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How Hyperconnected Cities Are Taking Over the World
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- powera 11y agoI feel like this is at least the third article that's showed up here recently making the claim that "cities are more important than countries for economic development" with no real argument behind it.
- mwilcox 11y agoIt's all based on the same book (Connectography). I highly recommend instead reading The Stack that just came out from MIT Press, which gives a much deeper analysis on the relationship between cities, software and geopolitics: http://thestack.org http://thestack.org
- natrius 11y agoThis is the book I didn't know I was looking for. Thanks.
- mwilcox 11y agoEthereum gets a mention :-)
- toyg 11y agoHardcover: £25.99 Kindle: £23.99 Does it really cost £2.00 to print a hardcover and ship it across the Atlantic, or is MITPress taking the metaphorical mickey?
- m-i-l 11y agoThere was a big discussion about the relative price of eBooks on HN recently at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11207209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11207209 . Points include (i) big publishing houses trying to prevent discounting of eBooks, and (ii) physical production not being the main cost of books.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- SixSigma 11y agoDo you really value books based on the price of wood pulp & the cost of shipping ?
- ghaff 11y ago>Does it really cost £2.00 to print a hardcover and ship it across the Atlantic That's actually probably pretty close to correct. Not defending the Kindle pricing but printing and distribution of physical books is a lot cheaper than many assume it is.
- wastedhours 11y agoeBooks and physical books are taxed differently in the UK, so the prices will be much closer together.
- miraj 11y agoThanks. This looks like a good read!
- dredmorbius 11y agoFor an earlier take, Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations. https://www.worldcat.org/title/cities-and-the-wealth-of-nations-principles-of-economic-life/oclc/10207383&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/cities-and-the-wealth-of-nati...
- basicplus2 11y agolooking at the pictorial map representative and suggestive of "hyperconnected cities" looks rather like trade routes.. which of course have been around for milenia
- notahacker 11y agoAnd its evidence for the breaking down borders of nation states is pretty scant too. A big map showing oil pipelines isn't really much evidence for Eurasia being a "seamless megacontinent" when communication takes place via telephone/internet and transport by air, and contrary to the argument put forward I'm a lot "closer" to Sydney or San Francisco than I am to Beijing, Dubai or Kinshasa when it comes to integration of culture, economies and flow of actual people. Relatively speaking, it's less of a "megacontinent" than when my ancestors could obtain produce traded by Silk Road caravans but didn't realise the Americas or Australia actually existed.
- chiph 11y agoThe I-85 corridor from Atlanta to Greensboro has been known to be a hub for a while. But like the article says, it's hampered by poor road quality.
- restalis 11y agoConnected people always existed. Maybe they connect nowadays more than they did before (but there is a biological limit to that, nevertheless), maybe they connect over greater distances than they did before given the technological means, but they were and are a minority (even if a loud one). The bulk of the populace are not like that. The bulk of the populace connect and live in a physically delimited place. Yes, you give them cars and make it easier with other forms of transportation, enlarging those limits, but that only produce results when it couples with an internal drive like a desire to travel, which again has its limits. Place proximity still holds a great weight in shaping human relations on a very broad level and that is a fact given by our human nature. "Geography is destiny" is here to stay, and so are all the local things that affect most of us.
- heykjo 11y ago"global strategist and world traveler" - that so totally qualifies him to bloviate!
- pessimizer 11y agoThey must be looking for a replacement for Thomas Friedman. Needs more incomprehensible metaphors, you can't just repeat yourself into credibility.