World digital cities: Beyond heterogeneity

This paper reviews worldwide activities on regional information spaces. In the US and Canada, a large number of community networks appeared in the early 1990s. As a platform for community networks, information spaces using the city metaphor are being developed worldwide. In Europe, more than one hundred digital cities have been tried. Asian countries are actively adopting the latest information technologies for city informatization. All of the above are independent activities, and thus their goals, services, and organizations differ. In parallel, local commercial portals provided by global companies are becoming very common in major cities. Unlike regional community networks and digital cities, to increase the efficiency of gathering and maintaining local information in a large number of cities, the companies often provide uniform platforms to develop local sites. As a result, local portals look homogeneous though the information is always particular to each city. Regional community networks and digital cities must accept that they are in competition with global companies. However, it does not mean that the homogeneous platforms will govern the heterogeneous activities. We observe that heterogeneity of the regional information spaces is also increasing just as local commercial portals.