Splintering Urbanism presents a path-breaking analysis of the nature of the urban condition at the start of the new millennium. Adopting a global and interdisciplinary perspective, it reveals how new technologies and increasingly privatised systems of infrastructure provision - telecommunications, highways, urban streets, energy and water - are supporting the splintering of metropolitan areas across the world. The result is a new 'socio-technical' way of understanding contemporary urban change, which brings together discussions about: * globalisation and the city * the urban and social effects of new technology * urban, architectural and social theory * social polarisation, marginalisation and democratisation * infrastructure, architecture and the built environment * developed, developing and post-communist cities.

Splintering Urbanism brings together a broad range of international case studies, boxed examples, over 100 illustrations and a comprehensive glossary. These take the reader on global journeys encompassing finance districts in Tokyo and New York; e-commerce spaces in Jamaica and northern England; new media enclaves in San Francisco and London; logistics and airport cities in Asia and the United States; malls in Atlanta and Singapore; gated communities in Istanbul, Sao Paulo, Mumbai and Johannesburg; new highway spaces in Melbourne, Manila and Los Angeles; and network ghettoes in the United States, the United Kingdom and the developing world.