Digital Geography: the Remaking of City and Countryside in the New Economy

In a manner not seen since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, technology is reshaping the landscape of American life.

There is a debate afoot as to whether computer networks and the Internet are revolutionizing productivity, but there can be no argument about whether they are revolutionizing the organization of space.

Just as the railroad, telegraph, and mass-production factor produced the manufacturing cities and towns of the industrial economy, the rise of the digital economy is creating a new geography of economic life.

But while vertical cities have lost population, mid-sized horizontal cities better adapted to the automobile and better able to offer a quality of life comparable to the suburbs have grown rapidly.