The global digital network is not just a delivery system for email, Web pages, anddigital television. It is a whole new urban infrastructure--one that will change the forms of ourcities as dramatically as railroads, highways, electric power supply, and telephone networks did inthe past. In this lucid, invigorating book, William J. Mitchell examines this new infrastructure andits 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 encompassvirtual places as well as physical ones, and interconnection by means of telecommunication links aswell as by pedestrian circulation and mechanized transportation systems. He proposes strategies forthe creation of cities that not only will be sustainable but will make economic, social, andcultural sense in an electronically interconnected and global world. The new settlement patterns ofthe twenty-first century will be characterized by live/work dwellings, 24-hour pedestrian-scaleneighborhoods rich in social relationships, and vigorous local community life, complemented byfar-flung configurations of electronic meeting places and decentralized production, marketing, anddistribution systems. Neither digiphile nor digiphobe, Mitchell advocates the creation ofe-topias--cities that work smarter, not harder. Read Less