The web has a role in relation to the city which we call the Local Web. In the (outdated) publication model, the Web is thought of as similar to a placeless book, magazine, or pamphlet. Following this view, the website seems to float even more free of place than do material publications. There is, however, another way to think of the Web: as a series of places related to (physical) inhabitation. Web spaces can be subsidiary or substitute for, or a threat to, the social roles of physical architecture and the urban realm. Websites are zones of instability which designers must exploit for their own ends. Consider the following quote by the young scientist from Tom Stoppard's play concerning complexity theory and landscape architecture Arcadia:

Valentine: (writing a treatise on complexity theory) "We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now… The future is disorder. A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong...".