Globalisation and technological innovation have changed the way people, goods, and information move through and about cities. To remain, or become, economically and environmentally sustainable, cities and their regions must adapt to these changes by creating cutting-edge infrastructures that integrate advanced technologies, communications, and multiple modes of transportation. The book defines cutting-edge infrastructures, details their importance to cities and their regions, and addresses the obstacles to creating those infrastructures.

This book explores all the issues behind the creation of new infrastructures and examines the effects they will have on the shape of the cities in the twenty-first century.

Much of the world's economic activity takes place in between cities and nations - the geographical containers that we have taken for granted for hundreds of years now. In this book Nicholas Phelps provides a guide to this uncharted territory within urban and economic geography. He highlights the importance of intermediary actors and processes in shaping this economy in between. From the airports, shopping malls, and office parks that have sprung up on the road between cities, to work done on the move in cars and trains, to the decisions made by internationally mobile networks of experts in conferences and negotiations. The geography of the economy in between is revealed as one involving four recurring and coexisting economic geographical formations - the agglomeration, the enclave, the networks, and the arena. Phelps sets out a multidisciplinary perspective and agenda on the question of the how, why, and where much contemporary economic activity takes place.

This book provides an up-to-date account of the technologies, organizations and dynamics which constitute the digital economy, and assesses the impacts they have on regions and communities.