Internet and the City

The Internet was the result of some visionary thinking by people in the early 1960s who saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields.[1] Tim Berners-Lee was the man leading the development of the World Wide Web (with help of course), the defining of HTML (hypertext markup language) used to create web pages, HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and URLs (Universal Resource Locators). All of those developments took place between 1989 and 1991.[2] "The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities. The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location."[3]

Instant communication through email and access to most kind of information are the basic benefits of the internet. The Internet gives us the opportunity to get up to date information through multimedia. Almost everybody can get access to information by browsing, by participating in blogs, or even by subscribing to a portal or an e-magazine or even by receiving news from RSS feeds directly to our email. TV channels and radio stations also emit their programs through the Internet. “You need specialized information? Post a question to the right group and you will get what you want and a dozen more related references. Also, sometimes information ...just comes to you.”[4] Maybe the most interesting part of the internet's development is the free wireless access, provided in a lot of cities of the world, included London.[5]

In our days, the internet provide us the opportunity to cover most of our needs. We are able to work from home, meet our friends through virtual conferences, watch movies and listen to music from our laptop, order food and even “make love”. Are we citizens in the City of Bits?[6] If today, people that have access to the internet are citizens in this type of city, can we give it an image? Can we imagine the City of Bits? Can we then imagine that, if everybody would have access to information technology, this would have been the future image of the city?

In the City of Bits people spent their lives in a very small, smart space that they call it “home”. “Home” is a place where people sleep, get entertained and work. Whereas the industrial revolution forced the separation of home and workplace, the digital revolution is bringing them back together.[7] People telecommute, and do not leave “home” because they do not have to do it. All their needs can be covered there. Information and people “go” there, and goods necessary for survival are being delivered. Place and traveling around has no meaning, every “home” is a centre of the world, a centre of bit's concentration; virtual reality has overlapped and distinguished reality; people live in a Second Life[8] urban environment.

But is this the image we want for our future? People enclosed in their “homes”? Lonely people living in their own virtual reality? What about personal touch? What about face-to-face meetings and human relationships? If we do not meet people and have real contact then there will not be any future cities, because people are not going to exist anymore. And what about people's need to have access to material objects? Human beings will always want to have recourse to materiality.., the more immaterial our lives become the more greater is our corresponding desire for a material world.[9]

Studying UK residents' travel behavior, between 1986-2006, we see an almost constant percentage of business' travellers the last years. We also take under consideration the fact that during the same period, more and more businesses worldwide used IT and the Internet.( t. 6 ) We can assume then, that Information Technology and the communication functions provided by the Internet, have a negative impact on travelling and face-to-face meetings.

On the other hand, several studies taken place in the Netherlands, searching e-shopping versus store-shopping, came to the conclusion that the higher the perceived attractiveness of the city, both in terms of range and convenience of shopping and accessibility, the less Internet users are incline to shop online and to replace the city centre shopping with e-shopping,[10] and that it appears that for most individuals e-shopping is just another way of shopping, complementary to their in-store shopping.[11] BT Futurologists also predict that between 2011 and 2015, people will return to the high-street for personal service.[12]

The City of Bits is a city in the city that we live. It is an invisible, immaterialized network city, that exists in the physical materialized form city, as we so far know and experience it. They both cooperate and coexist, to provide services and goods to their citizens, and make their lives easier and better. Electronic commerce, for example, should not be considered as the replacement of bricks and mortar by servers and telecommunications, but the sophisticated integration of digital network with physical supply chains.[13] We can then imagine several types of new urban networks that information technology, e-commerce, gives us the chance to create:

1. Small business and enterprises can become part of an urban network that provides services and goods as a large business village. For example, all services and shops situated in the same area could create an urban shopping mall[14] many doctors together could create an urban hospital network.

2. Small business, enterprises, and upcoming companies situated in several places all over the city, can provide services to each other, share expenses, technical facilities, common meeting rooms, and all together work as a larger company.

3. If we connect the above network with universities networks, libraries, labs, hotels and restaurants we can then create a new type of urban business park, not as a part of the city but the city itself.

The internet and several computer networks as they decentralize functions can help us think the city itself as a network of networks. That would help small and starting up companies to secure their existence in a global environment and people coming to or living in the city can get informed of what is going on in the area. We could anytime,anywhere get informed from our mobile phone or notebook where is the closest hotel to stay, or where we can find a cheap pair of jeans to buy, a public shower to wash ourselves or a nice event to attend.

The Internet can actually help people to express their opinion and cover their needs. Public participation becomes much more efficient in a society that everybody uses IT. When a local master plan takes place, professionals instead of sending thousands of letters to the residents of the area, could inform them by sending an email. Some people will very easy reply to an e-questioner rather to return a letter. Professionals will then get a better feedback in less time. It could be argued that people with no access to IT will never get inform of what is going on in their area. In this case email could be complementary to the traditional mail. A study on using the Internet for public participation in urban planning process centering around the Case of Yamato City, in Japan, was attempted in 1995.[15] The results shoed that when the master plan was presented on the Internet, the number of participants increased surprisingly, and that the opinion reflection rate was higher than that for the roundtable conference. We must consider the fact that there was an informational gap between citizens who had access to the Internet and those who did not, but since the study took place more than ten years ago, we could say that the gap today would had been less. More master plan projects promote public participation through the Internet, like the "Redevelopment Plan for Creshend City"[16] and the "California coastal sediment management project".[17]

Local councils can create a webpage to inform residents of what is going on in the area and create a blog where people can post their thoughts, opinions, make comments or complaints. Professionals will take these under consideration during the planning and design process. Even communities can create their own virtual network and contact between them. Not that we believe that actions like that promote real socializing, but they bring people together. If people are “connected” they can discuss and decide for issues they are mutually concerned. Of course they can decide to organize a public party in the main street, but they can also realize that what they need is not a new park, but some benches in the square and a projector to show movies during summer time.

A recent technological development on urban planning is the web-based GIS application. A similar application tested on a development plan in Malaysia, concludes that GIS data which was made accessible on the Internet by web-based GIS technology, has offered an effective medium for public participation and collaborative planning.[18] The same study suggests that Web-based GIS technology plays an effective role on the presentation and analyzing of planning information. Users do not need to have specific training or software to be able to interact. Its ability in enabling easy and simplified access and without limitation, in terms of time and location, should be able to increase the number of GIS users and involvement in the planning and development activities. Web-based GIS is expected to revolutionise public participation and consensus building in planning, by allowing anyone to access and use web GIS for capturing and manipulating spatial information with interactive sources and high customization.

2.3.2. Internet and Sustainability

Assuming that with the free wireless internet provided in cities and IT equipment prices, in the future years, the Internet will be accessible by most people in the world. The Internet partly reduces the costs of traveling and helps collaboration between companies internationally. Digital information and digital processes in a company reduces costs in paper, ink and labor. That is why the use of the Internet encourages small and upcoming companies to operate and young open-minded people to express and make true their ideas. In large companies new ideas from young people are usually being discouraged, either by upper level close-minded people or because of complicated and slow moving management processes. In contrast, small and medium companies can be very productive and useful for a society[19] and help to create of what we call “urban business park”, a network of small companies, connected with the research and educational networks of the city. On the contrast, some local businesses -like fast food and hairdressers- look safe from e-commerce competition; but local book, video and music shops and convenience stores are under direct threat.[20]

The Internet connects people. Communities can create their own webpage and portal in the Internet where they can discuss and take decisions for their area and then public participation will be more efficient. Furthermore, people can organize events and then the electronic network will become a real network, based on face-to-face relationships. Communities can also get connected by creating virtual networks. For example, they can create catalogues with map finders using GIS, where local businesses, culture, education and entertainment is situated, and then locals and foreigners can get the information they what and cover their need. Networks like this enable people to spend more time in the city and be more social sustainable. They can walk, get entertainment and enjoy public space, by choosing between a diversity of options.

What about all that energy that the Internet needs to operate? Last November Google announced a new strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal.[21] An Australian web company has launched a search engine that is the same as Google, but better for the environment. Its names is Blackle (www.blackle.com) and has the exact same functions as the white version, but on lower energy consuming black background. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year.[22] That give us the hope that future IT would be more friendly to the environment.