The cities and the regions of the world are being transformed under the combined impact of a restructuring of the capitalist system and a technological revolution. This is the thesis of this book, now in paperback. Castells not only brings together an impressive array of evidence to support it but puts forward a new body of theory to explain it. He analyzes the interaction between information technology, economic restructuring and socio-spatial change through the empirical observation of contemporary national, urban and regional processes in the capitalist world, with emphasis on the United States. The author summarizes a very wide range of evidence of urban and regional development, and isolates the causes and consequences of the processes and trends that may be observed.
Manuel Castells is Professor of Communication and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, as well as Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, Research Professor at the Open University of Catalonia, and Marvin and Joanne Grossman Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at MIT. He is the author of, among other books, the three-volume work The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture.