e-topia

@book{citeulike:1532747, abstract = {{This little book begins with a big claim: the city is dead, and cyberspace killed it. But Mitchell, it turns out, is too intelligent an observer to really mean anything quite so drastic. Despite his weakness for bold, catchy statements (and it is a weakness), this MIT architecture professor has both feet planted in the long and much-studied history of urban spaces, and he draws from it a pragmatic optimism that keeps his argument both hopeful and nuanced. His real thesis: Under cyberspace's influence, the city is changing, no more or less radically than it did under the influence of postal systems, electricity, and cars. And if we ride the new changes carefully, he insists, the places we live and work in can become "e-topias--lean, green cities that work smarter, not harder."<p> As in his bestselling <I>City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn</I>, Mitchell floats his claims on a brisk stream of technological detail, much of it eye-opening, all of it clearly presented. Low-earth-orbit satellites; small-scale, wearable computer networks woven into underpants; artificially intelligent houses; and the logistics of high-tech pizza delivery are just a few of the phenomena that go into Mitchell's sketch of the emergent digital city. Casually erudite nods to urban theorists from Plato to Lewis Mumford to William H. Gates III round out the portrait. In the end, Mitchell shows us the city doing more or less what it has always done: evolving away from its simple, ancient roots toward increasingly mediated complexity. <I>--Julian Dibbell</I>} {The global digital network is not just a delivery system for email, Web pages, and digital television. It is a whole new urban infrastructure--one that will change the forms of our cities as dramatically as railroads, highways, electric power supply, and telephone networks did in the past. In this lucid, invigorating book, William J. Mitchell examines this new infrastructure and its implications for our future daily lives.<br /> <br /> Picking up where his best-selling <i>City of Bits</i> left off, Mitchell argues that we must extend the definitions of architecture and urban design to encompass virtual places as well as physical ones, and interconnection by means of telecommunication links as well as by pedestrian circulation and mechanized transportation systems. He proposes strategies for the creation of cities that not only will be sustainable but will make economic, social, and cultural sense in an electronically interconnected and global world. The new settlement patterns of the twenty-first century will be characterized by live/work dwellings, 24-hour pedestrian-scale neighborhoods rich in social relationships, and vigorous local community life, complemented by far-flung configurations of electronic meeting places and decentralized production, marketing, and distribution systems. Neither digiphile nor digiphobe, Mitchell advocates the creation of e-topias--cities that work smarter, not harder.}}, author = {Mitchell, William J. }, citeulike-article-id = {1532747}, howpublished = {Hardcover}, isbn = {0262133555}, keywords = {digital\_life, information\_spaces, social\_implications, technology, urban\_living}, month = {September}, posted-at = {2007-08-03 10:51:52}, priority = {0}, publisher = {{The MIT Press}}, title = {e-topia}, url = {http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=citeulike09-20\&amp;path=ASIN/0262133555}, year = {1999} }

TY - BOOK ID - citeulike:1532747 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1532747 N2 - {This little book begins with a big claim: the city is dead, and cyberspace killed it. But Mitchell, it turns out, is too intelligent an observer to really mean anything quite so drastic. Despite his weakness for bold, catchy statements (and it is a weakness), this MIT architecture professor has both feet planted in the long and much-studied history of urban spaces, and he draws from it a pragmatic optimism that keeps his argument both hopeful and nuanced. His real thesis: Under cyberspace's influence, the city is changing, no more or less radically than it did under the influence of postal systems, electricity, and cars. And if we ride the new changes carefully, he insists, the places we live and work in can become "e-topias--lean, green cities that work smarter, not harder."<p> As in his bestselling <I>City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn</I>, Mitchell floats his claims on a brisk stream of technological detail, much of it eye-opening, all of it clearly presented. Low-earth-orbit satellites; small-scale, wearable computer networks woven into underpants; artificially intelligent houses; and the logistics of high-tech pizza delivery are just a few of the phenomena that go into Mitchell's sketch of the emergent digital city. Casually erudite nods to urban theorists from Plato to Lewis Mumford to William H. Gates III round out the portrait. In the end, Mitchell shows us the city doing more or less what it has always done: evolving away from its simple, ancient roots toward increasingly mediated complexity. <I>--Julian Dibbell</I>} {The global digital network is not just a delivery system for email, Web pages, and digital television. It is a whole new urban infrastructure--one that will change the forms of our cities as dramatically as railroads, highways, electric power supply, and telephone networks did in the past. In this lucid, invigorating book, William J. Mitchell examines this new infrastructure and its implications for our future daily lives.<br /> <br /> Picking up where his best-selling <i>City of Bits</i> left off, Mitchell argues that we must extend the definitions of architecture and urban design to encompass virtual places as well as physical ones, and interconnection by means of telecommunication links as well as by pedestrian circulation and mechanized transportation systems. He proposes strategies for the creation of cities that not only will be sustainable but will make economic, social, and cultural sense in an electronically interconnected and global world. The new settlement patterns of the twenty-first century will be characterized by live/work dwellings, 24-hour pedestrian-scale neighborhoods rich in social relationships, and vigorous local community life, complemented by far-flung configurations of electronic meeting places and decentralized production, marketing, and distribution systems. Neither digiphile nor digiphobe, Mitchell advocates the creation of e-topias--cities that work smarter, not harder.} SN - 0262133555 TI - e-topia PB - {The MIT Press} KW - digital_life KW - information_spaces KW - social_implications KW - technology KW - urban_living AU - Mitchell, William PY - 1999/09/17/ UR - http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=citeulike09-20&amp;path=ASIN/0262133555 ER -