Anthony Townsend

Anthony Townsend is a research director at the Institute for the Future (IFTF) in Palo Alto, California.

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18 years 2 months

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Full Bio

Anthony has been researching the implications of new technology on cities and public institutions for over a decade. As Research Director at the Institute for the Future (IFTF) in Palo Alto, California, Anthony's work focuses on several inter-related topics: pervasive computing, the urban environment, economics and demographics, public and nonprofit organizations, and the media industry.

Prior to joining IFTF, Anthony enjoyed a brief but productive academic career at New York University, where he directed research sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security.

Anthony is active in international futures research networks, and received a Fulbright scholarship in 2004 to study the social impacts of broadband in South Korea. He was one of the original founders of NYCwireless, a pioneer in the municipal wireless movement.

Anthony received his Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003.

McKinsey's Pitch for a More Compact Urban China

The McKinsey Global Institute has just published a major report outlining four potential scenarios for urbanization in China.The main thrust of the report is that China needs to focus less on growing its cities and more on making them efficient and productive. Given the massive levels of capital investment Chinese cities have seen over the last 20 years, it makes sense that the country's urban planners need to find ways to squeeze more capacity out of these systems. After all, as McKinsey projects, another 350 million people will need to be accommodated, some 250 million of them as rootless rural migrants.

Suburbia During the Crash

Maybe it's the rain in New York today, but I'm gloomy. So while<a href="http://www.iftf.org/node/2068"> China collapses</a>, it looks like the mobility-land use solution embodied in many of America's newer suburbs seems to be unravelling due to high oil prices. The IHT reports:

Is Baghdad Going Feral?

One of the most influential pieces of contemporary urban theory I've ever read was a short monograph by Richard Norton entitled "Feral Cities", which <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JIW/is_4_56/ai_110458726">appeared in the Naval War College Review</a> in 2003. Norton described feral cities thusly: "Imagine a great metropolis covering hundreds of square miles. Once a vital component in a national economy, this sprawling urban environment is now a vast collection of blighted buildings, an immense petri dish of both ancient and new diseases, a territory where the rule of law has long been replaced by near anarchy in which the only security available is that which is attained through brute power."

Pearl River Downturn

China's economic boom has often been compared to the West's industrialization, only running in fast-foward. IT looks as if the decline of Western industrial regions may be playing out in the China on the same accelerated time frame. BusinessWeek Asia is reporting on "<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_14/b4078078846220.htm?link_position=link1">China's Factory Blues</a>" this week on how a perfect storm of recent developments - from the decline in the US housing market to soaring commodity prices and new labor regulations - is shuttering factories in the Peal River Delta at an alarming rate.

FCC Rules for Telcos Against Landlords

It's tough to say what the impact of a decision like this is for the US market, where there are already so many obstacles to making money on the last mile.