President Obama's Broadband Legacy

[Commentary] We know the White House's thoughts on network neutrality and President Barack Obama's message to the Federal Communications Commission that the Internet is something everyone needs to survive in the new economy. But less understood is the President's thinking about the rise of cities, or, more precisely, metropolitan regions and region states, and the importance of broadband in spurring economic development.

It is in the city and region that President Obama sees hope for the nation's future, and it's broadband that he sees as a vital first step toward a whole new economy based not on manufacturing or even service provision but on knowledge or, more precisely, creativity and innovation. Now, for the first time in years, the door is open for cities everywhere to take the lead in building a broadband infrastructure that can be one of the fastest, cheapest Internet services imaginable. We have learned a great deal about the challenges we face in a global "knowledge economy," one based not on the production of goods and services or agriculture. Although these basic industries continue, the new economy relies on the production, use, and transfer of information and knowledge. The new economy -- the global knowledge economy -- needs the new infrastructure. It needs broadband. These are among the reasons that President Obama has urged America to rethink the vital role of the cities, of the new metropolitan cities, to spearhead the nation's plans for economic redevelopment.

[John Eger is the Director of the Creative Economy Initiative at San Diego State University]