Customer Reviews

The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape

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For years we've been hearing about how the Internet would revolutionize the way people live and work. Now Joel Kotkin gives us a book about the Internet's influence on where people live and work. The New Geography highlights what makes some locations more attractive than others in this digital age. Using easy to understand terms, quotes from people in the know, and page after page of demographic data and examples, Kotkin separates the modern and desirable "nerdistans" from the overbuilt and decaying cities that were so often associated with success. Because today's connected workers can live anywhere they want, they will live anywhere they want. If city leaders are serious about attracting new businesses and the affluent citizens those businesses bring, Kotkin's book is a must read. I found it particularly valuable because I am a newly transplanted resident in an up and coming nerdistan. Having recently attended a lecture by Kotkin, I can say I know what he's talking about. Other readers will too. The New Geography is a little scholarly and dry for five stars, but a very informative book indeed.

A thoughtful analysis of technology's impact on society with some ideas that are worth acting upon.

While the premise of this book is not new, Kotkin's thoughtful analysis of how technology has and is changing our geography puts this book securely in the "must read" category.

Kotkin's premise is that technology is changing America's landscape as much or more than did the Industrial Revolution. While, in some respects, technology has de-personalized our society (and there are many tangible examples; the malling and sprawling of America with "category killer" retail and soulless master planned communities), it has also emerged as a great unifier causing people to seek more connection, not less. Moreover, technology has enabled more choices, particularly on where one chooses to live and work. Consequently, the notion of "place" is more important than in the past and consumers of place are more demanding and sophisticated.

What all this means is that we are seeing a very positive evolution back to "Renaissance" type cites (populated by artisans, small business and niche players enabled with technology) where place and commerce are wed. Conversely, we are also experiencing the segregation of the "haves" of technology and subsequent wealth from the "have-nots". Further segregation, Kotkin argues, will erode the very positives that are emerging.

Kotkin takes pains to organize his argument and does so by citing both historical markers (i.e.-Fall of Rome, the Dark Ages and The Enlightenment/Renaissance) with geographical categories that describe our emerging urban landscape (ie-Valhallas, Nerdistans, Urban Cores and Midopolis).

My one complaint is that Kotkin didn't give enough airtime to the issues around how the segregation of the classes will potentially erode the more positive impacts of technology. This subject emerges only toward the end of the book with poignant comparisons to the Fall of Rome.

While some of the rosy "Internet Era" optimism (copyright 2000) is evident here, the gist of the message remains completely valid. This is an excellent book. This "New Geography" is worth thinking about and acting upon. Kotkin's last two lines are illustrative; "As people and advanced industries hunt the globe for locations, they will not necessarily seek out those places that are the biggest, the cheapest, or the most well favored by location. Instead they will seek out a new kind of geography, one that appeals to their sense of values and their hearts, and it is there that the successful communities of the digital age will be found." Do you live in one of these communities or not? Bravo!

You've heard it said that location is everything. City planning, urban geography, explanations of agricultural patterns, and the theory of industrial location all owe their existence to German geographers who were the pioneers of location theory; men such as von Thunen, Weber and Christaller. Edward Ullman introduced the concept of central-place theory to the US before WWII. The idea then has a long history of explaining the way things are.

All that will come to an end if it's up to Joel Kotkin. He sees the new economy with its emphasis on communication and technology as permanently seperating us from our dependance on place. This isn't revolutionary, or even a new idea. The belief that technology is more important than any physical space or location has long been the mantra of the netheads of the new economy. What else are we doing but proving the reality of this when we submit and read reviews at Amazon, and participate in a community that only exists in cyberspace?

Where THE NEW GEOGRAPHY truly breaks new ground is in the argument that the information economy has two "faces". These involve different processes and business that are beneficial to the "self-contained high-end suburds" or "nerdistans" but also, and very importantly, other elements have "taken on a decidedly more urban cast." It's a fairly good book that will be enjoyable to those with interests in geography, urbanism, and technology; it's therefore broad enough but unfortunately not deep enough to really satisfy all.

When "New Geography" hit the stands, it made it for few weeks on the LA Times bestseller list, and Joel Kotkin made the rounds on the local public radio stations. He is well spoken, and his interviews where engaging, but his book doesn't hold muster. Don't get me wrong - he has an interesting thesis, but it could have been well articulated in the length of an Atlantic Monthly sized magazine article. Instead, he gives the reader filler, and rehashes what other contemporary authors have been saying about demographic trends, urban lifestyles, decaying midwestern cities, and internet workers. He also wrote this book at the crest of the internet bubble, and like most new computer technologies, it has became outdated a year's time since the bust.

Also, one final thought...

This book was written with the assumption that programers, netheads, and digital artists exist in sufficient numbers to change which cities in America live and die. It's as if this country were populated by David Brooks and his "laptop at Starbucks so they can sip their lattes hot 'Bobo's.'" Has Kotkin ever been to Palmdale??

Skim this book, but don't forget to pick out the thesis. It says that cities, towns, and suburbs that make themselves livable by yuppie standards will flourish in this new internet driven economy whose companies and workers can live and work where they want because new technology allows them to be geographically unconstrained by "old" economy resources like shipping ports, raw materials, etc.

This book is a better read in 2005 than it was when it came out in 2000 because it's easier to understand the map Kotkin was drawing now that we can see it played out across the country. Creative and artistic people are just now moving into downtown Los Angeles; the traffic in Austin is awful because they didn't plan on the kind of growth they got; Detroit still has not cohesive plan in place for growth.

But the book also puts these changes into historical context, so we know that our change isn't the first of its kind and will likely not be the last.

This is an even-handed, non-cheerleading account of how people are moving to different locations in America based on their "skill level" (by which I think Joel primarily means IQ): e.g., Nerds are moving to Nerdistans like Silicon Valley and Research Triangle, while Rich Nerds are moving to Valhallas like Aspen. Lots of good insights, although his celebrations of how immigrants are reviving cities kept me wondering how who caused them to die out. Reading Joel is kind of like talking to some wealthy liberal who has just bought a house in an all-white suburb but can't quite ever mention the name of the people who he's trying to get away from.

Do not let the subtite, "How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape" suck you into reading this book. I would expect the Digital Revolution would at least mention the rise in the numbers of people who are working from home (aka telecommuters). Go to the book's index, and surprise, no entry for "telecommute(r)."

Rather than make forecasts for the how the digital revolution is reshaping U.S. geography, the author can only muster brief descriptions of present day impacts. Actually, the author burns considerable pages taking us back in time to explain past demographic changes (e.g., discussing Etruscan and Greek influences on the Roman empire). When the book manages to crank up to the present day, the next paragraph dives back to the safetly of re-capping past trends. As an example, the author addresses the growing concentration of the book and magazine publishing industry in New York in one paragraph. Rather than move the discussion to how the distribution of written material using technologies like the Internet and digital formats like PDF might impact this industry and consequently the related geography for this industry, the author falls back on the safety of history. "The predominant role has its root in history. ... Writing of the ancient Mesopotamian civilization, Lewis Mumford notes..."

Joel Kotkin's work is more one of explaining the impact of where the growing numbers of "knowledge workers" want to hang their hats. From what I can conclude, those cities that have remodeled warehouses with high-ceilings, open floor-plans, and large windows will grab the lion's share of the new soliders in the digital army. Sounds like what happened to the "South of Market" area in San Francisco. Wonder if the author has visited there since the dot com implosion? Can you say "Pets dot com?" They and several other digital ventures had closed their doors and laid-off thousands of employees. Their office space is available cheap. I think its going for less than $3 a sqare foot.

This book is more important then ever as the tech sector emerges from recent turmoil. I found it extremely insightful in describing how where we live and work has become so important after technology rendered us mobile. Truly the guidebook for an economy liberated by the internet from the confines of 'place', but that is now faced with a much greater choice of where to be.

Interesting and good book but he keeps telling us how wonderful immigrants are and how they revitalize cities. He mentions orientals and the businesses they start over and over but never about the Mexicans that are so much more common, with large families paying relatively little in taxes but putting a tremendous burden on local governments which in turn tax more and drive taxpayers to less "diverse" jurisdictions. Just look at California, the state with the largest portion of its population foreign born. Its a financial basket case. And New York can show you two smoking holes in the ground where mighty towers once stood. I wonder what Kotkin thinks about these immigrants' contribution to the new geography?