I pursued this research topic as a part of my Master of Architecture (Urbanism) program. This idea was individually driven, under the guidance of an amazing professor and urbanist, Prof. John Stallmeyer, at the U of I. It is a 12000 word paper, with research spanning over 8 months, starting in August 2019. However, I started writing the paper only in February 2020.

The Information age, similar to the Industrial age before this, and many more before that, profoundly affects our cities and urban life. Cities are centers of production and consumption, of goods, resources, and now information. Information revolution affects this process of production and consumption in many ways, and extensively. Internet and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have extensively increased the rate of the 'space-time compression' which we experience in our daily lives. Working for a US based tech giant, sitting half way across the world in India is no longer a pipe dream. Community engagement has dramatically changed its form and meaning. These communities are no longer bound by geographical, ethnic, regional, or religious markers, but now transcend physical distances and are based on similarities of ideas, interests, likes, and dislikes. Such exponential technological growth and dramatic change in the way we engage with our lives - of work, of leisure, and of recreation, will certainly have a long-term, deep rooted impact on our cities. Ultimately, what are cities, if not the reflection of the cultural, social, and technological achievements and aspirations a civilization. Tele-commuting and Tele-consuming, especially during these delicate times of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been progressing fast to surpass the conventional modes of production and communication. Arguably, tele-commuting fails when we consider material production like processed goods, construction, etc., but if you see the current trends of the increase in number of people involved in the service industry, suitable for tele-commuting, and consider factory and construction activity automation rates, the future might look very different. I am not saying the future will have no human interface in the manufacturing process, but the dominance of the service industry might be significant.

These abilities of remote access can motivate people to move away from the congested centers of our metropolitan cities and live, and work from, wherever they might deem fit. This will lead to decongestion and decentralization of power and resources. New building types like the data centers will become prime facilitators of this migration away from the city. Speculating and formalizing this reverse migration will have many positive social and environmental impacts. This new form of decentralized, informational urbanism will have satellite settlements which will be connected not only through physical highways, but informational superhighways also. Human need to connect with others of their kind has driven them to flock together, but these new forms of connectivity, through ICTs, have freed the human race from the constraints of geographical proximity, and will open many new unexplored avenues, as it continues to grow and evolve.

Moving forward, we need to move past a theoretical model of this new city to understanding the ground realities, and developing a viable framework to analyze which neighborhoods, towns, cities, regions, and countries are best suited to receive, and benefit from such an urban development. India, with its population and a close nexus of densely populated centers seem to be in an appropriate position. However, the endemic lack of infrastructure and inequitable resource distribution stand in the way of this transformation.

Unreferenced sources of inspiration-

Splintering Urbanism, by Simon Marvin and Steve Graham
Linked: The New Science of Networks, by Albert-László Barabási
The Condition of Postmodernity, by David Harvey
Pattern Language, by Christoper Alexander

Official Bibliography -

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Stallmeyer, J. C. (2011). Building Bangalore: Architecture and urban transfor