Resumen
A new kind of urbanization is emerging today, this time in the virtual world of the Internet, where millions of consumers and businesses alike congregate to engage in socioeconomic activity. There is a rise in the use of mobile devices and a pervasive Internet-based cyberinfrastructure in the form of large, complex portals as centers of business transactions, personal ambition and social activity for millions of people worldwide. The article by Lee Sproull and John Patterson focuses on Net-based social networks and communities, discussing how relationships among people living in physical cities are being altered as they increasingly depend on virtual cities for social interaction and organization, commercial activity and collaboration. The article by Donald Ferguson et al. proposes principles for designing information city infrastructures based on open standards, including Web services, making it possible for suppliers, buyers, municipalities, schools, hospitals and others to seamlessly connect to information cities and offer a range of services to participants and outsiders alike.

Resumen
Open communication standards are making possible the virtual equivalent of real city life, enabling delivery of such essential services as 911 emergency calls, traffic and health alerts, and market and medical information in real or near real time. This article explores the underlying technology frameworks and open standards needed to build the foundations for these and other information cities. An information city is a large Internet-based site offering a range of online services, including access to social environments, community services, municipal information and e-commerce to its infohabitants. Its boundaries are potentially unlimited, scaling as far as the available computation and storage capacity allows in order to manage huge volumes of content and millions of users simultaneously. Capturing user profiles and preferences is a key requirement for collaborative environments in information cities. Service-oriented computing paradigms will provide the open framework needed for the entities in physical cities to participate in and consume the services offered by their counterpart information cities.