ancient cities

Te c h n o b u r b s
The term technoburb is one in a long line of terms
used in urban studies to describe metropolitan
sprawl and the emergence of exurban landscapes.
The techno- prefix is mobilized to describe the rise
of these new socioeconomic units due to two primary
reasons. First, the basis for urban decentralization
over the last several decades has been the
expansion of advanced information communications
technologies, which have partly substituted
for the face-to-face contact and physical movement
of traditional cities. For example, the growing
use of such technologies in tandem with the
expansion of telecommunications infrastructure
has led to the deliberate dispersal of economic
activity and a new spatial division of labor, as
work processes have become increasingly mediated
technologically.
Second, the prefix refers to the fact that technoburbs
can be characterized by the presence of
high-technology industries and specific information
technology-facilitated corporate business
functions that created a new geographical pattern,
as often seemingly placeless business functions
have been relocated to, and physically clustered in,
purpose-built business districts such as technology
and science parks. These developments contain
concentrations of related businesses lured out of
the city by an attractive corporate campus environment
characterized by landscape uniformity, control,
and securitization. Therefore, a dual spatial
restructuring process has resulted in, on the one
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hand, the technologically facilitated movement of
economic activities out of the city, and on the
other, the subsequent clustering of activities in specific
exurban milieu.
Historical Evolution
One of the most important features of urban development
in the global North in the period following
World War II has been the rise of urban sprawl and
expanding suburbanization leading to the extension
of urban regions. While traditional central
business districts retain high-level command-andcontrol
service functions, the city has experienced
the decentralization of residential, industrial, commercial,
and specialized service functions to its
suburbs and beyond. The subsequent shift of these
functions to an urban periphery has led not just to
suburbanization but to the creation of new peripheral
cities without the traditional traits of cityness.
Within these cities, residents increasingly look to
their immediate surroundings rather than the city
for their employment needs.
For example, beyond the boundary of the traditional
urban core, shopping malls, industrial parks,
business estates, university campuses, corporate
office complexes, back-office centers, and logistics
hubs are interspersed with residential areas and
open green spaces, forming new decentered spatial
units where conventional notions of city and suburb
blur into one another. As a consequence,
notions of the city based on an established geometry
of bounded sectors and zones has become
obsolete.