Understanding Amsterdam

I read Castells' "European Cities, the informational society, and the global economy". This piece didn't focus on observations and "reading the city" like the other articles, but instead focused on globalization, informational societies and the creation of a dual society. The presence of a global economy in Seattle was incredibly evident simply by noticing the variety of brands of running shoes and mp3 players people had at Greenlake. Also, as far as an informational society is concerned, it was interesting to see how many people had headsets on, as though even during their recreational time they could not pull themselves away from the phone. Were they still on the clock, were they talking to friends, or was it just sort of a comfort being "plugged in" in a sense? One thing that we really didn't focus on in our reading the city excursion that came up in the reading was how the development of informational societies and a global economy leads to the formation of a dual city in which the upper and business classes are subject to a completely different reality than those who are poor or working class. I have noticed this many times when walking around Seattle, and also specifically around Greenlake. While middle and upper middle class people sporting their expensive name brand running/walking gear, when you venture a bit off the main trail into the back alleys of businesses and the fronts of shops, there are a lot of homeless people and drug addicts to whom Greenlake is not a place of recreation and fun. For them, the area is where they get their fix or where they find scraps of food to get them to the next day.