In an age when the United Nations has declared access to the Internet a human right, and universal access to high-speed broadband is a national goal, urban areas have been largely ignored by federal policy. The cost of that neglect may well be the failure to realize the social benefits of broadband and a broadly-connected digital society.
Technology offers unparalleled advantages for innovation in urban areas - in the economy, health care, education, energy, transportation, government services, civic engagement, and more. With their density and networks of activity, cities hold the most potential for reaping the benefits of technology. But there are surprisingly substantial disparities in broadband adoption across cities. More puzzlingly, rather than promoting innovation or addressing the high cost of broadband access, the US has mostly funded expensive rural infrastructure in sparsely-populated areas.
Digital Cities tells the story of information technology use and inequality in American metropolitan areas and discusses directions for change. The authors argue that mobile-only Internet, the form used by many minorities and urban poor, is a second-class form of access, as they offer evidence that users with such limited access have dramatically lower levels of online activity and skill. Digital citizenship and full participation in economic, social and political life requires home access. Using multilevel statistical models, the authors present new data ranking broadband access and use in the nation's 50 largest cities and metropolitan areas, showing considerable variation across places. Unique, neighborhood data from Chicago examines the impact of poverty and segregation on access in a large and diverse city, and it parallels analysis of national patterns in urban, suburban and rural areas. Digital Cities demonstrate the significance of place for shaping our digital future and the need for policies that recognize the critical role of cities in addressing both social inequality and opportunity.

Donald Trump's 2016 victory shocked the world, but his appeals to the economic discontent of the white working class should not be so surprising, as stagnant wages for the many have been matched with skyrocketing incomes for the few. Though Trump received high levels of support from the white working class, once in office, the newly elected billionaire president appointed a cabinet with a net worth greater than one-third of American households combined. Furthermore, he pursued traditionally conservative tax, welfare state and regulatory policies, which are likely to make inequality worse. Nevertheless, income inequality has grown over the last few decades almost regardless of who is elected to the presidency and congress. There is a growing consensus among scholars that one of the biggest drivers of income inequality in the United States is government activity (or inactivity). Just as the New Deal and Great Society programs played a key role in leveling income distribution from the 1930s through the 1970s, federal policy since then has contributed to expanding inequality. Growing inequality bolsters the resources of the wealthy to influence policy, and it contributes to partisan polarization. Both prevent the passage of policy to address inequality, creating a continuous feedback loop of growing inequality. The authors of this book argue that it is therefore misguided to look to the federal government, as citizens have tended to do since the New Deal, to lead on economic policy to "fix" inequality. At the same time, they demonstrate that the states are already vigorously confronting this problem. In fact, as they show, periods of rapid economic change post New Deal have consistently resulted from state action, while the federal government has been stymied by the federal institutional design created through the Constitution. Even the New Deal, in many ways the model of federal policy activism, was largely borrowed from policies created in the state "laboratories of democracy" in the preceding years and decades. William Franko and Christopher Witko argue that the states that will address inequality are not necessarily those with the greatest objective inequality, but those where citizens are aware of growing inequality, where left-leaning politicians hold power, where unions are strong, and where the presence of direct democracy initiatives have influenced majoritarian political institutions. In the empirical chapters Franko and Witko examine how these factors have shaped policies that boosted incomes at the bottom (the minimum wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit) and reduce incomes at the top (with top marginal tax rates) between 1987 and 2010. The authors argue that, if history is a guide, increasingly egalitarian policies at the state level will spread to other states and, eventually, to the federal level, setting the stage for a more equitable future.

In an age when the United Nations has declared access to the Internet a human right, and universal access to high-speed broadband is a national goal, urban areas have been largely ignored by federal policy. The cost of that neglect may well be the failure to realize the social benefits of broadband and a broadly-connected digital society.
Technology offers unparalleled advantages for innovation in urban areas - in the economy, health care, education, energy, transportation, government services, civic engagement, and more. With their density and networks of activity, cities hold the most potential for reaping the benefits of technology. But there are surprisingly substantial disparities in broadband adoption across cities. More puzzlingly, rather than promoting innovation or addressing the high cost of broadband access, the US has mostly funded expensive rural infrastructure in sparsely-populated areas.
Digital Cities tells the story of information technology use and inequality in American metropolitan areas and discusses directions for change. The authors argue that mobile-only Internet, the form used by many minorities and urban poor, is a second-class form of access, as they offer evidence that users with such limited access have dramatically lower levels of online activity and skill. Digital citizenship and full participation in economic, social and political life requires home access. Using multilevel statistical models, the authors present new data ranking broadband access and use in the nation's 50 largest cities and metropolitan areas, showing considerable variation across places. Unique, neighborhood data from Chicago examines the impact of poverty and segregation on access in a large and diverse city, and it parallels analysis of national patterns in urban, suburban and rural areas. Digital Cities demonstrate the significance of place for shaping our digital future and the need for policies that recognize the critical role of cities in addressing both social inequality and opportunity.