Peter F. Drucker Boxed Set (8 Books) (The Drucker Library)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

People, Work, and the Future of the City

IN 20 YEARS JAPANESE office workers may still commute, packed shoulder to shoulder, to downtown towers. But no one else in the developed world will. Office work, rather than office workers, will do the traveling. Tomorrow’s big city is no longer going to be the office center.

The exodus is already under way. Citibank handles credit cards in North Dakota, clears checks in upstate New York and Delaware, and is moving data processing across the Hudson to suburban New Jersey. A large Boston-based mutual-fund group, Colonial Management Associates, has moved nationwide customer service and customer ...