Urbanization, but also suburbanization, is enhanced by an increase
in transportation and communication technologies which have tradition-
ally enabled the maintenance of geographic association. As I have argued
elsewhere (Holmes, 2001: 31), ‘... as cities grow in their scale and abstract-
ness, the older technologies of urban connection, the motor car, the televi-
sion, the telephone, can become inadequate for the maintenance of a daily
cycle of connection’. Because of this, new forms of communicative net-
works such as the Internet and mobile telephony are lauded for their
perceived speed and efficiency in being able to replace the relatively cum-
bersome networks of old. Alternatively, there is also a tendency to abandon
urban networks altogether, as they become replaced by the security village,
the gated community, within which the home becomes the ultimate refuge.
The retreat to ever-shrinking spaces of urban privacy – the home, the graph-
ics of the personal computer, the intimacy of the SMS keypad – leads to ever
greater ‘personalization’. This in turn opens up markets for the commodifi-
cation of the means to ever greater control over immediate environments –
be this with the car, the home cinema or electronic assistance that is carried
on the body.
The more individuals find connection to an ‘outside’ on the basis of
personalized domestic electronic refuges, the less need there is for the
main street or the agora, and for public space in general. What public space
remains tends to itself be characterized by very enclosed and privately
controlled environments.
Both the physical and the electronic urban architectures converge
around the principle of continuous subdivision. Such subdivision is
endless in its scale, as the connectivity that these network spaces make
possible enables ever-expanding forms of urbanization – cities on ever
greater scales. Within these scales, each domestic or individual unit is sep-
arated and united at the same time. The relationship is dialectical: the
more the individual cell is able to be integrated via a centralized, decen-
tralized or distributed network, the less dependence there is on proximity
to or physical immediacy with others. Conversely, the less individuals
get to know their neighbours, the more important it is to be tuned in or
logged on to one of these networks.
These relations of synthesis through segregation are already antici-
pated in Debord’s account of the social bond via the image and of Adorno
and Horkheimer’s depiction of the culture industry, which is further dis-
cussed in the next chapter. However, what they do not analyse is the way
in which media forms coalesce with other urban means of connection.
For example, an important dominating virtual space is the contem-
porary freeway. The technical as well as metaphorical links between the
motor vehicle superhighway and the so-called information superhighway
are quite profound (see Jones, 1995: 10–11). Freeways and electronic media
are deeply embedded in the suburbanization process as well as making
possible ever greater separation between workplace and home and leisure
zones – such as the mega shopping malls.68 COMMUNICATION THEORYHolmes-03.qxd 2/15/2005 10:31 AM Page 68