While in the past five years the Internet and World Wide Web have received a great deal of attention from the media a n d s c h o l a r s a l i k e , o t h e r telecommunications technologies have rapidly diffused in this period as well. Mobile telephones have been rapidly accepted throughout the urban world, particularly in countries with far lower levels of Internet use. While mobile telephones are sold as a technology that helps conquer constraints of location and geography, it is increasingly apparent that the time-management capabilities of this new tool are equally important. As a result, the widespread use of these devices is quickening of the pace of urban life and at an aggregate level, resulting in a dramatic increase in the metabolism of urban systems. This quickening metabolism is directly tied to the widespread formation of new decentralized information networks facilitated by this new technology. As a result, new paradigms for understanding the city and city planning in a decentralized context are discussed. 1. The Arrival of Mass Mobile Communications in the City While the Internet has received much attention in the years following the appearance of Mosaic and the World Wide Web in 1993, the technologies with which humans communicate have changed in myriad other ways during these few short years. The advent of inexpensive mass-produced mobile communications in particular, has avoided scholarly attention, perhaps because it seems pedestrian compared to the nebulous depths of cyberspace. Yet the cellular telephone, merely the first wave of an imminent invasion of portable digital communications tools to come, will undoubtedly lead to fundamental transformations in individuals’ perceptions of self and the world, and consequently the way they collectively construct that world. In so doing, mobile communications devices will have a profound effect on our cities as they are woven into the daily routines of urban inhabitants. Notwithstanding the general neglect of
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