, and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK government's social science research body, through their 'Cities and Competitiveness' Programme.
The local organisers are the Centre for Urban Technology and the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies at the University of Newcastle. Both centres have undertaken research and published widely on the relations between telecommunications and contemporary cities.
The conference will take place in Durham in November 1999. The workshop format is designed to allow plenty of discussion and participation between speakers. Because of this, there will be places for only 25-30 participants. In some cases the organisers may be able to help pay towards the costs of speakers' travel expenses.
Submission of Abstracts
The organisers would welcome the submission of abstracts along the themes and issues above. We would particularly welcome papers based on empirical research within any of the different types of cities outlined above. We would particularly encourage abstract from teams of researchers and/or policy makers within the same city. It is our intention to gain the best spread of cities so emphasis will be placed on cities not usually represented in conventional literature. The papers will be circulated to speakers before the workshop. Discussions are taking place with publishers to publish the papers in a book format after the conference.
TIMESCALE
The Deadline for Submission of abstracts is December 31st 1998
Please send a 200 word abstract to:
Elizabeth Storey Centre for Urban Technology Department of Town and Country Plaanning Newcastle University Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
E-mail elizabeth.storey@ncl.ac.uk
This conference brief is also available on the CUT web site http://www.ncl.ac.uk:80/~ncut/
Notification of Acceptance of papers will be by January 31st 1999
Submission of full papers will be required by October 31st 1999.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Stephen Graham Telephone (UK) 0191 2226808 Centre for Urban Technology Telephone (non UK) +44 191 2226808 Department of Town and Country Planning Fax As above and 2228811 University of Newcastle NE1 7RU, U.K. E-mail s.d.n.graham@ncl.ac.uk
For articles, links, information: CUT on the Web http://www.ncl.ac.uk:80/~ncut/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ```
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