Theft at the Public Till
economic activity to occur most anywhere-satellite communications, mi- croprocessors, robotics, lasers, fiber optics, microcomputers, and integrated circuitry. In the 1970s and 1980s, some cities made the successful transition from a manufacturing to a service economy only to discover that new tech- nologies had reshaped not only office work but also the location decisions of service firms and industries. Technology reinforces the idea that local communities are archaic, even while making their image more available. In the nineteenth century, the railroad and photograph lost the immediacy and depth of a foreground view of place, although they made distant places more accessible. Today, simultaneous exchanges by electronic media tie together even the smallest places, but they destroy the social distance that made experiencing them so distinctive. In brief, as markets have been globalized, place has been dimin- ished. At the same time places have also become more differentiated. New patterns of regional specialization reflect the selective location of highly skilled and highly valued economic activities-finance, corporate leadership, and research and development-in zones that offer amenities. These concen- trations enable places to capitalize on their initial advantage. By the same token, areas that begin to lose business investment become even less attrac- tive. They utterly fail to develop high-status production and consumption. The same country, and the same region, can easily be divided between these two paths of development. The basic problem derives from a simple imbalance between investment and employment: capital moves, the community doesn't. For many people who are enthusiastic about the next economic transformation, imbalance and dislocation are a painful but necessary part of the transition. But for those who worry about the present, and find the future still uncertain, di- chotomous landscapes pose a major problem. Not only do they embody alternative economic and political strategies; these strategies also carry a burden of existential choice. The only tissue of the city is that of the free- ways, a vehicular tissue, the extraordinary spectacle of these thousands of cars moving at the same speed, in both directions, headlights full on in broad daylight, on the Ventura Freeway, coming from nowhere, going nowhere: an
203
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online