Metropolitan Computer Services Infrastructure and Economic Development Capacity in the Information Society

This article focuses on the capacity of metropolitan areas to use information technology, based on the assumption that the combined telecommunications and computer infrastructure relies on the presence of a computer-literate population with computers as much as on phones, fiber optics, microwave, and digital switches. A computer services infrastructure is assumed robust if there is an adequate number of computer workers and sales of computer equipment and software. Neither factor has received much attention in debates about the information highway. We find that computer service workers are intensively metropolitan. Computer employment is concentrated in large metropolitan areas, but the ratio of computer workers per 1,000 employees is higher in middle-sized and smaller metropolitan areas. Computer and software sales are metropolitan, with downward filtering to smaller regions. Large metropolitan regions have advanced computer infrastructures, but middle and lower ranks of the metropolitan hierarchy are demonstrating robust computer infrastructures.