Taub Urban Research Center

The "Wired" Metropolis:
The Internet Backbone and the Future of Cities in the Information Age

Anthony Townsend

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People tend to take telecommunications for granted, especially in New York, which arguably has the world's most advanced communications infrastructure. The federal government has long endorsed policies that sought to bring affordable telephone service to everyone, often overcharging businesses and residents in cities to subsidize those in the suburbs and outlying areas. As a result, over 95 percent of the nation's households have been connected to the telephone network since its invention a century ago.

Cyber-City?

The Internet, however, has grown at lightning speed without government restrictions, leading to wide disparities among cities and regions in the deployment of high-speed network infrastructure. It appears that a select group of "cyber-cities" is emerging.

At first, it seems an oxymoron to talk of cyber-cities. A city is fixed in space, immobile, a sculpture in concrete and steel, while cyberspace is by definition placeless -- everywhere and nowhere at once with no regard for borders of any kind. But in reality, cyberspace is merely an extension of the social, political and economic systems that define urban America. There is a connection between the physical and the virtual, and as Peter Huber noted recently in City Journal, cities like New York are where "cyberspace hits the road."

In the increasingly deregulated telecommunications industry, cutthroat competition dictates that companies must choose markets carefully when building the complex and expensive networks that today's business customers demand. The cross-subsidies that made the telephone system a seamless, universal means of communications are being dismantled, and companies are free to pursue the most lucrative markets while bypassing less profitable ones. Despite the prevailing wisdom that the Internet will decentralize the economy and liberate individuals even faster than the automobile and the Interstate Highway System did, we may actually be building the most centralized communications network in modern history.

Out with the Old, In With the New

Every year magazines like Money, Fortune and Forbes rank American cities on a number of factors such as quality of life, business climate and economic growth. However, they have yet to revise their scoring systems to include factors like the availability of high-speed Internet connections, the percent of schools connected to the Internet, the percentage of adults with a college education, or the number of businesses with an Internet presence, despite the growing importance and phenomenal growth of telecommunications that those glossy pages periodically report.

It is increasingly clear that the future of cities in the Information Age rests upon their ability to collect information, process it to extract knowledge, and sell that knowledge around the world. It's no coincidence that the parts of the country with the highest per capita income -- New York, San Francisco, Washington and Boston -- are dominated by industries that don't produce anything tangible. These cities thrive on the creation of knowledge and innovation.

The most recent ranking of cities by Money magazine underscores my argument that we need a new set of urban indicators to guide decisions on where we should live, work and play. Based on a variety of criteria including air and water quality, job opportunities and weather, Money actually picked Trenton, New Jersey as the best mid-sized city on the East Coast. Now, as anyone who's ever spent time in Trenton can agree, Money's rating system has some fundamental problems. When the five o'clock bell rings, and the suburban workforce abandons the Garden State's capital, quality of life in Trenton is more a function of avoiding stray bullets than living out a happy and healthy existence. Money also ranked dangerous Newark, New Jersey (the nation's car theft capital) above affluent Bergen County, New Jersey (the third richest county in the nation).

The Ten Most Wired Cities

One example of a new indicator of urban vitality in the Information Age is the capacity and diversity of Internet backbone links to other cities. The Taub Urban Research Center has been compiling a list of links between cities for each of the 29 major backbone networks in the United States, which represent over 95 percent of the wholesale Internet market. National providers sell their capacity to local Internet Service Providers and institutions like NYU, which then parcel out that resource to employees and customers for office and home Internet access.

The table below shows the ten most "wired" metropolitan areas and the total capacity of all backbone networks that maintain a node there. Surprisingly, despite rhetoric from futurists, cyber-prophets and even Vice President Al Gore, nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of Internet capacity is centrally located in just seven metropolitan areas -- San Francisco, Washington, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles and Atlanta -- where barely one-quarter of the U.S. population actually lives. Furthermore, more than half the network links in these cities are used to connect to the other six top metros. Rather than a widely decentralized network, it appears that these seven cities are driving the development of a tightly linked, exclusive set of inter-connected cities and regions.

Internet Backbone Capacity by Metro Area
Metropolitan Area	Backbone Capacity (in Megabits/second)	Percentage of National Backbone Capacity	Cumulative Percentage of National Capacity
San Francisco/ San Jose, CA	9,166	11.6	11.6
Washington, DC	8,186	10.4	22.0
Chicago, IL	7,753	9.8	31.8
New York, NY	7,666	9.7	41.5
Dallas, TX	5,646	7.1	48.6
Los Angeles, CA	5,326	6.7	55.3
Atlanta, GA	5196	6.6	61.9
Denver, CO	2,901	3.7	65.6
Seattle, WA	1,972	2.5	68.1
Houston, TX	1,890	2.4	70.5

To understand just how massive these data pipes really are, consider this. If the entire San Francisco Bay Area's Internet infrastructure were under my control, I would be able to send over 25,000,000 copies of this article per second to any number of cities around the world! In the information economy, the power and capacity to export information says more about the vitality and future prospects of cities than any other indicator. Companies that are in the business of selling information will locate at the top of the food chain, where they have best access to distribution networks. While in the past, proximity to rail lines or Interstate highways was the deciding factor for which cities grew or declined, in the future access to advanced telecommunications will play a commanding role in wherer businesses decide to locate.

There are clear losers in the Internet race, as well. Detroit has twice the population of Denver, yet only one-third as much Internet backbone capacity. Philadelphia is also falling behind other metro areas, having about the same amount of bandwidth as the much less populous Miami/Fort Lauderdale region.

While it is clear that disparities in Internet infrastructure among metropolitan areas are clearly related to economic health, the nature of this relationship is complex. Do investments in telecommunications drive economic growth, or do prosperous economies invest in new technologies to maintain their competitive advantage? I believe that the truth is a little bit of both, which is very disturbing. For if that is the case, it will mean that metropolitan areas with healthy, vibrant economies can and will invest in advanced telecommunications, creating a feedback loop that drives their growth. On the other hand, less prosperous regions that lack the resources to compete may actually fall further and further behind.

Considering the federal government's continued apathy towards urban policy initiatives and its reluctance to interfere in the telecommunications industry, those cities least prepared to compete in the information age will likely be left to fend for themselves. While we should not restrain the most productive cities from forging ahead into the future, it is becoming clear that public leadership is necessary to bring the opportunities of the Information Age to all of our cities. [ C ]