IntroductionThe transition towards a`new economy' is the subject of a large body of work within geography and the social sciences more generally. This new economy is conventionally characterised by two intertwined processes: first, the emergence of an information mode of production in which``productivity and competitiveness are increasingly based on the generation of new knowledge and on the access to, and processing of, appropriate information'' (Castells and Hall, 1994, page 3); and, second, tendencies towards the functional integration of economic activities and processes on a global scale, facilitated by advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs) (Castells and Hall, 1994, page 3; see also Castells, 1989). Geographers have paid attention to the sociospatial processes and implications of the emerging new economy as they seek to debunk the`end of geography' rhetoric commonly associated with utopian accounts of advances in ICTs (compare Ohmae, 1990).Four main geographical dimensions of the new economy are evident in the existing literature. First, geographers have highlighted the continued significance of nationstates in influencing the direction and nature of global flows of capital and talent. Instead of being`overwhelmed' by global forces, there is a reworking of state institutions, policies, and power as nation-states seek to (re)assert their place in the world economy (Dicken, 2003; Yeung, 1998). Second, geographers have pointed out how globalisation and technological processes are contingent upon infrastructures and face-to-face interactions concentrated in specific localities, such as technopoles (Castells and Hall, 1994), global cities (Sassen, 1991),`new industrial spaces' (Castells, 1989; Scott, 1987), and`neo-Marshallian nodes' (Amin and Thrift, 1992). Third, geographers emphasise how flows of capital, people, and knowledges occur through social networks that are grounded in and have effects upon everyday places and spaces (Castells, 2000; Thrift and Olds, 1996). Olds (1995, page 1717), for instance, has noted how the development of urban megaprojects to reimage urban localities, in the context of intense interurban competition to hold down global flows of capital and talent, is bound up with``worldwide social networks of knowledge-based experts who have the resources and power (or the access to power) to impact decisions in ... propertỳ