Where There Is
Sometimes we accept common ideas without challenge or thought and use them as basic information to make decisions in our daily lives. When the world was thought to be flat, we didn’t go near the edge. When the trucking industry couldn’t possibly be a threat to trains, railroads advocated the construction of highways. And when no one would read news online, newspapers ignored the internet. Today, without considering the increasing land value in New York and San Francisco, most people accept that the internet, e-commerce and tele-working will make location irrelevant. But if that turns out to be true, then the continuing trend toward urbanism must mean that while people don’t have to live in cities, to adapt a phrase from Gertrude Stein, they must want to be where a there is.
Still, given a computer and an internet connection a few less social creatures will attempt to take advantage of the modern irrelevance of place and move to far-away locales.
Take Carol Goves, a copy editor and layout artist who moved from the Bay Area to rural Bieber, California. There may be lots of open space in Bieber, but there is no local dial-up number for AOL. That may not be enough reason to prefer the increasingly congested city when the lower cost of housing in Bieber can more than make up for a few calls to Sacramento. And with suburban sprawl and internet servers spread ever outward, the citizens and new residents in Bieber can reasonably assume there’s just no there there yet. Once there is an AOL server in Bieber, Groves can get online and order tax-free cigarettes from South Carolina without incurring charges from the telephone company. What need can there be to stay in town?
It seems like a logical conclusion, but...the grocery store is not nearly as close, and it's doubtful that home delivery of pizza or groceries will ever be available in remote areas. That’s because perishable goods can’t be mailed from the farm to the consumer. More, in order for such companies as Web Van to be profitable, groceries need to be shipped to a central warehouse that’s located within a short drive of many consumers. That’s much easier to do in San Francisco than Bieber.
But so what? A weekly drive to a grocery store a few miles away isn’t that big of a deal. Of course, groceries are something everyone buys all the time. What about things like refrigerators, autos and the kitchen sink, big, difficult-to-ship items that aren't bought all that frequently. They will be more expensive in remote areas because of the additional shipping costs.
Even the additional cost of less frequently purchased items is unlikely to make up for the higher cost of living in an urban area. But while businesses like Carol’s can afford the luxury of working at home, other occupations, such as the manufacture of all the goods being purchased online, don’t afford the same luxury, and never will. While some employees or contractors may spread out, even in the services industry others will consolidate.
Take banks that used to have neighborhood branches before everyone started packing up and moving to Bieber. While the bank's customers may be banking at home on the internet, its employees at the other end of the telephone or cable wire have been consolidated into a central office. Other industries like insurance will likely follow a similar path. The more people shop for and purchase policies online, the less need there is for insurance agents and customer service representatives to be scattered throughout the suburbs. Insurance companies can take advantage of technology and save money by closing smaller offices and centralizing services.
While a few employees are able to tele-work from Bieber, even more move closer in or commute.
Carol works independently without relying on outside services beyond the post office and office supply store, but a manufacturer or other enterprise must consider access to advertising agencies, banks, accountants, consultants, transportation, and, most important, employees. Finding the outside services and talented and trained workers is considerably more difficult in Bieber than New York. While some functions of a company may be able to be sent to the outlands, others will need to stay where services, materials, and knowledge are available. While the internet may make it so knowledge and workers are more accessible from anywhere, it remains true that ideas and information are most easily exchanged where there are the fewest barriers between the sender and receiver.
Undeterred by the reluctance of even technology companies to disperse away from Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley, supporters of the current paradigm may conclude that Carol Groves is only the first line of particles spinning out of control away from the urban nucleus. Technology is always developing and such we only see the seeds of trees. From the Catholic Church to the Chicago Board of Trade, everything one day could be virtual...if only we were virtual. "This is madness," news anchor Harold Beale ranted in the 1970s movie network. "The television is not real, you are real." It’s a message that spans several decades and which may soon put our belief in the power of technology to make place irrelevant into perspective.
In the end it's not manufacturing or a system of distributing goods that make the dispersion of civilization unlikely. Since the industrial revolution, rural folks have been the first to embrace new gadgets from the mail-order catalog to the auto to the radio and the computer. Why? Because they provided connections to the city, to culture and people. The reason for being in or near a city, any city--wherever there is a there there--will be important is because at the end of the virtual day, there has to be somewhere to go, something to do, and someone to do it with. The cows don’t talk too much.
Eric Miller is editor of The New Colonist.
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