E-topia

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.Picking up where his best-selling City of Bits 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.