gengar

Wait what? Really? I completely disagree - in fact, I take the opposite stance: Big cities and sprawling urban centers with absurd numbers of absurdly huge highrises are a grossly inefficient use of natural resources. And I think reality and how US society (if not the world at large) has responded to the resulting economic forces does back me up on this.

After all, where are the massive city centers with dense highrises? They are almost all in geographically limited places, like Manhattan or San Francisco. (Globally, Hong Kong has already been mentioned and is another good example.) Major US cities that are not geographically limited, like Houston, Phoenix, San Diego, San Antonio, Dallas, San Jose, etc. etc. etc., don't have nearly the type of urban desnity that Manhattan and SF do despite all being top-10 population cities or near to it. Even downtown LA doesn't have the type of highrise density that SF does despite LA having 4-5x the population. If sprawling urban centers with massive highrise density are supposedly so desirable, I would expect to see more of them and for it to be correlated with metropolitan population, but that's simply not what exists right now.

The simple reason is that owning and operating cars and commuting is much cheaper than owning an inflated piece of real estate. (I honestly sometimes wonder why owning a $375,000 car is considered more extravagant than owning a $900,000 one-bedroom condo - I bring that up as an example as a friend just bought one for that price on Manhattan.) That is also why in many non-geographically-limited cities condos are not all that common - because the real estate prices are not as inflated by geographical constraints, and they simply cannot support the massive amounts of natural resources which must be inputted into a highrise. That alone demonstrates the inefficient use of natural resources that highrises represent.

So I will also disagree with Lil4x and others here, because they have brought up city centers and communication infrastructure obviating the need for cars. Again, I believe the opposite is actually true. If our communication infrastructure means we do not need to commute in order to communicate effectively and efficiently, then that also means that we will not need to travel in order to be productive. People will be able to work from anywhere which means they can choose to live anywhere with less regard for commute convenience, so that actually reduces the need for sprawling commercial centers and the sprawling residential centers that surround them, as part of the traditional urban map.

Frankly, that's why I believe that most urban planners have it all wrong. They should not be concentrating on building city centers, but instead on utilizing our transportation networks more efficiently and pricing them correctly, as well as expanding them when necessary. I already mentioned in my prior post that roads and highways are IMO the biggest and best example of government incompetence in resource management.

I'll also take issue with this:

I am pretty sure around 95% of the US is classified as rural by the government; census or land management bureaus should have the figure. Humans only overpopulate tiny geographical areas because they unwisely choose to do so or they are given incorrect and improper incentives to do so.

Of course, this is all just my opinion. People can certainly and understandably disagree as far as the values involved and the choices made. My primary residence is now in an urban area, after all.

Lil4X

But as we disperse the workforce to the suburbs, we create long commutes for single-occupant cars. We must either develop business models that can sustain telecommuting, adopt the mega-structure urban plan that puts each of us in the same building as our office, school, entertainment and recreation, or build a sprawling mass-transit network in order to get significant numbers of cars off the road. Either way, this is going to require a rather drastic change in our culture.

Telecommuting, for me, is the answer. There isn't much I can't do at my desk at home that I could do in a client's office - other than just show the flag. It's sad that so many executives want to see their minions spread out in the cube farm before them every morning at 8am like a lord surveying his fiefdom. Most people work better and more productively at home, once they have learned a little discipline, and routine teleconferences answer the need to collaborate with your team. Until our business culture accepts telecommuting as an alternative, no, a preference to conventional office work, we are not going to make much of an impact on energy efficiency.

FrankReynoldsCPA

I second what Gengar and Lil4x have stated. Both of my parents work from home, and the savings on daily commuting is noticeable. Plus....it helps keep miles from being racked up on their cars.

J.P.

Telecommuting is great for some positions but it doesn’t work the retail business, food and beverage, manufacturing, construction, healthcare, distribution, the service sector etc etc

Also for those that have been part of a start-up, run their own business let alone are trying to grow your business in highly competitive markets or have a sales team working for you, you have to come to work at least some days otherwise productivity sucks.

We played with it over the years and for certain creative positions it works, and for a lot of other tasks such as accounting to IT support even works for some, but for many businesses, sadly, you need to have people in front of you otherwise their finding everything else to do from home but work. People are getting lazier, not more motivated…..


TeleC only fixes the traffic \ car issue for a small handful.

mmarshall

That's generally true, but don't forget that each car taken off the road during rush hour (which, in my part of the country, goes on almost continuously between 5 AM and 10 PM, with Sunday mornings being about the only exception) actually has a double-benefit. Each car remaining back at home means that the person (or persons) that would be in it are not out adding to traffic and burning fuel, but also that there is one less car that everybody ELSE on the road doesn't have to share the traffic-jams with, either.

Lil4X

All very true. If you are involved in a retail industry, you have to be where the work is. Same thing with manufacturing; if you operate a punch press, you have to be where the machinery is. However, as we move more toward a service economy, a larger segment of our workforce driving to a central office to sit in a cube all day makes less sense than ever. By allowing these workers to telecommute, as Mike said, only takes the pressure off the existing transportation infrastructure, cutting traffic and parking problems for those who must drive to the workplace.

One interesting outcome of the Iraq war has been the development of telemedicine, allowing patients to be seen by doctors and specialists from across the country during a visit to a remote clinic. In Iraq, this technology allowed our top specialists to participate in the treatment of critical injuries in real time. It was instrumental in saving hundreds, if not thousands of lives. This month our local county hospitals are beginning to shift to the same program, with triage being performed at a large central ER and treatment being moved to large specialty clinics.

I have a dental appointment in a few days that will be our family's first test of the system that started the transition in December. Rather than go to my normal dentist for a simple filling, I will now go to a large clinic that is electronically connected to the hospital intranet. In my small case it probably won't make a difference except for the location of my treatment, but should something unexpected happen, there would be a full staff of doctors and dentists on hand to consult on my case.

Next week my wife is having an MRI that requires special equipment. She'll go to a specialty MRI imaging facility and the results of her scans posted on the intranet to be reviewed by her doctor and possibly a specialist in real time so that additional contrast scans can be performed while she is still on the imager. That beats two weeks' delay in sending the results to the doctor and forwarded to a specialist only to find that something wasn't quite right in the setup. Real time adjustments can be made and the whole procedure completed in 40 minutes rather than a month.

Beyond that, the establishment of telemedical facilities would put regional, even national specialists at the fingertips of my dentist, should they be needed. Such a capability might be overkill in my case, but for an ER patient with gunshot wounds or in cardiac arrest, it could be critical to put top notch talent on the scene with a few keystrokes.

The idea also is to be efficient with a specialist's time. Rather than fly in a neurosurgeon from San Francisco for a consult, he can be there right in the operating theater as an observer and consultant for fifteen minutes or whatever is required, then move on quickly to another case. A doctor can consult on thirty or forty cases a day rather than ten or twenty - all without leaving his or her office.

How will that kind of capability affect our culture when applied to other industries? I think it is the leading edge of the application of communication technology to the workplace. Already many companies are drawing up new products and shooting the digital drafting files over the internet to a 3D model shop where a FDM machine deposits fine filaments of thermoplastics on an armature to build up a fully functional prototype or even a finished product in one of a variety of materials, literally overnight. This "virtual" experience of putting the proper tools and people on the scene as needed will, IMHO, change the structure of our culture. We can afford to be a nation of specialists, and by that means we can deliver better products and services more efficiently and at lower cost by reducing duplication of effort, compartmentalizing skills, all while reducing the need to have our physical presence in attendance. Could this help bring our competitive advantage in the global market back home?

J.P.

Manage 20-30-40 people remotely and let me know how well that goes for you

gengar

But why are telecommuting, massive urban centers, and mass transit the only options? Why isn't it an option to expand and improve road/highway networks so that single-occupancy cars can get places more quickly and more efficiently? Heck, why isn't that the number one option?

The biggest barrier to vehicle commuting in our cities is that our roads and highways are recklessly mismanaged by the government. The proper incentives aren't there and in most cases the methods of revenue collection are inappropriate, which leads to the lowest common denominator dictating society's cost to use our roads and highways. The result - traffic jams - vividly demonstrates what is wrong with the current system.

Where I currently live is a great example. There's a restaurant/bar I go to frequently to meet up with friends as we know a bunch of the people who work there. There are two ways for me to get there using highways; I can either go on two toll roads or on two non-toll highways. The distance is almost identical as the restaurant and where I live are basically on opposite corners of a rectangle made up by these highways. Before I got my toll pass, I twice had to take the non-toll route during the afternoon rush hour, and it took me 38 minutes and 44 minutes. On the toll roads, even during rush hour it has never taken me more than 15 and I can usually do it in 10-12. Again, our roads and highways demonstrate a severe resource mismanagement problem.

Also, I'd note that moving the workforce to the suburbs does not necessarily mean increasing commutes. Why can't many workplace functions move to less urbanized areas as well? The incentives are there. As I mentioned in my last post, urban residences such as highrises don't make much sense in terms of efficient use of natural resources. Well, much the same applies for corporations as well. There was one international conglomerate I consulted for and I was just flabbergasted that they felt the need to house all their operations in a city in one place, in a commercial tower where they were paying around $40/sq ft in rent. Does all your support, like HR, Legal, all your IT, communications, etc. really need to be there? There's simply no reason why the structure of business cannot move to be less consolidated. It's simply an extremely inefficient use of our resources.

Oh, I certainly wasn't suggesting that all our jobs would move to telecommuting or that none would be sensitive to commute distance. My point is that technology is allowing movement in that direction, therefore decreasing the influence of commute convenience on behavior.

Lil4X

Conventional management wisdom says no one can effectively manage more than four or five people. That's why we have org charts.

You can't pave everything. We can't even maintain the highways and bridges we have. The topic of this thread is the disaffection of youth with the car culture, and I believe it may be a good thing for all of us. I love to drive, just not on a freeway crawl with my only view fixed on that bumper in front of me. I'd much rather be somewhere out there on the two-lane blacktop on a summer's morning enjoying the experience and the countryside than stuck in the bumper-to-bumper grind in my leather-lined cocoon creeping through some fetid industrial smog.

Agreed. But building more of these highways, in my experience, has only led to them filling up faster. We don't plan for the long term, but only to add a single lane or two to relieve the immediate congestion. That means we shut down two or three lanes of a freeway to add a single lane or two for a year - at the conclusion of which, congestion has doubled and we're worse off than ever, new pavement notwithstanding.

That's fine for now, if you're not adverse to paying for your convenience. Fast forward a few years and you'll be paying that "use tax" wherever you go. It's up to you whether your time is worth it. That's the short-term view. Now let's extrapolate this example fifty or a hundred years: Will this solution still work for a population that will double or triple in that time? What about the increase in commuter traffic? Will we still be able to afford a two-hour commute to an eight-hour job?

Isn't that the same argument for telecommuting? Wouldn't the ultimate extension of this dispersal of facilities place us in our own homes?

Very true. The solution will ultimately lie in some mixed-bag of office/shop/telecommuters that can't be expected to solidify into a one-size-fits-all business model. I think that your point (and mine) is that there should be, at least for the near term, some flexibility in the approach to organizing the workplace.

superchan7

Without going into telecommuting and its management challenges (it won't work for my job anyway), I'm all for reducing single-occupant vehicles in job-related commuting. 2 people in one car reduces resource usage by nearly half; this also frees up space on urban roads. Even more though, I am a strong supporter of mass transit for commuters and a transit-centric environment; I hope that future US urban development continues to develop and refine this concept as the rest of the world has been forced to do since long ago.

That doesn't mean I don't love driving my own cars, outside of work. It's a luxury that we can afford and enjoy, and I'm sure gengar's garage would agree.

J.P.

Sounds like something from an MBA class, I and many others on here I know have and do manage(d) very large teams of people very successfully. I deal with the telecommute people on an hourly basis because I have people doing work for me all over the country. On any given day I would rather them be in an office. It’s not the corp execs being stuffy, be it in the corp world or your own business its damn tough getting people to work and do the right work correctly unless you can afford to hire the top 10% of the workforce, good luck keeping your margins with that idea.

The vitality curve shows this over and over again..... and from the occupy wall street people to those that worked in corp America, its pretty clear there is a those that are self-motivated and work really hard and to quote mark cubans recent book others will "find anything else to do but work".......


Telecommuting does work for some people, it works for some positions very well. But for most, and I mean enough to make a difference in traffic, isn’t going to happen. What has worked for some is consulting \ freelancing from home, like my Web Developer. But it’s not a matter of just freelancing, he was already someone that was in the top 5% of the vitality curve, so it’s not a great case but overall if you’re on your own dime you tend to be more motivated, or like the 100 resumes a week I see, you fail and go back to the corporate world.


This works for some I know but I could never, ever, be and want to be tied to someone else’s schedule. If you have kids this often is not even an option.

J.P.

There is so much money \ capital \ wealth tied up in our already built and stationary infrastructure it’s really hard to fix and it’s not going to be fixed with some after thoughts like telecommuting or carpooling. They will make some difference but as the population grows it’s no fix.

We are not likely to change our lifestyle. Our country is vast, we like to travel, we like our freedom to go wherever we want when we want, we force our kids to have non-stop schedules, over all you really have to study how people in whatever geographic area live and try to come up with ideas and solutions over the next 50 years to attack that. We are not going to change how we live, we can change how we develop our land and roads in the future though.

If you went out in an area with 100 square miles and played sim city, and did all the right planning to allow wide streets, great traffic flows, mass transit, ideal commercial parks etc, it could work….. oh wait, until another congested city offers a tax abatement for you to move your company there

Lil4X

I really can't see any near-term changes in our urban areas, but given our growing population, increasing concern for security, resources, and the environment, we are going to need to start addressing some cultural issues rather soon. Not that these will take effect soon, but we should be engaging in a bit of outside-the-box thinking before it becomes critical.

I wouldn't want to live in an urban beehive, and I don't suppose too many of my generation do either . . . nor the one after us. It's the kids just now entering the culture, those being value-programmed at the ages of 3-5 that will be the major consumer decision-makers of the day-after-tomorrow. What thinking do we need to do now to give them viable options for their future?

Communications and transportation will be critical to our society, particularly as they are impacted by technology. We may be only able to imagine within the constraints of present-day technology, but if some of you older folks recall, the futurists of the '50's and early '60's foresaw the fax machine as providing our morning newspaper, to order, with the latest news.

Same idea, different technology, the great majority of us are now getting our news from the internet. Newspapers will either have to morph into an online medium or be swept away. TV and cable will probably move from the hourly news cycle to furnish more "breaking" stories, but even these outlets will dwindle as we move to more self-programming by the individual, through such outlets as Hulu and Netflix. None of that was even imaginable in the '60's, but the kernal of a custom-developed newspaper was.

I hope we can do as well with transportation and urban planning.