While Allegheny County and Pittsburgh consider merging services and complete governments, I would like to share some ideas on what a city is and what.... While Allegheny County and Pittsburgh consider merging services and complete governments, I would like to share some ideas on what a city is and what its purpose is in the 21st Century. While many suburbs and county residents shudder at the idea of becoming part of the city, attempting to exist without the city would be a far worse fate, and in the long-term an impossibility.

While it is true that technology has improved the efficiency in transmitting information, allowing development patterns to disperse into suburbs, the importance of being in close proximity to the source of the knowledge is more important than ever. Silicon Valley is a geographic place. It is real rather than virtual. An increasing number of people live in metropolitan areas, including Silicon Valley. Likewise most cities, including Pittsburgh are a source of knowledge and technology.

Perhaps even more important is the capacity for interaction and exchange between people and organizations and the accessibility of these organizations to more limited people, groups and institutions of a city. Which brings us to the importance of a physical, traditional central setting of a city.

The American development patterns which have in recent times disregarded the central city in favor of office parks, suburban enclaves and "edge cities," may not be able to compete as well in a global society as the more suited London, Berlin and Hong Kong. The extent to which knowledge translates into power and serves to perpetuate itself is somewhat dependent on the ability of the information to be useful and available to all segments of the population. This necessitates the center-city as a dense urban area which maximizes interaction--exchange of information.

Regardless of technology, the easiest and most efficient way to transfer goods and information is to be in the same place. Technology sometimes serves to limit interactions that would occur in a "bricks and mortar" setting. While business can and is being conducted without real locations, development of new ideas and technologies is dependent on physical locations.

Suburban developments exist "independently" at least as far as government services are concerned in the United States primarily through a false assumption that urban areas have become wealth draining, costly relics. But if the traditional center-city environment is not essential to the existence of suburban centers, why are they always located within easy commuting distance of the city?

Suburbs are dependent on the research and educational centers, not to mention the entertainment, arts and business centers yet exist without providing adequate financial support of such institutions located in a separate government area. This system of many governments, one region limits the economic strength and cultural influence of a region.

The division that exists in American "Metropolitan Areas" between the suburbs and traditional city in terms of wealth and access to wealth will be detrimental to the ability to compete in a global environment. The populations in these regions are inextricably linked to a common future in a world economy, and a region bent on separating the suburban and urban futures will not be able to create or maintain the quality of life essential to attracting and holding the most important commodity in a knowledge- based society, talented people.

Neil R. Pierce expressed in his 1993 book Citistates that:

"Political boundaries do not seal off problems of pollution, solid waste disposal, transportation, schools, inadequate infrastructure. Advertise a suburb by itself and you may be able to offer an above-average labor force and housing stock, but probably fewer educational centers and no really significant concentrations of financial and legal services. Advertise a center city alone and you may talk of great centralized facilities but end up exposing to your catch conditions of severe poverty and lack of a skilled labor force."

If knowledge is the most important commodity in the global society, then the ability to educate, attract and hold people will be the most important asset an emerging world-city can work to create. The only effective way to do that is to form a unified regional government or a city that spans to the edges of economic rather than political borders. High tech workers and people who start businesses and develop technology are young, single, and not content to live in the isolation offered by the suburbs. Further, they are educated and desirous of cultural facilities, theaters and libraries and most importantly the potential to interact with others like themselves.

Only the traditional city can offer these amenities. Pierce said, "Once upon a time, quality of life may have been thought of solely as an aesthetic or social issue. No more. Today it is a critical economic factor profoundly affecting the future prospects of a city-state."