On the way towards the Information Society, global networks such as the Internet, together with mobile computing, have made wide-area computing over virtual communities a reality. Digital city projects, with the goal of building platforms to support community networking, are going on worldwide.This is the first book devoted to digital cities. It is based on an international symposium held in Kyoto, Japan, in September 1999. The 34 revised full papers presented were carefully selected for inclusion in the book; they reflect the state of the art in this exciting new field of interdisciplinary research and development. The book is divided into parts on design and analysis, digital city experiments, community network experiments, applications, visualization technologies, mobile technologies, and social interaction and communityware.

Design and Analysis Perspectives.- Designing the Digital City.- Understanding Digital Cities.- Digital Cities: Organization, Content, and Use.- Digital City or Urban Simulator?.- Next Generation Community Networking: Futures for Digital Cities.- Digital City Experiments.- Experiences of European Digital Cities.- The Information Society in the City of Antwerp.- Helsinki Arena 2000 - Augmenting a Real City to a Virtual One.- The Geographic Information System (GIS) of Turin Municipality.- Digital City Bristol: A Case Study.- Digital City Shanghai: Towards Integrated Information & Service Environment.- Experiments in the Digital 'Engineering City Oulu'.- Community Network Experiments.- Reconfiguring Community Networks: The Case of PrairieKNOW.- The Mutual Development of Role, Rule, and Tool Through the VCOM Project.- Davis Community Network (DCN): A Regional Community Networking Initiative in North-Central California.- Examining Community in the Digital Neighborhood: Early Results from Canada's Wired Suburb.- On-line Forums as an Arena for Political Discussions.- Applications of Digital Cities.- Towards the Integration of Physical and Virtual Worlds for Supporting Group Learning.- Digital City for Disaster Reduction.- The Digital City's Public Library: Support for Community Building and Knowledge Sharing.- Agent Community with Social Interactions for Worker and Job Hunting.- Visualization Technologies.- The Motion Generation of Pedestrians as Avatars and Crowds of People.- Image-Based Pseudo-3D Visualization of Real Space on WWW.- Dynamic Zone Retrieval and Landmark Computation for Spatial Data.- Environment for Spatial Information Sharing.- Image Maps: Exploring Urban History through Digital Photography.- Mobile Technologies.- Navigation Support in a Real CityUsing City Metaphors.- Public Applications of SpaceTag and Their Impacts.- Location Oriented Integration of Internet Information - Mobile Info Search -.- Fairy in a Smart IC Card: Interfacing People, Town, and Digital City.- Social Interaction and Communityware.- A Warm Cyber-Welcome: Using an Agent-Led Group Tour to Introduce Visitors to Kyoto.- Extending the Services and the Accessibility of Community Networks.- Creative Contents Community.- Public Opinion Channel: A Challenge for Interactive Community Broadcasting.