The Flow of Information in a Global Economy: The Role of the American Urban System in 1990

Abstract Information circulation and availability have always been fundamental to the development of cities even when their employment base depended on manufacturing. With the rise of the informational city, and the global economy, the creation and exchange of highly specialized information has become vital for a metropolitan center's success. This paper, accordingly, examines the contemporary production and exchange of higher-order information that occurs among and between American cities and reveals how ongoing globalization has affected the position of these cities in the system of information exchange. The paper introduces a conceptual framework combining processes of uncertainty, deregulation, globalization, demassification, and vertical disintegration and deploys that framework in an empirical analysis. An analysis of 1990 flow data provided by Federal Express Corporation measures flows among 47 major U.S. centers and selected foreign places and reveals a three-tiered hierarchical system, with New Y...

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