The understanding of the urban pattern of the financial district with the introduction of new technological improvements in the process of conducting business

Abstract

This thesis poses a question for the future of financial districts. Attempting to understand the future evolution of financial districts. It begins by tracing the history of financial speculation and its expressions in architecture and the city. Analysing the New York Stock Exchange and the changes as associated with it in the past 150 years. And how the financial institution has transformed with the introduction of the Electronic Communication Network. The new dispersed identity of the finance, with new diversifications in trading and the slow death of the trading floor. New positions of centrality in the system of finance. Where the Network has created an increased centrality of the system, and the possibility of dispersion also. Working with this duality of the network and analogies which can be built from the geography of the network, as posed by physicists in their current research. Parallels drawn between the nature of the creation of these networks, due to the formation of a new market structure and its new positions, in centralized global cities, edge cities and in the possibilities of locating back offices in other countries. Therefore the new nature of business allows a new understanding of how urbanism must respond to work with the new market structure and create a new interpretation of how the network can be accommodated and understood for future financial districts.