New York — The Town So Nice They Gave It Its Own Domain Name

He perhaps overstates the power of the Internet:

Is it time for the big city to start cornering a piece of the Internet?

A growing grassroots movement says yes, and is trying to create a “.nyc” domain name to go alongside the dot coms and dot orgs of the World Wide Web.

“When Ford introduced their first car 100 years ago, no one thoughtto start building roads for it,” said Tom Lowenhaupt, an interactive marketing consultant who heads Connecting.nyc, a group he formed to lead the effort.

“So we ended up having to tear down miles of the Bronx to build freeways to start accommodating them all. It’s the same thing now. We have the opportunity now to plan for the future and start organizing ourselves and our resources in a responsible way.”

Backers say that a dot NYC Web address will allow the city’s small businesses to distinguish themselves in the crowded online marketplace and foster better community cohesion and social activism.

“The Internet is great at global things but it isn’t very good at local things,” Lowenhaupt said. “There are 60 million dot com names out there. When all six billion of us are on the Internet New York is going to be forgotten.”