New conflict areas in urban politics in the internet age? (527)

Theme Track: Sectoral Changes and New Markets - Special Workshop "The Spatial Implicationf of the New Economy"

Author:
Läpple, Dieter

Much of the recent literature on Internet-based economy has stresses the concentration of new media production in urban centres. Despite the technical potentials of the Internet with its electronic inter-connectivity of almost any place of the globe, with regard to new media production there is neither a 'death of distance' nor a transformation of cites into a virtual 'city of bits'. New media firms value spatial proximity to customers and project partners and they need professionals who prefer to life and work in the centres of metropolitan cities where they have access to complex educational infrastructure, professional associations and personal networks to maintain employment in a project-oriented environment with rapidly changing technology and an extreme volatile labour market.

Many city officials have discovered the potential of the so-called digital economy to create jobs and revitalise the urban economy and urban neighbourhoods. Even after the dot.com crisis the internet-driven portion of the economy seems to be an important field of job creation and innovation, especially via diffusion of internet applications into the economy as a whole. However, it is evident, that this fast changing and volatile field of the urban economy is linked with severe challenges with regard to the labour market, the educational infrastructure the urban environment and the strategies of the cities to promote the urban economic development.

In my paper I shall highlight the challenges faced by professionals, employers and the city government alike in this dynamic and conflicting economic and urban field and discuss the following questions: Which are the specific urban forms of embedding? Which conflicts and conflict areas are linked with this specific urban economy? What are the most important shifts in the targets and means of public policy due to the new conflict areas and what are possible policy responses? Which specific strategies are required to promote a sustainable development of new media in an urban context?

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