This paper argues that geographers have tended to neglect the substantial impact of skyscrapers on urban life. Yet the significance of these buildings - in terms of height, levels of human occupancy, aesthetic impact and popular representation and use - is in need of careful geographical interpretation. Synthesizing work from a number of disciplines - geography, social history, architecture, planning, and cultural studies - it argues that the skyscraper is an extremely complex spatial phenomenon. First, the development and diffusion of skyscrapers as a global form is considered in terms of its geographical contingency, and the relational nature of its production. Secondly, the representational nature of the form in relation to cities is discussed, including attention to cinematic, biographical and everyday practices of representation. Thirdly, the volumetric nature of the skyscraper in urban form is briefly reviewed, focusing on its differing impacts on urban space and at various physical strata of the city. Taken together, there are important urban, political, social, cultural and economic debates that underpin this apparently regularized, rationalized built form.

The urban built environment is underpinned by an increasingly complex digital infrastructure, which is posing a variety of unpredictable and unprecedented challenges for urban governance. The paper outlines the key strands of digital infrastructures which underpin the urban polity, including the role of global technology providers in shaping the urban governance agenda around digital policy; and the emergence of smart city strategies. The paper is illustrated using empirical examples drawn from Australian digital infrastructure development, with reference to the international landscape of 'smart city' developments. It argues that there is a significant mismatch between the often small scale, bounded capabilities of municipal government, and the actively large-scale operations of technology firms.

This paper examines the relationship between cities and hotels, arguing that this urban space sheds light on many of the traits of twentieth-century urbanism. First, it sketches the relationship of hotels to urban space, either as landmarks within cities, as statements of civic selfconfidence in booming central business districts, or as components of urban renewal strategies. Second, it is suggested that the design of hotel space is expressive of consumption choices, whether in terms of a standardized, hard-wearing functionality or an expression of uniqueness, reflecting contemporary trends in consumer marketing, distinction and branding. Third, these spaces are crucial to the notion of the `circulatory' city. They are representative of a form of dwelling, of a temporary domestic, for various types of traveller, as well as serving as a business space. Fourth, they are reflective of the complex social geographies of city life, and provide a microcosm of the occupational hierarchies of hospitality services.

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The development and spread of 'smart city' technologies, policies and practices is now an important element of contemporary urban governance, given the role of powerful global firms such as IBM, Siemens and Cisco in their authorship. Developing a relational ontology of global 'smart city' firms, the paper explores the origin and development of IBM's pervasive and influential Smarter Cities strategies. The paper argues that for IBM, Smarter Cities represents an attempt to solve three strategic problems that face the firm: how to maximise its stored knowledge and ensure its labour costs deliver significant added value; how to construct new sectoral and geographic markets for this knowledge; and how to reduce, standardise and simplify the object of that knowledgethe city -as a scaleable commodity. To illustrate these issues, the paper first explores the strategic direction of IBM from being a loss-making computer hardware manufacturer, to an information technology consultancy, identifying the role of acquisitions, city partnership, and research and development in that process. Second, it identifies how IBM has constructed a market for city or municipal services within its suite of vertical specialist markets. Third, it describes the relationship between the marketing, modelling and visualisation practices that reduce and simplify urban problems for solution through the sale of proprietary software packages, consultancy services and hardware to their clients in city government. The paper concludes by arguing that the future of smart cities is inextricably linked to the internal knowledge organisation of a small number of global technology firms.