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Therese Kenna, University College Cork, Ireland
Urbanisation and the rapid (yet uneven) diffusion and uptake of information and communications technologies (ICTs) are key processes defining the contemporary era. Not only are more people now living in cities than rural areas globally, but more people are connecting to cyberspace through new technologies such as smart phones, laptop computers, and other devices. For processes of urbanisation to be sustainable, urban policy needs to pay attention to the social, environmental and economic issues that are critical to achieving a sustainable future for cities. ICTs are one component in creating sustainable futures for cities, though current evidence suggests ICTs are creating unequal and thus unsustainable realities.
The pervasive diffusion of ICTs is highly uneven. ICTs are contributing to a growing divide both between urban areas and within them. However, the digital era was heralded as one which would have the ability to transcend inequalities. As Graham (2002, p.35) noted, Cyberspace has been “cast as a single, unitary and intrinsically unifying electronic space” with the power to overcome a variety of segmentations and inequalities in the ‘off-line’, urbanising world. However, the reality is very different with emerging evidence that ICTs are “serving to underpin and support processes and practices of intensifying urban polarisation” (Graham, 2002, p.35). Stephen Graham’s work highlights Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley, as a prime example of the ways in which a rapidly urbanising city, investing significantly in high-tech industries, has seen a widening socio-spatial and now digital divide. Graham (2002) notes that an information technology park has also been constructed on the outskirts of Bangalore that has the full suite of technological activities and infrastructure, as well as international standard water, sanitation and waste disposal. There is also an upmarket residential development with high-end leisure facilities, which separates the high-tech workers and companies from the “prevailing poverty in the shanty towns which still house the bulk of the city’s in-migrant population (over 50 per cent of whom are illiterate)” (Graham, 2002, p.45). Similarly, in relation to San Francisco, Richard Florida (2014) notes how the city has become a site for the location of high-tech start-up firms (e.g. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), yet it is also home to a ’68-acre homeless camp’. As a result of the growth and development of high-tech companies, there is a widening economic wedge between those in the high-tech industries and everybody else, such that there two key urban problems emerging: increasing economic inequality and worsening housing affordability. Urbanisation presents a series of challenges and uncertainties for the city, which is now compounded by the rapid diffusion of ICT, digital technologies and high-tech companies. As a result, the social, economic and environmental sustainabili