For example, notes Mitchell, we have probably seen the last newspaper building erected. On one hand, the number of major newspapers has been shrinking for the last 50 or so years, due, in part, to television and the costs of running a large-circulation paper. On the other hand, because information can be stored in infinitely smaller spaces than imagined just a few decades ago, large office complexes become obsolete. Furthermore, electronic publishing utterly changes distribution systems. Ditto for universities, libraries, museums, hospitals and prisons.
Computer networks become as fundamental to urban life as street systems.
Memory and screen space become valuable, sought-after sorts of real estate. Much of the economic, social, political, and cultural action shifts into cyberspace. As a result, familiar urban design issues are up for radical reformation. As welcome and necessary as is Mitchell's dispassionate prose, one occasionally hopes for a little fire, since what he outlines is nothing less than complete social dislocation for large segments of the population. No one in politics is talking about this.