Book released by RIBA's think tank "Building Futures". The book addresses a broad range of issues of where the built environment meets the digital world.

Of particular note to CNF members are the articles within the chapter Digital Cities:

William J Mitchell: E-Bodies,E-Buildings, E-Cities.

Mitchell concludes that their will be 6 main influences of digital technology on urban design and architecture:

1. A selective loosening of the necessity for linkages and connections between spatial elements causing fragmentation & recombination of building types and patterns
2. An erasure of incompatibilities between buildings’ uses contributing to an easier relationship between work and home
3. Revenge of place - The reemergence of the importance of place
4. A tunnel effect of intense and polarizing ICT locational specialization
5. Less influence of building use on architectural form
6. More complex and responsive buildings designed through cad/cam technologies

Andrew Gillespie: Digital Lifestyles and the Future City

Gillespie concludes: “We are left to conclude that planners have yet to develop the awareness, let alone the experience or appropriate policy intervention mechanisms, that would enable them to influence the spatial development of a digital society.  Somebody is ‘planning’ the digital city – the telecommunications companies perhaps? - but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the planners!”

David Turnball: GMCity: The Genetically Modified City (2001)

Turnball discusses how the liberating power of digital communications can create a new, genetically modified city:

“The problem: crime, danger, stress, high cost of living, congested roads, and high levels of frustration, gridlock.

The Solution: relocation – great education, smart people (smart friends), good employees, high salaries, low cost of living, good lifestyle, good shops, world class food, sport, scenery…  ...friction free living”

For more information click here