Networks in Cities, Cities in Networks: Territory and Globalisation Intertwined in Telecommunications Infrastructure Development in Europe

Abstract

There appears to be substantial convergence in the type and extent of telecommunications networks being deployed between and in major European cities to serve increasing numbers of corporate clients, thus forming one of the principal material elements in the development of a world city network. Through a broad theoretical discussion and an empirical exploration of the interurban and intraurban network development of one of the major telecommunications providers in Europe, however, it is shown how the planning, construction and expansion of these infrastructures remain crucially shaped by a variety of historical, regulatory, economic, physical and organisational constraints and compulsions which are specific to individual cities. It is argued that the mutually constitutive nature of economic and technological connectivities suggests, therefore, that the development of a world city network continues to have an important dimension of territorial fixity, reflecting the multiscalar entanglement of territory and globalisation that forms the world cities of today.