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The argument that New York is overly centralized is incorrect for several reasons. First it ignores New York City's own demographics and geography, and second argues that cities are a centralized entity, and not a distributed one. Second it ignores that within this densely distributed cluster, it is easier to set up multiple pathways.
New York City, is vast, I know I have lived here all my life. While the political definition of the city encompasses the 5 boroughs (counties) of 8 million, it actually sprawls across 3 states, more than 10 counties and almost 30 million people. Within this small country, there are several business districts, and including Jersey City, Midtown Manhattan, Stamford and Downtown Brooklyn. In fact, while some high-profile front-offices were hit, the majority of the technical infrastructure for the "Street" moved out of downtown a long time ago (I know, I built some of it). Our financial markets are back up because of this redundancy.
In addition, I can personally attest to how fast the multiple redundant paths of communication work well. On the very same day of the attacks, and the following, I was still able to take multiple routes home through the subway. Some routes were blocked, but I had a choice of alternatives. This held through the next day as I moved around and visited different family members in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
In more distributed areas, these connections don't exist. If a major highway is somehow incapacitated in most of our west coast cities, then that entire area is shut down. The same problem holds for the telecomunnications network. What once was a mutliple points of communications network becomes dependent on long distance single points of failure as the cost per line skyrockets.
While praising geographic decentralization, we should not lose sight of idea-contextual decentralization. One of the joys and challenges of living in a city is sheer number of different communities in terms of ethnicity, belief, economic status, lifestyle and community. The different communities have different goals, and schema to find those goals. Artistic/Creative communities often persue non-profit or theoretical expressiveness, but they ultimately input and inspire the marketing/creative world. "Alternative" communities often define needs and trends outside the mainstream that get incorporated into marketing and business. Because of proximity, these contacts and cross-connections are unconscience and pervasive. In effect, cities were the original communications network.
The historical benefits of cities is supported by how by well they have survived. The plagues, wars and pillaging of past centuries killed a higher percentage of people, and destroyed a greater portion of cities than these terrorist attacks. Yet Rome, Beijing and Hiroshima are still with us, bigger than they ever were. They exist because individual people have selected to live in them and benefit from them. This decision making process is the human "peer-to-peer" paradigm.
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