In coming years, a vast majority of the workforce in developed countries will become proficient in the use of these new technologies which will have a major application in urban administration and management. Powerful computers with imbedded multimedia and GIS capabilities will be available as a common household tool. However this scenario will not necessarily occur in the developing world. The International Conference of the Internet Society, INET’98 (Geneva) has highlighted this issue as one of the main concerns in developing countries regarding technology diffusion (Hargittai, 1998). This has important implications for their adoption strategies.
The above technologies obviously have great potential in supporting improved urban management and administration. However the experience of developing countries, even with the most basic spatial information technologies, has not been good, for the reasons explained above. As such, care should be taken by developing countries in adopting the latest technologies which are only now being adopted in the developed world.