dear all, thanks to everyone who replied to my query; your recommendations are very helpful to me. here's the summarized list: -------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------- *Greg Wise & Robert Luke suggest:* Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin Telecommunications and the City: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places (Routledge, 1996). S. Graham, ed. /The Cybercities Reader/. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. *Phil Graham* recommends Virilio, Lewis Mumford, John Armitage & Ryan Conlon *Joao Paulo Silva* points to the work of joan trullen and rafael boix on barcelona: http://www.ecap.uab.es/urban/researchers/jtrullen.htm http://www.ecap.uab.es/urban/researchers/rboix.htm where i picked two good papers: Trullén, Joan and Rafael Boix (2003) "Barcelona, policentric metropolis and network of cities" Workshop on Spatial Networks and Clusters, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, March 2003. http://www.ecap.uab.es/urban/references/2003/03002.pdf Trullén, Joan and Rafael Boix (2004) "Knowledge, networks of cities and growth in regional urban systems: theory, measurement and policy implications", 44th European Congress of the European Regional Science Association. Porto, 25-29 August 2004. http://www.ecap.uab.es/urban/references/2004/04001.pdf *Ellis Godard* says: William J. Mitchell City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn The MIT Press; (August 1, 1996) *Wafa AL-Ghatam* sends a wonderful bibliography: A series of papers by Bill Hillier: Bill Hillier et al., 1987, 1989; Bill Hillier et al., 1993; Bill Hillier, 1996b; , 1997; Bill Hillier, 1999; Bill Hillier, 2001 ... and further material: Hillier B, 1999, "Centrality as a process: accounting for attraction inequalities in deformed grids," Space Syntax - Second International Symposium Proceedings 1: 03 Hillier, B., 1996, Space is the Machine, Cambridge, and Cambridge University Press Hillier, B., 2001, 2003, “A theory of the city as object”, Urban Design International, 2003, Also Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium in Space Syntax, Atlanta, 2001, Carter, H. 1998 An Introduction to Urban Historical Geography Bird, J. 1977 Centrality and Cities. London In a related discussion on SpaceSyntax *Drew Dara-Abrams* found noteworthy: Robert M. Fogelson. (2003). "Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950." Yale and Daniel R. Montello, Michael F. Goodchild, Jonathon Gottsegen, and Peter Fohl. (2003) "Where's downtown?: Behavioral methods for determining referents of vague spatial queries." Spatial Cognition and Computation, 3, 185-204. <http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~montello/pubs/downtown.pdf> another paper *Joao Paulo Silva* recommended to me: MARCO BONTJE From suburbia to post-suburbia in the Netherlands: Potentials and threats for sustainable regional development Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 19: 25–47, 2004. freely available papers i found: Glaeser, Edward L., Kolko, Jed and Saiz, Albert, "Consumer City" (June 2000). Harvard Institute of Economics Research Paper No. 1901. http://ssrn.com/abstract=237462 Südekum, Jens, "Concentration and Specialisation Trends in Germany Since Reunification" (July 2004). HWWA Discussion Paper No. 285. http://ssrn.com/abstract=576902 Debrezion, Ghebreegziabiher, Pels, Eric A.J.H. and Rietveld , Piet, "The Effects of Railway Investments in a Polycentric City" (April 2004). Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper No. TI 04-089/3. http://ssrn.com/abstract=578821 Junius, Karsten, "The Determinants of Urban Concentration" . http://ssrn.com/abstract=42640 -------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------- that's it so far. please excuse my own emphasis on working papers & freely available publications; my university's access to scientific journals is, erm, limited... regards, max doelling