Telecommunications and Geography

Misconceptions About Telecommunications and Geography

There exists considerable confusion about the real and potential impacts of telecommunications on urban structure, in part due to the long history of exaggerated claims made in the past, particularly by those subscribing to the “postindustrial” theory. Often, such views hinge on a simplistic and utopian technological determinism that ignores the complex, often contradictory relations between telecommunications and local economic, social, and political circumstances.

For example, repeated proclamations that information systems would allow everyone to work at home via telecommuting, dispersing all functions and spelling the obsolescence of cities, have fallen flat in the face of the persistence of growth in dense urbanized places. In fact, advances in videoconferencing notwithstanding, telecommunications are generally a poor substitute for face-to-face meetings, the medium through which most sensitive corporate interactions occurs, particularly when the information involved is irregular and unstandardized in nature. Most managers spend the bulk of their working time engaged in face-to-face contact, and no electronic technology can allow for the subtlety and nuances critical to such encounters. For this reason, a century of technological change, from the telephone to fiber optics, has left most high-value-added, white-collar, and administrative command-and-control functions clustered in downtown areas (despite their high rents), their agglomerative advantages intact if not unchallenged. In contrast, telecommunications are ideally suited for the transmission of routinized, standardized forms of data such as back office clerical functions. In short, contrary to much received opinion, there is no a priori reason to believe that telecommunications inevitably lead to the dispersal or deconcentration of functions; by allowing the decentralization of routinized functions, information technology may enhance the comparative advantage of inner cities (albeit with jobs generally filled by suburban commuters). Information systems thus allow for the simultaneous concentration and deconcentration of economic activities.

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