Info Age Evolution.(Review)

Info Age Evolution Joel Kotkin, The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape. Random House, 299 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10171.

The dispersal of manufacturing and the rise of the Internet and telecommuting puts the future of big cities in question. Kotkin, a contributing writer to TAE, suggests "communities can only survive and prosper by becoming something more than soulless zip codes of brick and glass interconnected by fiber-optic cables" He believes new types of communities are slowly evolving. Among them:

* "Nerdistans." Smart people who work for computer-centered enterprises tend to be anti-hierarchical free spirits with little leisure time. They tend to like working in campus-like office complexes easily reached by boulevards which avoid urban blight. As engineers, they like cities that are orderly and perhaps a little bland, preferably located near large universities with strong science departments; for example, Irvine, California; Austin, Texas; and the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina.

* "Valhallas." The wealthy often dream of fleeing the city for the country. But not all parts of rural America will benefit equally from anti-urban impulses. Wealth creators tend to move to places with exciting, vibrant landscapes, such as country towns in New England, the foothills of western North Carolina, and the valleys and foothills near the great Western mountain ranges. Less well-off ...