How Free Wi-Fi Could Change The City

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is planning to provide free wireless access across the city.

"What would it mean as an urban phenomenon, for the way we experience the city and interact with one another? [It could] expand the public sphere, turning every corner park and sidewalk bench into a possible home for the kind of coffeehouse culture that has always been a defining feature of urban life.

A more likely effect, frankly, is a noticeable increase in the odd sort of public, shared alienation already on display in cafes everywhere, with people packed in next to one another but staring into their own individual screens."

"A subway to the sea qualifies as a bold initiative. A wireless plan that creates significant benefits for a private-sector company is something else - something more symbolic of the way cities make and remake themselves now. [It] weaves strands of public and private benefit (and risk) in a way that makes them almost impossible to untangle...free wireless service doesn't mean a whole lot if you can't afford a laptop...That sounds quite a bit like the digital equivalent of a highway system split between private toll roads and sluggish public freeways. And it raises the question of how precisely to measure civic progress as nearly every corner of city life undergoes commercialization. If you put a drinking fountain on every corner but allow a private company to charge for each sip, even if it's only a few pennies, can you really make a case that you're improving access to clean water?"