Geographies of the United States in the Year 2004* Elvin K. Wyly The University of British Columbia The change was based in science. There was ‘‘Geography,’’ a magisterial essay I first savored a continuing interplay between speculation and as an undergraduate in the 1980s, I am saddened empirical investigation. The research was by the tone of his recent editorials on the state broadly based and multidisciplinary. There of the field (e.g., Berry 2001). Once in the was a continuing concern to keep one foot in vanguard of a revolution, Berry seems to have theory and the other in practice. These are forgotten that revolutionaries must live with qualities that I still value, despite the ascendancy of armchair socialism in the 1980s and its the dialectical processes they set in motion. A replacement by a combination of environmental new generation is working hard toward the con- activism and dreamtime postmodernism in ditions of possibility seen by Berry in ‘‘The the 1990s as the reds became green and the Geography,’’ but the work of these new scholars dialecticians switched from Marx to Foucault. is too often ignored amidst the ongoing wave — Berry 2001, 561 of Reflections on the Nature of quantitative revolution geography. To comment upon the sacred is never easy, and the charge of sacrilege is always imminent. [T]he tendency and temptation to look politely Berry’s Contribution the other way is strong. But Reflections always require a mirror, and to ignore the mirror is the ‘‘The Geography’’ offered a panoramic view equivalent of clapping with one hand to produce of midcentury patterns and processes in the wind but no sound. nation’s economic and spatial structure, and it — Gould 1991, 328 marshaled Berry’s(1964) ‘‘cities as systems with- in systems of cities’’ framework to anticipate a radically new spatial structure, as telecommu- rian J. L. Berry has been called geography’s nications technologies accelerated time-space B‘‘master weaver,’’ and he remained one of compression to alter the raison d’eˆtre of the field’s most heavily cited authorities well regional economies. A reader in 2004 is taken into the 1980s. ‘‘The Geography of the United on a fascinating tour of Toffleresque anticipa- States in the Year 2000’’ (Berry 1970; hereafter tions: ‘‘We are on the verge of yet another ‘‘The Geography’’) was penned when he was fundamental transformation of American so- the single most frequently cited geographer. The ciety’’; ‘‘Television,I think, is the first of a series article presented a valuable synthesis of the pro- of revolutionary electronic innovations that will cesses creating twentieth-century regional eco- affect America in the years to come’’; ‘‘The nomic and urban geographies and sketched revolutionary aspect of electronic environments a prescient mental map of today’s American is not that they reduce the frictions in moving landscapes. ‘‘The Geography’’ is a classic in goods and people, but that they move the human geography, in every sense of the word. experience itself to the human nervous system’’ But authors are not always the best ambassadors (Berry 1970, 43, 46, 49). Berry sought new ideas for their own work. After rereading Berry’s to chart the emergence of a new geography, and * I am deeply grateful to Brian Berry for the opportunity to engage with his work, and to Daniel Sui for organizing this valuable forum. I also wish to thank John Adams, Cheryl Gowar, Dan Hammel, Bob Lake, Robin Leichenko, the editor, and four anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and feedback on earlier versions. I am to blame for all deficiencies. This is a shortened version of comments delivered at the 2002 AAG meeting, and space limitations required the omission of several sections and nearly all the references. Please send a note to [email protected] if you would like to see the extended version. The Professional Geographer, 56(1) 2004, pages 91–95 r Copyright 2004 by Association of American Geographers. Initial submission, October 2002; revised submission, March 2003; final acceptance, May 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U.K. 92 Volume 56, Number 1, February 2004 found them in the metaphors of inversion sen. Mapping regional demographic patterns and telemobility. Berry predicted the reversal of is hazardous when divorced from the context prevailing midcentury spatial divisions—cen- of accelerated immigration, seasonal migratory ter/edge, core/periphery, Snow Belt/Sun Belt— labor circuits, and transnational identities among and the emergence of an intricate, dispersed the jet-set capitalist elite, as well as the down- society of telemobility, no longer constrained graded working classes. Mapping firms or sec- by the mechanical geographical concepts of tors overlooks the spatial, temporal, and cost distance-decay, gravity models, and heartland- complexities of commodity chains spread across hinterland. dozens of production sites, and in any event it is becoming quite difficult to understand precisely Doing Geography in 2004 where certain types of services are produced and consumed. Mapping daily urban systems with Three decades have been kind to many of these standard commuting data misses the small cadre predictions. But looking back at prior pre- of global-city elite who spend a good portion dictions, interesting as it may be, tells us little of their week aloft in a first-class seat hopping about our craft today and how it might help us between New York and London, or Tokyo understand future geographies. Can we repli- and Los Angeles, and the much larger portion cate ‘‘The Geography’’ today? I do not think so. of the workforce who spend their days on the Epistemological consensus is not what it used road, working at home, or shuttling among to be, and even if we were to find a ground for constantly-shifting work sites. common search, problems remain. Inversion A second shift has altered the data systems and telemobility have turned out to be relatively used to measure and monitor the geography simple metaphors, unsuited to the complexities of the United States. This change involves ele- of social, spatial, and temporal change. Clear- ments of policy and ideology as well as the tech- cut dichotomies of core/periphery and physical/ nical details of databases. Repeated rounds of virtual environments were never anything more government devolution, beginning with Nixon’s than simplifications of the processes of un- ‘‘New Federalism’’ in 1969 and picked up again even development and the social production of by Reagan and Clinton, meshed with aggressive space, place, and scale. And these processes have attempts to privatize a broad array of pub- changed in important ways. lic-sector functions. Anyone concerned with The first shift is now all too familiar. The the fate of cities must surely feel wistful when uneven geographical developments of global- reading that ‘‘One of the most pressing public ization have swept aside many of the economic debates in the United States today concerns the and spatial arrangements of the middle decades development of a national urban growth policy’’ of the twentieth century. Oil-shock recessions (Berry 1970, 22). For years, ‘‘national urban and the collapse of the Bretton Woods ex- policy’’ has simply meant an enforced axiom change-rate regime in the 1970s hammered the that the market decides, and this commitment final nails into the coffin of the postwar golden has gone hand-in-hand with changes in the poli- age, a period now properly understood as an tics of information. Bipartisan commitments to historical aberration rather than the normal deregulation and devolution in successive Con- state of affairs. The comparatively simple spatial gresses and presidential administrations has led organization of the golden age, assuming it was to a localization and privatization of regulatory not also an illusion, disappeared as well. Berry tasks. At the same time, public information has wrote ‘‘The Geography’’ during one of the rare become increasingly privatized through active interludes when it was actually possible to de- and passive means. scribe the geography of the United States by Perhaps none of this is genuinely new; the analyzing the place itself. Globalized uneven Census Bureau, after all, has been part of development has accelerated the production the Department of Commerce for good reason. of new scales of political-economic relations, Yet some things do seem different now, casting and the implications span the range from the Berry’s maps and data analyses in a very differ- broadly theoretical to the day-to-day details ent light when viewed from the vantage point of empirical analysis. Euclidian geography fails of 2004. It is significant, I think, that Berry us now, regardless of which indicator is cho- introduced the telemobility metaphor with a Geographies of the United States in the Year 2004 93 quote from a Kaiser Company brochure, rather of America’s daily urban systems—the auto- than, say, a passage from Marshal McLuhan. mobile and the detached single-family home— Underneath Berry’s (1970) deceptively clean constantly remake urban space in ways that maps of color-television market penetration, lubricate capitalist accumulation and shape the behind today’s maps of Internet activity, is a genre de vie of workers and families. Privatiza- landscape bloodied by battles over data, pri- tion and devolution of social welfare functions vacy, copyright, patents, and trademarks. The of the state, alongside a simultaneous elevation maps are structured by local, national, and and centralization of investment decisions, re- international wars over intellectual property. shape regional spaces in ways that discipline Even plant life is up for grabs in property-rights locally tied workers and institutions. And the claims, giving an entirely new meaning to local state has stepped in with policing practices, simple maps such as those showing county- antihomeless ordinances, and intensified sur- level agricultural land uses.