According to Fishman, the old day suburbia has evolved over the years, and still continues to develop into a modern day technoburbia. Fishman comes up with two words to describe this new reality, “technoburb” and “techno-city”. He describes a techno burb as peripheral zones, as big as counties, and which have emerged as potential socio-economic units, spread along highway corridors, more like shopping malls. He further describes a techno-city as a metropolitan area that has been transformed as a result of the development of a technoburb. This means that most of the economic activities no longer belong in the core city, and have been spread out through the city.
In his view, the new suburbia or technoburb does not represent the suburbanization of the United States. He does not agree with Wright and Wells, accusing the new craze as consisting of unplanned cities that lack proper structuring and planning. This has, in turn, led to a lot of land wastage. He also describes it as highly dependent on a good road system, which is most often not reflected in reality. The technoburbs lack proper boundaries, with some having overlapping or different political jurisdictions, making regional planning impossible.
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Wells argued that the concentration of people and big companies would soon be reversed and duly, would move to the suburbs. He supported this argument with the development of good road and communication networks. Wells also predicted modern urban areas to be a series of villages and factories, connected by a good, high speed-railway network, an idea also supported by Frank Write through his broadacre city plan. Fishman, however, disagrees with both, arguing that with the rise of the Technoburb, much of the urban richness has been lost. He further argues that decentralization, as per the suggestion in the Broadacre plan, results in cultural disaster.
“ While the rich and diverse architectural heritage of the cities decays, the Technoburb has been built up as a standardised and simplified sprawl, consuming time and space, destroying the natural landscape” (Fishman, 1987, p.75)., Frank Write was of the idea that superhighways opened up a wide range of opportunities, in that their interceptions would open up market centers and shopping centers for both commodity and cultural exchange, small schools, and churches. He believed that highways create a series of business centers instead of one core central business district, hence leading to the extinction of the old urban areas. Ebenezer Howard came up with the garden city utopia, a combination of the traditional countryside with the traditional towns. He envisioned self-sufficient towns, where one doesn’t have to travel far for work, and everything is available in one town. Fishman also thinks that the decentralization of cities has had some negative impact on our culture and environment. The first one being, a cultural disaster which he attributes to the growth of technoburbs, which have destroyed heritage and the old architecture. Secondly, they are disadvantageous to the poor as they are not able to share in the job and housing opportunities in the techno burbs.
Fishman believes that the big cities are here to stay, despite the fact that numerous multinationals and technology companies have shifted base to the Silicon Valley. He argues that most of these large organizations still seek to be centrally established in terms of their location, in order to prove their importance in the society. Government institutions are also centrally located which make them attract supporting services in the central location such as advertising firms, law firms, entertainment joints, media agencies, publications and many more, making the central business district idea more viable in the long run.
