What does telework really do to us?2.pdf[ 16] Jack M. Nilles What does telework really do to us?...

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World Transport Policy &Practice2/1-2 [1996] 15–23

MCB University Press [ISSN 1352-7614]

© Jack M. Nilles

What does telework really do to us?

Jack M. Nilles Director of Interdisciplinary Research, University of Southern California, USA

Presents the results of exten-sive surveys of about 400telecommuters in the USA,including transportationimpacts, and whethertelecommuting is actuallyrelated to any net reductionin travel in general and in caruse in particular. Gives find-ings from trip logs completedby driving age householdmembers for an entire week.Concludes also that telework-ing also has no severe nega-tive socio-psychologicaleffects on either teleworkersor telemanagers, at leastshort term and provided allparties are properly selectedand trained and do not tele-work full time. Touches on thedifferences between telework-ers in the USA and elsewhere.

Over the past two decades the topic of tele-work has become engulfed in a welter of theo-ries about its nature and impacts. I have beenaware of, and have been testing, most of thepotential benefits and disbenefits of teleworksince I first began to study it in 1970 (at whichtime I used the unwieldy appellation: thetelecommunications-transportation tradeoff).This article is an attempt to inject reality intosome of these theories.

The results presented here are not fabri-cated. They are the product of extensive anddetailed surveys of practising teleworkersand their co-workers[1]. Although the infor-mation presented here is about a specificgroup of about 400 telecommuters, the resultsare quite consonant with – and comparable to– those of thousands of others that we havetested since the mid-1970s in a variety of orga-nizations, both public and private.

Having said that, I should also mention thatthese results are solely of workers in the USA.Most of them, more than 80 per cent, are inmid-level positions in large organizations,placing them in the middle class. They tend tobe about evenly split between males andfemales, although that is probably not thedistribution of sexes holding those positions.Hence, there are probably more women tele-workers as a proportion of their representa-tion in the organizational hierarchy. They arenot necessarily techno-adepts; about one-third of them do not use computers whileteleworking. They represent a great varietyof types of jobs, including some that mightnot immediately seem telework-suitable.Almost all are part-time, home-based tele-workers. That is, although they are full-timeemployees, they telework from home lessthan half the time, on average. The rest of thetime they commute to their more traditionaloffices.

Transportation impacts

The predominant favourite theory is thatteleworking actually does not reduce travel, itsimply displaces it; commute trips saved areat least replaced by more shopping, visits tofriends, etc. To test this, since telework projects in the USA are often tied to efforts to

comply with environmental quality regula-tions, we ask the telecommuters, the mem-bers of a control group, and their driving-agehousehold members to complete trip logs foran entire week. The following information isderived from a set of trip logs completed bythese groups.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of triplengths (of all sorts) for the telecommuter andcontrol group households. The members ofthe telecommuter households take shortertrips, on average, with a mean of 13.5 miles, ascompared to the control group mean of 15.9miles. The median[2] trip lengths follow asimilar pattern, with 8.0 miles for thetelecommuters and 10.8 miles for the controlgroup. (The mean is the average, taken byadding up all the trips and dividing by thenumber of trips; the median is the pointwhere half the reported distances are longer(or shorter). If the trips were normally dis-tributed, the mean and median would be thesame; a higher mean indicates a dispropor-tionate number of long trips.)

A series for the average commuter residingin the region is included in the figure forcomparison. The mean trip distance for thelatter set of people – commute trips only – is16.6 miles and the median is 10 miles, verysimilar to the total household data from ouremployee group. (Data are from an annualregional commuter survey.)

Of the 3,997 trips logged during the 7-daytest period, 3,739, or 95.6 per cent, were by car,amounting to 16.0 car trips per reportingindividual during the week. Table I shows thebreakdown. Telecommuters, with 96.6 percent of their reported trips by car, wereslightly more intensive car users than weremembers of the control group, who used theircars for 92.7 per cent of the trips. Apparently,mass transit and car/van pooling have hadlittle influence on the travel behaviour ofeither of these groups. Consequently, most ofthis section will concentrate on the automo-bile trip behaviour.

Where are all these people going? Figure 2shows the percentage distribution of types oftrips taken by the two groups in terms oftheir purpose. There are no major differencesbetween the two groups. That is, both groupsallocate the nature of their trips about the

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Jack M. NillesWhat does telework really doto us?

World Transport Policy &Practice2/1,2 [1996] 15–23

same way. Trips to work account for at leastone of every four trips for both groups.

The distances required to achieve thosepurposes do differ in some respects. In partic-ular, the telecommuters have significantlyshorter trips for medical purposes. This is

consonant with the theory that most family’sphysicians or dentists are located closer tohome than to work. Figure 3 shows the distri-bution. The telecommuters also appear to eatout at closer distances than the members ofthe control group.

Work-related travel remains the dominantfactor throughout the week. Figure 4 showsthis graphically. Weekday trips, includingcommuting, for both the telecommuter andcontrol group households account for about85 per cent of all reported trips, with Saturdayand Sunday trips together constituting therest of the trips. Interestingly – and in defi-ance of the theorists’ forecasts – the controlgroup households make a slightly higherproportion of their trips on weekends than dothe telecommuter households, 16.9 per centand 14.8 per cent of the totals, respectively.

Figure 5 shows the information in terms ofcar miles travelled, rather than percentage oftotal trips. The same relationships hold, how-ever, although the difference between weekdayand weekend trips is less pronounced. This isbecause some members of both groups tookfairly long distance (greater than 100 miles)trips during the weekend. However, the con-trol group households show significantlylonger mean weekend mileage.

The telecommuting impacts

Given this overall view of travel characteris-tics, generally indicating that the travelhabits of the telecommuting and controlgroup households are similar, and that they,in turn, are generally similar to those of theregion in which they live, what is the impactof telecommuting? The question of greatestimportance is whether telecommuting isactually related to any net reduction in travelin general, and in car use in particular.

First, Figure 6 shows how the averagetelecommuter allocates his/her trips on adaily basis. The trips are distributed betweenworking at home, working at a satellite office(only one of the telecommuter group doesthis), working in the principal office (mostly

Table IAllocation of participants’ trips by mode

ControlTransportation Telecommuter groupmode households (%) households (%)

Private car/van (as driver) 96.6 92.7Mass transit 2.1 3.4Walking 0.1 0.3Car/van pool passenger 1.2 3.5

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Percentage of household trips

Miles

Key The region’s commuters Control group Telecommuters

Figure 1Distribution of household trip lengths

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40

35

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Percentage of all trips

KeyControl groupTelecommuters

Figure 2Distribution of household trip lengths by trip purpose

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in the central city), and everything else. The“everything else” category includes all thenon-work trip categories shown in the previ-ous figures. It is clear that 70 to 80 per cent ofthe average telecommuter’s weekday trips areto and from the principal office, at least fromMonday through Thursday. Friday is a popularday off for those on modified work schedules.The erosion of the Principal Office column for

Friday in the figure is matched by theincrease in the Other column. Although sometelecommuters work at home or at the princi-pal office on weekends, most are off, there-fore, the Saturday and Sunday trips aremostly in the Other category.

One other factor is also apparent from Fig-ure 6. Telecommuters do make trips on daysthat they are telecommuting. They do not juststay at home all day. A key question iswhether these trips are sufficiently longand/or frequent to offset the commute sav-ings in any significant way. It is also impor-tant to compare the telecommuter trips withthose of the control group.

Figure 7 shows the comparison. This depic-tion of the average number of miles travelledper trip on each day shows that the telecom-muters and the members of the control grouphave about the same characteristics on regu-lar office days. The telecommuters’ trips ontelecommuting days are relatively short,averaging four miles over the work week, aswell as being relatively few. Therefore, itappears safe to say that telecommuters aremaking significant reductions in their commute savings, even though some aretaking telecommute-day trips.

The average trip length gives a clue as tothe type of trip being taken. For example,short trips indicate local travel, while tripson the order of 15 miles or more are moreassociated with work related travel. Possiblymore important than trip length is the totalmileage covered per day, particularly thosecovered by car. Figure 8 shows that for thetelecommuters and the control group.

As in the previous figure, Figure 8 showslittle difference between the telecommutersand the control group during regular at-officedays. Discrepancies in office day mileageduring the weekends are more apparent thanreal; few members of either the telecommuteror control groups worked weekends duringthe survey. From these figures it wouldappear that the average telecommuter isreducing his/her daily car mileage by about30 miles even though trips are being madeduring telecommuting days.

Therefore, at least part of the doomsdayhypothesis (that additional household car usewill totally offset or even exceed the telecom-muting reductions) is disproved by the datafrom the telecommuters themselves. Whilethere is still some residual car travel, indicat-ing some life remaining in that hypothesis, itis still significantly less than the office-daytravel.

Further, the question remains as to theeffect of telecommuting on overall householdcar travel. Figure 9 shows the additional carmileage put on the telecommuters’

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Other

Mean trip length (miles)


Med

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Figure 3Distance distribution by trip purpose

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Percentage of household weekly trips


Figure 4Distribution of household trip during the week

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households on both telecommuting and regu-lar office days. The office day total mileagesare scaled down to reflect only the mileageadded by the same number of households thatwere telecommuting that day. That is, if 29people were telecommuting on Wednesday,the office day total mileage residuals areshown for 29 households as well.

Clearly, there is little additional householdtravel on telecommuting days. What appears

to be happening is that trips ordinarily takenby other household members, such as trans-porting children to and from school, are beingtaken over by the telecommuters. In addition,the overall level of car travel during telecom-muting days is significantly diminished rela-tive to the data for equivalent numbers ofhouseholds on regular office days.

Hence, these results appear to support acounter-doomsday hypothesis: Telecommut-ing acts to reduce car use over and above thecommuting related reduction. Specifically, forthis group of telecommuter households, theaverage weekly reduction in car use[2] is 19miles per household. Telecommuting is, with-out question, an important means of reducingautomobile travel.

RidesharingAlthough most of the reported trips were viasingle occupant automobiles, there was someridesharing. Thirty per cent of all telecom-muter household trips and 31 per cent of allcontrol household trips included one or morepassengers. Nineteen per cent of the telecom-muter household trips were with one passen-ger, compared with 24 per cent one-passengertrips among the control group households.Both groups include some van drivers, with0.4 per cent of the telecommuter – and 0.1 percent of the control-group-households report-ing trips with six or more passengers. Forboth groups the multi-passenger trips werework related slightly more than 62 per cent ofthe time. All eight of the van trips reportedwere work related.

Experience effectsSome telecommuting pilot projects in theUSA, notably the State of California and LosAngeles County projects, had multiple“waves” of trip log surveys[3]. Those projectsonly used three-day trip logs during eachsurvey, rather than the seven-day logs usedhere, as a means of reducing “form fillingfatigue”. The reason for multiple surveys is tosee if there are changes in trip behaviourwith time.

We adopted the stratagem of using a longer,but one time only survey, encompassing agroup with a range of telecommuting experi-ence, to see if experiential effects could beobserved. The range of telecommuting experi-ence in the test group ran from one month to42 months. Using linear regression analysisof the data, we found no significant experi-ence-related difference in either the averagenumber of daily car trips or the total daily carmileage of the telecommuter households. Weconclude that the telecommuting-relatedsavings in vehicle use appear essentially from

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Daily household car miles


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Figure 5Distance distribution of daily household car trips

Percentage of daily trips by telecommuters

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Figure 6Daily distribution of telecommuters’ trips

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the beginning of one’s telecommuting experi-ence and continue thereafter.

Changes in the quality of life

Another segment of the speculative literatureabout telework focuses on the potential

hideous effects of this work style on one’spsyche. Feelings of social isolation or, possi-bly worse, stunted career growth are amongthe most popular such telemaladies. We donot develop direct evidence of the effects onthe families, rather we ask the teleworkersabout the impacts. A substantial section inour evaluation questionnaires is specificallyoriented towards these impacts[4]. Commonfactor analysis of the questionnaires allowsus to break a number of the work/socialimpacts into 11 categories, as follows:1 General work life. This relates to changes

in the individual’s relationships withhis/her supervisor, self assessment of jobskills, feelings of job responsibility, influ-ence, versatility and scope.

2 Personal life. This factor includes changesin quality of family relationships, discre-tionary time, feelings of control of one’slife, ability to separate work and home life,success in self discipline, co-ordination offamily and work time, and knowing whento quit work.

3 Visibility. Do teleworkers feel out of theirsupervisor’s and co-workers’ minds when they are out of sight? This factorincludes changes in one’s influence onorganizational strategy, understanding ofwhat others are doing, how well one’ssuggestions are received and self assess-ment of visibility in the organization.

4 Environmental influences. This includeschanges in home office space, stress fromenvironmental noise, ability to matchwork and biorhythms, and feelings of selfempowerment.

5 Belonging. Do teleworkers feel themselvesto be loners? Here we have changes ininvolvement in office social activities,amount of job-related feedback, careeradvancement, job stability and relation-ships with fellow workers.

6 Creativity. Changes in: creativity in one’swork, the amount of flexibility in job per-formance and feelings of self empower-ment, are in this factor.

7 Stress avoidance. Changes in work relatedcosts, ability to bypass physical handicapsand avoidance of office politics aregrouped here.

8 Liberation. This factor includes changes inability to concentrate on crucial tasks, theneed to cope with traffic, and the ability toget more done.

9 Apprehension. Changes in uneasinessabout equipment failure and feelings ofguilt about “not really working” constitutethis category.

10 Interdependence. This factor relates tochanges in the quality of meetings with

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Average miles travelled per trip

KeyControl groupTelecommuter office daysTelecommuter telecommuting days

Figure 7Comparative daily trip miles

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Figure 8Comparative total daily car use



colleagues and dependence on others tohelp perform one’s job.

11 Continuity. The final factor calibrateschanges in freedom from interruptions.

Figure 10 shows the results for our testgroups after about 18 months of telecom-muting, as well as pre-telecommuting andmid-project surveys. Hence, it gives a feel forthe long-term changes as well.

Note that the emphasis is on changes inthese categories. We asked the participantswhat had changed since telecommutingbegan, whether or not they were telecom-muters. We asked how much, if any, changethere was and how important each issue wasto them. We have developed composite values(amount of change multiplied by importanceto the participant) for these factors, as shownin Table I. The scales for amount of changeare from –2 to +2, with –2 signifying muchworse, 0 meaning no change, and +2 signify-ing much better. Importance ranges from 0(not important at all) to 4 (extremely impor-tant to the participant). Thus, the compositefactor can range from –8 (i.e. –2 × 4) to +8 (i.e.+2 × 4).

The surveys show clear differences betweenthe telecommuter and non-telecommutergroups. There are three areas in which wemight expect to see negative impacts fromtelecommuting: Visibility, Apprehension andBelonging. Yet, this group of telecommuters,on average, shows net positive changes for allthree, although there are some individualnegative responses.

Note that, with the exception of the liberationand continuity factors, both groups at mid-term appear to be more positive than theywere during the baseline survey; then bothgroups tended to decline slightly from themid-term to final surveys. In two of the keyfactors – continuity and creativity – thetelecommuter group switched rankingsbetween the mid-term and final surveys,while the non-telecommuters stayed aboutthe same. This could arise from a possibleincrease in interruptions to thetelecommuters as more people get used tocontacting them while they are at home, cou-pled with a decrease in interruptions in theoffice as the on-site office populationdecreases. Interestingly, the telecommuters’responses to the liberation and continuityfactors declined after the baseline measure,showing the effects of reality slightly modify-ing expectations. In any case, the telecom-muters show quality of life changes that aremore positive in every respect than those ofthe non-telecommuters.

Urban sprawl or redemption?

A third area of great speculation is the poten-tial of telework to totally alter the shape ofcities. The most popular variant of these isthe idea that teleworkers will flee their traffic-strangled and crime-ridden urbanlocales for the peace and tranquillity of thecountryside in general and areas of greatscenic beauty in particular. Of course, in theprocess they are likely to ruin the very scenicwonders that they moved to live among.

Short of that exodus is the more familiarfreeway effect, in which new communitiesspring up along newly completed highways.These new communities require furtherinvestment in the physical infrastructure(local roads, power distribution, sewer lines,etc.) – creating urban sprawl – and generallyact to increase the average amount of automo-bile use, particularly for commuting. A keyissue is whether telecommuting has an equiv-alent urban sprawl effect.

The flight-to-scenic-beauty syndrome doesexist, but it appears to be confined (so far) topersons of significant wealth who can affordto live and telework in such communities asTelluride and Aspen. That is, the high landvalues in such communities tend to act asbarriers to significant immigration. Further,as the resources become limited, the pricesincrease accordingly and the problem may beself-limiting.

Not so in the more conventional urbansprawl case. Here, large numbers of individ-ual family decisions – often motivated by the

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Residual household car miles

KeyTelecommuter’s office dayTelecommuter’s telecommuting day

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Figure 9Additional miles put on by telecommuter households

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need for lower priced housing for growingfamilies – might be expected to be swayed bythe reduced number of commutes enabled byteleworking to increase the distance to workfor the times when a commute is necessary. Inthese cases, urban sprawl may indeed beteleworking-induced.

As in the other two areas discussed already,we long ago decided to test the theories withthe co-operation of real people. The results ofour urban sprawl tests are reported in detailelsewhere (Nilles, 1991; 1995), There is noclear evidence to date of any sprawl effects;most of the telecommuters who moved duringour test periods[5] either moved to locationsabout the same distance from their non-homeworkplace or moved to another town where,presumably, a local telework centre could actas a surrogate principal office. Yet, the sprawleffect may not appear for several years afterteleworking begins, and our surveys have notcovered that time span. Hence, this remainsan open question and this is one area thatrequires some vigilance in the future, partic-ularly on the part of urban planners.

On the other hand, telework has greatpotential for revitalizing existing urban areasby allowing people to live and work in thesame neighbourhoods. Aside from the trafficreduction possibilities already discussed,there is a large array of community develop-ment opportunities that do not require expen-sive infrastructure alterations. That is, it isnot necessary to tear down existing buildingsand build new roads in order to revitalizeneighbourhoods, if telework is used appropri-

ately. This possibility is in the planning andearly implementation stages in Californiaand Austria (JALA International, Inc. et al.,1994).

Conclusions

The surveys described here were confined totelecommuters in the USA and did notinclude the more general type of teleworkerswhose travel patterns may be more diverse.However, other studies we have performedindicate that mid-day, work-related travel issignificantly less than commuting in largemetropolitan areas. Few information work-ers, with the exception of sales and field sup-port people, engage in much mid-day travel.Although teleworking may induce demandfor long-distance travel, other interviews thatwe have had with mid-level managers andprofessionals indicate that they are alreadylargely travel-saturated; telework allowsthem to expand their contacts but may notsubstantially increase their total travel. Inany case, these variants tend to be at the mar-gins when compared to the magnitude ofdaily commuter travel. Although it was notcovered in our daily trips surveys, we alsohave no evidence that telecommuting induceslonger vacation trips.

One comment, often heard, is that the tele-work-related changes in transportation useare not significant. That is, by themselvesthey do not “solve” the traffic congestionproblem. Let me remind the reader that

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Figure 10Quality of life impacts

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traffic flow is non-Newtonian. That is, it doesnot behave like a watery fluid; its behaviouris much more like that of blood – it flows welluntil some congestion threshold is reached,whereupon it clots.

In the developed world, about 40 per cent ofall automobile use is for commuting. If 50 percent of the workforce in those countries arepotential telecommuters, but only 10 per centof the workforce is actually telecommuting onany given day, then there is a 4 per cent dailyreduction in commute volume, mostly duringpeak traffic periods. Because traffic flow isnon-Newtonian, a “mere” 4 per cent differ-ence in peak volume can eliminate most traf-fic congestion and the billions of ECU’s orEMU’s or $$ wasted every year (given popula-tion stability). We made computer models ofthis effect in the late 1960s and it was provenreal in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles (thesame 4 per cent reduction in peak trafficvolume allowed free-flow). That is a primaryeffect.

This research and comparable surveys wehave made also leads me to conclude thattelework has no severe negative socio-psycho-logical effects on either teleworkers or tele-managers – at least not in a period aslong/short as two years – provided that allparties are properly selected and trained anddo not telework full time[6]. On the contrary,there are significant positive effects for theteleworkers, at least.

I am often asked/told about the differencesbetween telework in the USA and elsewhere,particularly in Europe. Clearly there aresome differences. Among the foremost is thatteleworkers’ homes in the USA typicallyaverage at least 160 square metres, as con-trasted to 100 square metres or less in Europeand Asia. Thus, because of the greater likeli-hood of more “discretionary” space, home-based teleworking would appear to be easierin the USA. Yet, evidence from Dutch trials bythe Ministry of Transportation in the Ams-terdam region indicates that home-basedtelework is by no means precluded. There-fore, I would expect to see regional and neigh-bourhood telework centres forming a greaterproportion of telework venues outside theUSA, but not to the exclusion of home-basedteleworking. Indeed, the Bangemann reportrecommendations (High Level Group on theInformation Society, 1994) emphasize develop-ment of telework centres but mention bothforms. During a trip to Rome for the Telework’95 conference I found that many Italian infor-mation workers have a daily commute of asmuch as two hours each way from the sub-urbs to central Rome; a situation very similarto that of major urban areas in the USA and –

in this example – comparable to that in theTokyo region.

These are differences in degree, not in kind.They do not affect the innate nature orimpact of teleworking. More important arewhat is often called “cultural differences”.Two of these appear to be significant. First isthe industrial age hierarchical managementmind set that seems to be more intense inEurope than in the USA (in Japan this isfurther intensified by the ubiquitous togeth-erness principle). This acts generally to slowthe rate of acceptance of teleworking in pro-portion to its intensity. Second is the lack of acommon language. Although not a problemfor most telecommuting and local telework-ing, it is a definite hindrance to internationalteleworking. Both of these primary barriersare eroding; they are merely factors that willslow, but not stop, the growth of teleworkingin these countries. Note that a substantialfraction of active teleworking in Europeappears to be associated with large multina-tional companies that have long since learnedto function in global markets. Unfortunately, Ihave not seen much quantitative data onthese issues.

This is not to say unequivocally that thecounter-teleworking theories are invalid. It issimply that, after years of trying, we have yetto find evidence to support them for any but avery small number of individuals. Researchshould continue in all of these areas, particu-larly as more millions of people become tele-workers and more countries appreciate itsadvantages.

Still, telework is a double-edged sword.Depending on the way it is used, its impactscan be either positive or negative – and rarelyneutral. Control of the impacts is only par-tially in the power of governments; much ofthe change is made by individual decisions,generally for reasons that have little apparentconnection with telework itself. Whatever theultimate outcome, there appears to be noquestion that telework is here to stay.

Notes1 Our current evaluation questionnaire, to be

completed by the teleworkers as well as theirco-workers, contains a few hundred items andcovers a variety of topics. We also use travellogs that are completed by all driving agemembers of a household, documenting each oftheir trips for a one-week period.

2 This figure is arrived at by subtracting theresidual mileage during telecommuting days(60.6) from the office day residual (2,318.3) anddividing the result by the number of telecom-muting households (119).

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3 See, for example: Kitamura, R. et al., Telecom-muting and Travel Demand: An ImpactAssessment for State of California TelecommutePilot Project Participants. Research ReportUCD-TRG-RR-90-8. Davis, California: Trans-portation Research Group, University of Cali-fornia at Davis, USA.

4 We developed this component (as well as theother components) of the questionnaire instudies of telecommuters and other informa-tion workers carried out over the past 20 years.It contains 50 questions about the extent andimportance to the respondent of any quality oflife impacts.

5 Some caution is in order here since none of thetests covered more than two years.

6 We simply do not have enough evidence aboutfull-time teleworkers’ experiences to draw anyconclusions.

ReferencesHigh Level Group on the Information Society

(1994), Europe and the Global InformationSociety: Recommendations to the EuropeanCouncil, Brussels, May.

JALA International, Inc., Siembab, W., Nilles, J.M.and Kirkpatrick, K. (1994), “Village onetelecommunications feasibility study: finalreport”, City of Modesto and JALA Interna-tional, Inc., Los Angeles, CA.

Nilles, J.M. (1991), “Telecommuting and urbansprawl: mitigator or inciter?”, Transportation,Vol. 18, p. 411.

Nilles, J.M. (1995), Alternatives for the Develop-ment of the Daily Urban Action Space, Reisen,F. van and Tacken, M. (Eds), A future of Tele-work: Towards a New Urban Planning Con-cept, Delft: Koninklijk Nederlands, Aardrijk-skundig Genootschap: Delft University ofTechnology, Faculty of Architecture, pp. 125-35.

Jack M. NillesEducated as a physicist,Jack Nilles headed thepreliminary design ofseveral space vehicles andcommunications systemsfor the US Air Force andNASA and was a consul-tant to PresidentsKennedy’s and Johnson’sScience Advisory Council,the National Science Foun-dation and other federaldepartments. He joinedthe University of SouthernCalifornia as Director forInterdisciplinary Researchand began his empiricalresearch on telecommut-ing and teleworking, termshe coined, in 1973. He hasled a number of studies ofpresent and future impactsof information technologyand created the standardsby which major telecom-muting projects arejudged. He has developedand/or evaluated telecom-muting projects forFortune 100 companies,state governments, thecity of Los Angeles, andcompanies and govern-ment agencies internation-ally. He is author of TheTelecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff.His newest book, MakingTelecommuting Happen, isa manual for teleworkprogramme developmentand management. He iscurrently involved in devel-oping a series of longrange forecasts of theglobal impacts of tele-work. He can be reachedvia email: [email protected].

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© Patricia L. Mokhtarian

The information highway: just because we’re on itdoesn’t mean we know where we’re going

Patricia L. Mokhtarian Assistant Professor of Civil and EnvironmentalEngineering at the University of California, Davis, USA

Looks beyond the hype sur-rounding telecommunicationsand suggests that the physi-cal aspects of the informationhighway are currently short ofthe ideal and further, thatwhen eventually in place, itmay not be ideal. Examinessome commonly held beliefsabout the transportation,geographic and economicimpacts of telecommunica-tions. Suggests numerousfurther research and policyissues. Concludes by remind-ing us that telecom technol-ogy is inherently neutral. Itcan facilitate travel reduc-tions and geographic decen-tralization and economicdevelopment, but not alone –we, as policy makers andconsumers must have somecontrol over the outcome; thecompact city made obsoleteand settlements dispersedthroughout the countrysideshould only happen if peopledecide that is what they wantto happen.

Introduction

Telecommunications, like many other tech-nological advances, is often accompanied by alot of hype, an optimistic, rather naïve, andfrequently aggressively self-serving over-selling of its potential. Steve Finlay of BCTelephone in Vancouver, British Columbiacoined the phrase Information SuperHYPE-way – an apt description of the current stateof the much-vaunted info highway. We owe agreat debt to two other Canadians, Lis andIan Angus, for explaining to us why the infor-mation highway is like teenage sex:• Everyone thinks about it a lot.• Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it.• Everyone talks about doing it, but almost

no one is really doing it.• The few who are doing it are not doing it

very well.• Everyone hopes it will be great when they

finally do do it (Gordon, 1994).

I suggest that not only do the physical aspectsof the Info Highway currently fall short of theideal, but that the impacts of the info highwaywhen it eventually is in place may also not beideal. As a society, we have this touching butusually misguided faith in the ability of tech-nology to solve problems that are essentiallyhuman – whether individual or institutional– in nature. The purpose of this paper is toremind us to look behind the hyperbole aboutwhat the info highway is and what it will dofor us, to peel away the exaggeration and findthe reality underneath. First, I will describethree attributes of “conventional wisdom”(CW). Then, I will discuss three examples ofthe received wisdom regarding the urbanimpacts of telecommunications technology.

I will briefly present some suggestions forfuture research into these impacts, and closewith three cautionary observations.

Three attributes of conventionalwisdom

At least three attributes that characterizeconventional wisdom can be identified. Thefirst is that:

It is hard to pin down its origin, and (evenif it starts out accurate) it often losessomething in the translationAt a 1991 UC Irvine conference on telecom-muting, Professor Ilan Salomon, the keynotespeaker, traced the “genealogy” of apublished forecast that telecommuting maysubstitute for 12 per cent of all trips. Thatforecast cited three sources for corrobora-tion. He looked up those three sources. One ofthem contained no explicit forecast of tripsubstitution. A second source in turn citedthree other studies for corroboration (at leastone of which also contained no quantitativeforecast), and that second source also con-tained important qualifications of its findingsthat were completely ignored by the laterstudy which cited it (Salomon, 1995).

At the same conference, consultant JohnNilles gave a droll speech speculating on theorigin of the oft repeated factoid that telecom-muting results in a 20 per cent increase inproductivity. More recently, ProfessorSalomon has attempted, without success, totrace a brochure claiming a 200 per centincrease in productivity back to its origins.Perhaps it was originally reported as 20.0 andthe decimal point got lost.

The message is: Be sceptical. Dare I say theobvious? Do not believe everything you reador hear. Even peer-reviewed papers in acade-mic journals are guilty of careless citations,and they in turn are inaccurately cited byothers.

The second feature of the conventionalwisdom’s argument is that:

It contains both truth and fiction in varyingquantitiesThis of course is what makes it so insidious.Consider a recent magazine advertisement bya major software company. The ad states, “It’snot WHO you know, it’s WHAT you know. Thedays of getting somewhere in the businessworld because you know the right people –whoever and whatever they are this week –are ending. Hallelujah”.

Well yes, telecom does, in some but not allcases, • permit greater access to more people, • flatten the organizational pyramid,• decentralize control,

This paper owes asubstantial intellectual debtto my colleague Ilan Salomonof the Hebrew University inJerusalem, whose criticalquestions about the impactsof telecommunications havegreatly influenced my ownthinking.

[ 25 ]

Patricia L. MokhtarianThe information highway:just because we’re on itdoesn’t mean we knowwhere we’re going


• make it easier for merit to be recognized,and so on.

But do you really think, • that it is now no longer important to “net-

work” in the human sense of the word? • that you will hear the same gossip – excuse

me, I mean valuable inside information –from random strangers that you get fromyour carefully cultivated and well-placedsources? – that your e-mail messagebypassing the chain of command willreceive equal attention whether the recipi-ent actually knows you or not?

I once sent an e-mail message “cold” to aneditor of a journal, asking him if he consid-ered the paper summarized in the attachedabstract to be appropriate for his journal.When a month had passed and I had receivedno reply to my message, I fell back to the low-tech approach and telephoned him. “Oh,” hesaid, “I get 200 e-mail messages a day and Idelete most of them without reading them.That must have been what happened.”

Here was a person who was clearly pluggedinto the information highway and used tooperating on it – he promptly e-mailed me thejournal’s style requirements and copyrighttransfer form – but, so much for “access”!

The software company ad is just one exam-ple of the mixture of truth and fiction in CW.Our challenge is to separate one from theother.

It oversimplifiesIt does not worry about the fine print, theexceptions.

Einstein once said: “Things should be madeas simple as possible, but not simpler”. If onlywe knew where that invisible line was. Someexamples of this feature are presented below.

Some popular factoids about theimpacts of telecom technology

Let us examine three commonly-held beliefsabout the transportation, geographic, andeconomic impacts of telecommunications.The first belief is that:

Telecommunications will reducecongestion and improve air qualityJudging by the number of policy documentsand regulations which have favourably men-tioned telecommuting, this is now the expec-tation or at least hope of a number of plan-ners and policy makers. And I support thesepolicies, and believe that telecommunica-tions, at least telecommuting, will have adirect positive impact on travel. What is thecatch? The question is how much of an

impact, and what the indirect and system-wide impacts will be.

At UC Davis, we recently did a study inwhich we synthesized the findings regardingthe transportation-related impacts oftelecommuting from a number of empiricalevaluations of pilot projects (Mokhtarian et al.,1995). Two of the most rigorous evaluationstook place among California State workersand in the Puget Sound (Seattle) Telecommut-ing Demonstration Project, which was spear-headed by the Washington State EnergyOffice. Both studies found quite similarresults: on average, telecommuters travelled52-54 miles on regular weekdays, compared toabout 13 miles on telecommuting days – asaving of 75 per cent. Most of all of that reduc-tion was due to the elimination of the worktrip.

We thought we had placed this result quitefirmly in context. But when the paper wassubmitted for publication, one of the review-ers commented that it seemed generally well-done and well-written, but the claim thattelecommuting would reduce travel by 75 percent was too extravagant to be credible.

This is a classic example of the CW over-simplifying – not reading the fine print. Wesuddenly had visions of this number beingpulled out of context and carelessly quotedjust as the reviewer did: “telecommuting willreduce travel by 75 per cent”. So we insertedeven more caveats – in the text, in the tables,everywhere we possibly could. What arethose caveats?

First of all, our number represents 75 percent of travel on a weekday by employedtelecommuters. It is not 75 per cent of alltravel, which would include weekends, vaca-tions, and travel by non-workers. Further-more, telecommuters are not typical of allworkers. An important finding of our studywas that telecommuters, not surprisingly,tend to live farther from work than non-telecommuters – fully twice as far, on average.At least, the early adopters of telecommutingfound in these pilot programmes did. Thecommute trip constitutes about 75 per cent ofthe weekday travel for these long-distancecommuters; hence eliminating that commutetrip has the noted result. It is likely that astelecommuting moves into the mainstream,commute lengths for telecommuters will dropcloser to the overall average – in which casethe average travel savings of telecommutingwill decline, both in absolute terms and as apercentage of weekday travel.

Furthermore, a 75 per cent reduction obvi-ously only applies to telecommuters them-selves, not to the population as a whole. Anyassessment of the aggregate impacts oftelecommuting must take into account how

[ 26 ]



many people are telecommuting, and howoften. Our study estimated that in 1991, 6 percent of the California workforce was telecom-muting 1.2 days a week (24 per cent of thetime) on average. This translated to a whop-ping saving of one-half per cent in vehicle-miles-travelled and in transportation-relatedfuel consumption in California (it would be amuch smaller proportion of all energy con-sumption). This effect is well within measure-ment error, i.e. certainly not strong enough todetect by any kind of “field measurements”.Notice how easily 75 per cent became 0.5 percent!

It may be said, “But that is now”, or 1991, tobe exact. Surely telecommuting will increaseconsiderably, and have a much bigger impactin the future? Again, it all depends on what isreasonable to assume. If the number oftelecommuters increases four- or sixfold (to,say, 25-35 per cent of the workforce), and allelse remains constant, then the fuel savingswould increase to a dizzying 2-3 per cent. Butwe have just suggested that the savings pertelecommuting occasion is likely to declineover time as telecommuters become morerepresentative of the population as a whole.And what about latent or induced demand?

Even if the freeways ever could becomeclear, it would not last for long: people wouldcreate new trips, and change modes, and desti-nations, and do all kinds of things to takeadvantage of the new capacity made availableto them. And what about the trip generationeffect of telecommunications? There is a lot ofevidence to indicate that trips will be createdby new technological applications as well aseliminated. These issues of latent demand andtrip generation are explored extensively in tworecent studies sponsored by the US Depart-ment of Energy (1994a,b).

Bottom line: Do not count too heavily on thetrip reduction benefits of telecommunicationstechnology. Yes, they will be there – at themargin. But they will be counteracted andperhaps completely swamped out by impactsin the opposite direction.

The second commonly-held belief I want toexamine is that:

Telecommunications will make locationirrelevantThis CW has several variations:• telecommunications will create even

greater urban sprawl by making it possiblefor people to move even farther from work(thus, incidentally, potentially negatingsome of those transportation savings thatthe CW was so confident would occur. Thatis by the way a fourth characteristic of CW– it often contradicts itself);

• everyone will move to the countryside, or tothose scenic resort villages in the moun-tains or to that island in the Puget Sound;

• jobs will haemorrhage to cheap labourmarkets offshore.

Again, there is doubtless some truth to thesestatements: not only manufacturing and dataentry but professional jobs such as softwaredevelopment have been placed overseas.

According to the popular press, resort townslike Telluride, Colorado have been invaded byaffluent “lone eagle” telecommuters andmobile executives, driving up land prices to thepoint that native residents can no longer affordto buy a home in the town in which they grewup.

But human settlement patterns are far frombecoming completely homogenized, and tech-nology is far from eliminating locationaladvantage. In reality, there are sound reasonswhy cities as we know them will endure:• agglomeration economies: telecom will not

erase the need for face-to-face interaction orfor goods movement (we are still going toneed not only food, but clothing and shelterand other tangible things that cannot be“downloaded”); it will continue to be moreefficient for these activities to be conductedin dense settlements;

• the massive already-built environment(Mandeville, 1983);

• the tendency of similar or inter-relatedindustries (or groups of people) to clustertogether (Muth, 1985);

• distinctive geography, climate, and otheramenities;

• differences in infrastructure capacity andtopology;

• the role of cities as cultural, political, andeconomic centres (Gottman, 1983).

Depending on how the decision variables areweighted in each instance, the optimal locationfor a particular individual or firm may be theurban centre, the urban periphery, or an exur-ban or rural area. But most location choicesare likely to be incremental accretions towhere most activities are currently located. So,we are likely to see simultaneously, continuedgrowth in metropolitan areas, emergence ofmultiple nuclei in expanding metropolitanareas, growth of smaller cities into regionalhubs and specialized centres, and some move-ment into currently rural areas. In otherwords, evolution, not revolution.

The third and final commonly-held beliefneeding scrutiny is that:

Telecommunications will stimulateeconomic developmentWhether in a rural or urban setting, the hopeis the same: that providing advanced telecom

[ 27 ]



services will result in a competitive advan-tage that will attract jobs and dollars to thearea. However, Abler (1987) and others pointout that communications networks are two-way streets, so to speak. The same technologythat, it is hoped, will bring economic benefitsfrom major metropolitan areas to the periph-ery provides the opportunity to vacuumresources from the periphery to the morepowerful urban core.

The belief in telecom as an instrument ofeconomic prosperity sounds suspiciously likethe factoids often used to justify enormousinvestments in transportation infrastructure:this subway or that beltway will increaseeconomic development. To give this a realitytest, pick a depressed area of the USA, saydowntown Detroit. Will building a new free-way through downtown Detroit revitalize it?It is ludicrous on the face of it; numerousother factors must come together to achievehealthy economic growth. Infrastructure maybe necessary, but it is certainly not sufficient.Yet we often seem to subscribe to the “Field ofDreams” school of economic thought: if weinstall a fibre optic loop, or ISDN, or a teleportor a smart building, or a telecottage in thisurban area or that remote town, “they willcome”.

I have met with a few rural telecottagedevelopers from around the world, and haveread about a number of others. I am currentlydirecting the implementation and evaluationof 12 urban and suburban telecommutingcentres throughout California, and havestudied several others. It appears to me thatrural telecottages and urban telecentres alikehave a very mixed record to date. Many(although not all) have closed following theconclusion of a heavily subsidized demon-stration period. Our study of urban telecom-muting centres in California shows that, ofthose which have been open more than sixmonths (but have not yet closed!), occupancylevels average about 17 per cent. As for ruraltelecottages, not all of them have theexpressed goal of job creation, and most ofthem have other goals besides that. But anyjob creation (or even attraction of existingjobs from elsewhere) that does take place isby no means automatic – “because ‘it’ isthere”. Rather it is the product of careful,labour-intensive job and skills training, ofextensive and tireless marketing, and ofpatience and an ability to stay in it for thelong haul.

Message: Getting the technology in place isonly one step, not even necessarily the firststep, and probably the easiest step. Almostinevitably, the crucial barriers to achievingthe desired economic benefits are not techno-

logical, but institutional, social, economic,and personal.

Research and policy issues

A number of research studies would be ofvalue in increasing our understanding of thetypes of impacts of telecommunications tech-nology considered here. Space permits only abrief mention of the possibilities; each sug-gestion below carries within it numerousspecific questions of interest.

In urban areas, we could:• track telecommuters longitudinally to

assess long-term impacts on residentiallocation, job choice and travel;

• continue to study the role of telecommuni-cations in business location and relocationdecisions;

• analyse the short- and long-term trans-portation impacts of those business deci-sions, at both aggregate and disaggregatelevels; and

• explore ways to strengthen the role oftelecommunications infrastructure insupporting the urban core.

In urban areas, we could:• monitor telecommunications-facilitated

residential and business relocation tohigh-amenity areas such as resort towns.

Regarding the use of telecommunications forrural and small town economic development,we could:• learn more about successful “gardening”

(local job creation) projects;• demonstrate and evaluate rural telecom-

muting centres as in Kentucky and else-where;

• analyse the success of job shifting strate-gies such as those being followed inKansas and Japan.

Internationally, we could:• monitor the location of firms and

employees offshore, with distinctionsbetween the situations for data entry work-ers and skilled professionals likely to be ofinterest.

Any number of policy issues are implicit inthese studies. One such issue is the ability(and desirability) to provide infrastructure tosupport large shifts in population to theurban fringe or to exurban areas. There isalso an equity issue: the greater ability ofmiddle and upper class workers to live any-where they choose will contribute to theongoing socio-demographic fragmentation ofsociety. And, how to achieve or maintaineconomically viable central business dis-tricts will continue to be a concern.

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Conclusions

I do believe that telecommunications has anenormous potential to change society. I justdo not believe that those changes will neces-sarily be simple, or on net in the expected ordesired direction. For that reason, I do believein monitoring and analysing trends andimpacts of telecom technology, and proac-tively planning to harness that technology forthe public good.

In closing, it is important to rememberthree things:

Telecommunications technology isinherently neutralIt can facilitate travel reductions and geo-graphic decentralization and economic devel-opment, but it alone does not cause thesethings. It can also facilitate the oppositeresults: increased travel, geographic central-ization, loss of jobs off-shore and increasingpolarization of the haves and have-nots.External forces will determine how technol-ogy is used and what its impacts are. We, aspolicy makers and as consumers, have somecontrol over the outcome. The well-knowngeographer Jean Gottman (1983) wrote:

The organization of space is man-made; it isa product of the collective will of the partici-pants … Living and working together incompact settlements may seem unnecessaryonce the technology to overcome distance iswell-developed. However, it does not neces-sarily follow that the compact city has beenmade obsolete and that settlements willdisperse throughout the countryside. It alldepends on what people decide to do.

There are no easy answersTechnology may solve some problems whilecreating others. We will still be faced withhard work and hard choices to achieve adesired outcome. Public policy decisions havehistorically had an important effect on urbanform. Governments have wielded their zon-ing authority to block or downsize develop-ment in the face of favourable market forces.Conversely, they have also attracted develop-ment through tax breaks, provision of infra-structure, and other incentives (Giuliano,1989). Today, policy choices can help deter-mine the extent to which telecommunicationstechnology will support propagating urbansprawl even more widely, and the extent towhich location activity will be channelled

into more efficient higher-density, balancedland use, and infill development patterns.

And finally,

Be sceptical, be realisticRead the fine print. Ask questions. I am notsuggesting planning paralysis – that is, wait-ing till we have all the answers before acting –we often must go with our instincts and lim-ited knowledge to get anything done. Butwhile proceeding on instincts and limitedknowledge, solicit opposing viewpoints, andlisten to them. Monitor trends carefully to seeif they match your instinct. And supportresearch that will help provide answers tothose important unknowns.

ReferencesAbler, R.F. (1987), “What if somebody built a tele-

port and nobody called? Communications andregional development in the United States”,Presented at the OECD Seminar on Informa-tion and Telecommunications Technology forRegional Development, Athens, 7-9 December1987.

Giuliano, G. (1989), “New directions for under-standing transportation and land use”, Envi-ronment and Planning, Vol. A 21, pp. 145-59.

Gottman, J. (1983), Urban settlements and tele-communications, Ekistics, Vol. 50, pp. 411-6.

Gordon, G. (1994), “Travels along the informationsuperhypeway”, Telecommuting Review: TheGordon Report, 9 March.

Mandeville, T. (1983), “The spatial effects of infor-mation technology”, Futures, pp. 65-70.

Mokhtarian, P.L., Handy, S.L. and Salomon, I.(1995), “Methodological issues in the estima-tion of travel, energy, and air quality impactsof telecommuting”, Transportation Research,Vol. A 29 No. A4, pp. 283-302.

Muth, R.F. (1985), “Models of land-use, housing,and rent: an evaluation”, Journal of RegionalScience, Vol. 25 No. 4, pp. 593-606.

Salomon, I. (1995), “Social forecasting and technolog-ical change: telecommuting as a case study oftravel substitution”, unpublished manuscript.

US Department of Energy (1994a), Energy, Emis-sions, and Social Consequences of Telecommut-ing, DOE/PO-0026, Office of Policy, Planning,and Program Evaluation, Washington DC,June.

US Department of Energy (1994b), BeyondTelecommuting: A New Paradigm for the Effectof Telecommunications on Travel, DOE/ER-0626, Office of Energy Research, Office ofScientific Computing, Washington DC, September.

Patricia L. MokhtarianAssistant professor of Civiland Environmental Engi-neering at UC Davis. Fol-lowing completion of herPhD in OperationsResearch from Northwest-ern University in 1981,she came to Los Angelesto work for the SouthernCalifornia Association ofGovernments. That metro-politan planning organiza-tion asked her to explorethe potential of telecom-munications applicationsto reduce congestion andimprove air quality for theregion. She becameintrigued with the capabili-ties of telecommunica-tions technologies, andwith their impacts ontransportation in particu-lar and society in general,and has been studyingthose issues ever since.From an initial position ofnaïve optimism about thepotential of telecom toreduce travel, she hasreached a more critical(but not negative) posi-tion. Issues she would liketo see studied furtherinclude: long-term impactsof telecom on locationdecisions and urban form;telecommunications as atool for economic develop-ment; short-term traveland communicationimpacts of online con-sumer-oriented informa-tion/transaction servicesand community networks;and travel and communica-tion patterns of mobileworkers.

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© Horace Mitchell 1996

The social implications of telework: the UKexperience

Horace Mitchell Telework Practitioner, Observer and Policy Adviser, UK

Gives findings of extensiveresearch into the key socialimplications of teleworking,carried out over the last fiveyears in the UK. Gives exam-ples of telework parametersat both micro and macrolevels for employers to con-sider when making strategicdecisions about siting worklocations; to which part of theworld he/she will contractout; or subcontract signifi-cant operations. Feels weshould not concentrate onprotecting existing paidworkers against the perils ofworking at home rather thanin an office, thereby failing toassess and respond to theimplications of the “flight ofwork” from higher cost, lowerskilled to lower cost, higherskilled environments. Equallywe must not overprotectthose in conventional employ-ment against the “risk” thatthey may have to move into anewer work style.

Why “telework parameters”?

Our field work over the last half decade inBritain in trying to understand better some ofthe key social implications of telework hasinvolved consultation with a wide range ofinterested parties, including teleworkers,technology and infrastructure suppliers,employers, teleworker representatives, spe-cialist telework practitioners. In this work[1]we encountered two significant stumblingblocks to effective discussion:• The tendency for the parties to any particu-

lar discussion to arrive with considerable“baggage” in the form of pre-conceivednotions of “what telework is” and “whattelework is about”, which in many caseshad led to pre-judged conclusions as to suchissues as “whether telework is a good thingor not” and “whether telework is somethingto be promoted or to be avoided”.

• The tendency for discussion of issues andpolicies to be sidetracked into semanticdebate or undermined by semantic misun-derstanding – for example one party wouldassume the discussion to be about “the shiftof existing employees from office-based tohome-based teleworking”, another wouldassume it was about the opportunities forself-employed people to avoid travel; a thirdmight assume it was about the shift ofemployment and work opportunities fromhigher cost to lower cost economies. Theseare of course quite different subjects, but allrevolve round the concept of telework.Sometimes discussion revolves aroundvarious aspects of all of these perceptions oftelework, making it impossible to achieveconsensus or even an agreement aboutissues and priorities for debate andresearch.

We quickly concluded as follows:• In any discussion of “telework” issues and

policies it is vital to be clear about (and tostate clearly) what aspect or characteristicof telework is being considered; for example“this discussion is in the context of officebased employees shifting to home basedwhile remaining employees”; or “this dis-cussion is in the context of teleworkenabling jobs and work opportunities to

move from ‘higher net cost’ to ‘lower netcost’ economies or places”. When broadeconomic, employment or social implica-tions are being considered, it is importantwithin the debate to be clear about whichdimensions of telework have influencedwhich elements of discussion and conclu-sions.

• It is equally important to be clear as to thedirection and level of focus of discussion;for example when we discuss issues arisingfrom the fact that much work (and espe-cially “new work”) can now readily bemoved from a higher cost to a lower costplace, both the discussion and our conclu-sions will be quite different depending onwhether we are talking about “theemployer’s office versus the employee’shome”, about “cities versus the peripheralrural areas”, or about “Europe versusIndia”.

At first sight this might appear to underminethe possibility of any conclusions or report-ing about “telework”, since one should say“we are reporting on the implications ofemployees moving from office based to homebased working”, not “we are reporting on theimplications of telework”. However this is notthe case – indeed the breadth of impact oftelework makes it all the more important tosynthesise our understanding of its impactsand to strive for consensus, since narrowconsideration of just one facet often leads tofalse conclusions. What is important is that a“Report on the Social Implications of Tele-work” (for example) should very clearly statewhat aspects of telework have been consid-ered and at what level of focus. In particular itshould be clear about how the differentaspects of telework have influenced any con-clusions or recommendations. In particular,if a report (or section of a report) is based on aspecific aspect (for example the adoption ofhome-based working by companies and theiremployees) this must be very clearly statedand the report should also make clearwhether the wider implications have or havenot influenced its conclusions and to whatextent.

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Horace MitchellThe social implications oftelework: the UK experience


Examples of telework parameters

The figures following provide examples ofsets of telework parameters. The “macro”aspects are perhaps of more interest to somepublic agencies’ considerations of socialimplications, but research has shown that“macro” discussion has to be clearlyinformed by “micro” understanding if it is toreach realistic conclusions.

“Micro” level parameters – individualteleworkers and/or tactical decisions inparticular companiesAt the “micro” level, when discussing indi-vidual teleworkers or telework policies for aparticular company, we have expanded theoriginal “four perspectives” identified in the1991-1992 study to a suggested seven mainparameters (Figure 1):1 The person – his or her attitudes, prefer-

ences, skills, motivation etc.2 The “employment” context – is there paid

employment with a single employer? Port-folio working? Self employment with mul-tiple customers? Participation in a virtualfirm?

3 The task set – what is the nature of themain work to be done by the person – cre-ative; reactive/responsive; structured vs.unstructured; concentrative vs. commu-nicative.

4 The nature of external relationships – withcustomers, suppliers, audiences, relatedenterprises; for example does a high pro-portion of the customers expect and prefer

to meet face to face? Do they prefer this tobe at supplier premises?

5 The locational context – are we consideringthe possibility of people being fully homebased, or partly home based, or telecentre/telecottage based, or mainly mobile? In thecase of home-based telework, how wellsuited is the home? Can defended space beprovided? Are partners/family welcomingand supportive of home-based working?

6 The nature of internal work relationships –to what extent does the work or the per-son’s motivation depend on other mem-bers of a team, the manager or peoplebeing managed (reporting staffs), personalnetworks of contacts? What are the pre-ferred workstyles of people with whomthere is significant interdependency?

7 The technology context – in a company, theextent to which it already uses relevanttechnologies; in networks of relationships,the extent to which others in the networksare comfortable with “distance working”and use the relevant technologies; in thelocational context the quality and cost oftelecommunications wherever the tele-worker’s home (or office) is sited.

Even brief consideration of such a list ofparameters demonstrates that no one modelof telework (moving existing employees fromoffice based to home based for example) canpossibly be “promoted” as being generallyapplicable to people and companies and tasksand homes. Table I qualifies some of the char-acteristics for each parameter, in terms that acompany should be looking for when it con-siders whether (and to what extent) to pro-mote “home-based teleworking” to its ownemployees. Similar sets of “desirable charac-teristics” for different perspectives on tele-work can readily be adduced once the set ofoverall parameters has been identified. Thepresent list of seven is not put forward asbeing complete, merely convenient. The ques-tion of “cost”, though often a prime motivatorfor both teleworker and employer, is regardedas an underlying driving or restraining factornot a “telework parameter”.

“Macro” level parameters – strategicconsiderations for companies ornations/regionsFigure 2 suggests six main parameters to beconsidered at the “macro” level. An entrepre-neur/employer will consider these whenmaking strategic decisions about where tosite major work locations or to which parts ofthe world he will contract out or subcontractsignificant operations. A local, regional,national or European government will con-sider the same parameters but from a different

Figure 1Telework parameters: people and tasks – the“micro” level

The person(attitudes, preferences, skills, etc.)

Employment context(employer, self employed, virtual firm, etc.)

Task set(creative, reactive, structured,unstructured, etc.)

Locational context(home, business centre, etc.)

External relationships(customers, target audiences, etc.)

“Internal” relationships(task teams, personal networks, etc.)

Technology context(technology rich, low tech, etc.)

Source: ©Management Technology Associates 1995

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perspective when framing its telework-related policies and when developing plansfor economic development and the creation ofwork opportunities:1 Geographical – are we considering the

characteristics of (and policiesfor/towards) a small locality (Rome,County Antrim), a region (Northern Eng-land, Southern Italy), a country (Scotland,the UK, The Netherlands), a wider region(Scandinavia, Mediterranean Europe) or aworld region (Europe, North America,South Asia); the further we get from thelocal, the more dangerous it is to general-ize. For example “Europe” cannot be typi-fied as a “high cost employment region” oras particularly strong in particular skills,whereas the City of London can be veryclearly typified against these and othercharacteristics.

2 Sectoral – telework has quite differentcharacteristics when applied to (say) ship-building or motor manufacture as com-pared with computer programming orrestaurant catering; companies considerinto which markets they will move,regional economic developers considerhow to migrate their economies from sta-tic or failing sectors into stable or growthsectors. General policies have to under-stand whether they are biased towards“old/failing” sectors or towards“new/growing” ones. “Unbiased” policiesgenerally tend to favour the old.

3 Product and delivery characteristics – forexample the “product” of a top class inter-national hotel relies heavily on the “per-sonal presence” of a multitude of trained,willing and presentable staff (everything isdone on site), while the “product” of theFormule 1 chain of France (offering thecheapest possible overnight stay) dispenseswith customer contact staff almostentirely (everything possible is done viatelework); both companies and regionshave to take a view as to what level ofattention to pay to what kind ofproduct/delivery mix. General policiesmust again be informed by the need tounderstand such bias and be deliberateabout it.

4 Skills context – in corporate strategy, whatkinds of skills do we need and what will weneed; in regional policies what kinds ofskills do we have and what can/should weplan to develop. General policies again willtend to favour either the future or the pastand must be conscious of this.

5 Regulatory context – in corporate strategy,is the regulatory environment welcomingor inimical; in regional policies are weto focus on “protecting workers” or

Figure 2Telework parameters: jobs, trade, workopportunities – the “macro” level

Geographical context(local, regional, national,European, global)

Sectoral context(e.g. old sectors/new methods,new markets/innovation)

Product and delivery characteristics(e.g. nature of “supplier presence”at delivery point)

Skills context(e.g. scarce versus plentiful, shortversus long learning curve)

Regulatory context(e.g. progressive versus defensive,free market versus protective)

Policy context(e.g. employment led versus tradeled; strategic versus tactical)

Table IPeople and tasks – existing employeesbecoming home based

Person Likes to work at/from home, good com-municator, confident in self and role

Task set Potentially very wide, includes mobilestaff, any “office” work, any “communica-tions” work except face to face tasks atfixed customer-facing premises (e.g.restaurant manager)

Employment Company and individual manager comfort-able with managing at a distance, oppor-tunist and energized culture, managersand employees empowered and self-managing

Location Home with defended space, family/part-ners accept/welcome home-based work-ing, good telecoms locally, only geograph-ical constraint is need for customer-related travel

External Any, except face to face at customer-relationships facing premises

Internal Well established “networking” environ-relationships ment, good communications, reasonable

stability of organization

Technology Well established electronic networkingfacilities, resilient IT infrastructure,relatively high IT investment profile,telecoms and integration competence

Source: © Management Technology Associates 1995

Source: © Management Technology Associates 1995

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“encouraging innovation”. In today’sEurope this is perhaps the most importantissue.

6 Policy context – in corporate strategy, theextent to which (for example) the enter-prise seeks to be self sufficient or to slimdown to core skills only; in regional poli-cies whether the political philosophy is(for example) expansionist or defensive,long term or short term, conservative orprogressive, free market or planned econ-omy, accelerating change in a desireddirection or cleaving to what is known bestand most “comfortable”.

Table II summarizes a possible set of localpolicy stances, approximately asrecommended for regional economic develop-ers in Management Technology Associates’report Telework and Teletrade: The Local andRegional Response (Mitchell and Skyrme,1994).

Relevance to the present “socialimplications” work and report

Any consideration of telework at Europeanlevel cannot avoid being strongly influencedby what most reports call the need for “jobcreation”, and our own investigations suggestshould be regarded as the need to “increasework opportunities” (see below). Once this isaccepted, whatever the geographical scale (orwithin whatever political entity) the highestlevel issue becomes: (How) can we arrangematters so that the net work opportunitiesarising within our boundaries or brought infrom elsewhere exceed or at the very leastequal the net work opportunities that migrateacross our boundaries to another region?

At European level this translates as “(How)can we use telework and related techniques toshow that there is a net increase in workopportunities for Europeans?” If this were apublic paper I would of course be more posi-tive and omit the parentheses around “How”!

If we are to be really ambitious we mightrefine this question by adding: (How) can wedo this in such a way that the overall qualityof working life in Europe is enhanced?

And we might further add: What furthersteps can we take so that this (a net increasein better work opportunities) becomes thelong-term trend as well as having a measur-able short-term impact?

Of course these questions present signifi-cant difficulties. For a start, so far as I can tellthere is as yet no consistent effort at measur-ing whether Europe is a net gainer or loser ofwork opportunities “across the Europeanboundary” in our progress towards an Infor-mation Society. (Establishing a “EuropeanTelework Observatory” that starts to under-take and report such consistent measurementappears to be an urgent priority.)

Second, politicians and the media still talkof “creating jobs” when there is a very cleartrend across the industrialized world awayfrom “jobs”, in the form of “full-time perma-nent paid employment”, and towards a muchricher and more varied mix of full-time andpart-time work, work for employers or selfemployed working, portfolio working, volun-tary work (unpaid or where pay is not thesignificant factor), periods out of work, peri-ods in education or training etc. It is difficultto make sense in discussing telework unlessthis varied mix is accepted as being what“work” is now about, but almost all reportspay only lip service to this before concentrat-ing on issues that are firmly rooted in thepast of “one employer, one job, one worker”and two now unjustifiable assumptions:

Table IIJobs, trade, work opportunities – local eco-nomic development perspective

Geography Operational focus is local, strategy focusis global markets and threats as seenlocally

Sectors Focus on sectors that have existing localstrengths and impacts; globalgrowth/opportunity sectors; sectors thatpotentially could employ local skills

Products and searching for innovation in marketing,delivery delivery and cost reduction in traditional

local products/strengths; driving aware-ness and fostering innovation in newgrowth sectors; driving “global perspec-tive” for all local enterprises

Skills Auditing existing skills base againstrequirements of global growth sectors;enhancing core “information societyskills”; strengthening and reinforcingexisting and still relevant local skills;strengthening education and trainingaccess and quality regardless of source

Regulatory Seeking to be an attractive place atwhich to employ people; an attractiveplace at which to base “future market”enterprises

Policy Balancing “protection of weak” withpromotion of initiative and innovation;striving for local independence to pursuelocal interests; contributing actively towider policy debate and formulation

Source: © Management Technology Associates, 1995

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1 That the terms and circumstances of“work” are largely determined by employ-ers; this is true only of people who are “inand expecting to remain in permanent,full-time paid employment with a singleemployer” – such people are already aminority of “working people” or the“potential workforce” in much of Europe.

2 That employers “are responsible” andemployees “need protection” (see below).

Third, experience with the Internet, ourmain current practise ground for the Infor-mation Society, indicates that increasingwork opportunities for Europeans is verymuch about innovation and the seizing ofopportunities, not about analysing or negoti-ating new work conditions in the context of(relatively) fixed “jobs”. Much of our employ-ment related legislation appears to assume a“relatively fixed job” but practical experiencein every sphere from government administra-tion to banking or the railroads suggests thatthe assumption of fixed jobs is deeply mis-leading and a serious barrier to progress.

All our research into and experience oftelework suggests that:• It is most prevalent among self employed

people and portfolio workers.• Where it does exist in companies, it is more

likely to be formally developed in compa-nies that have a “progressive” (expectationsbased) rather than a conservative (agree-ments based) approach to employee-employer relations.

• In companies that still have a more conserv-ative (formalist, agreement based) environ-ment, much of the telework that goes on isinformal or even illicit – it has been tacitlyagreed between the manager and theemployee on a local basis, sometimes whenthe company even has a formal “no tele-work” policy.

Much of our employment regulation, healthand safety legislation, and social securityprovision have evolved in the context of mostpeople being in relatively fixed and stable“jobs”, working for a “corporate” employer.It seems reasonable to assume this may nolonger be wholly appropriate for an era inwhich a very high proportion of “workers”will either be self employed or will be work-ing “just now (but not for long)” for one ormore rather fragile small firms and microenterprises, or will be “between work”, orwill be working in some voluntary role, orpart-time for several employers, or in somemixture of all of these. We still tend, for exam-ple, to base the main discussion of regulationor legislation on the assumption of anemployer, a job and a worker, then turn to

“self employment” as though this were tosome extent an aberration.

As a simple example of such thinking, somegovernment administrations do not allowworkers to decide for themselves whether tobe self employed. Anyone who wishes to beself employed has to prove that he is not “inpractice” an employee. The clear implicationis that “employment” is normal, “self employ-ment” is somehow special. It is difficult todetect any sound basis for such thinking,except that “we make the laws on the assump-tion that most people who work for moneywill do so through permanent paid employ-ment” – scarcely conducive to innovation andchange!

There is also an implied assumption inmuch regulation that “the employer isresponsible” and by implication “the workeris not responsible”. Employment law (and to agreat extent health and safety regulation) isframed to “protect” the employee againstmisdemeanour or default or carelessness onthe part of the employer. It is mainly left tothe civil or criminal law to protect employersagainst default on the part of employees.Employees are protected against losing theirjobs unexpectedly, employers have difficultyprotecting themselves against losing staffunexpectedly. Many high tech growth compa-nies whose key staff have “walked off ” andstarted a successful competitor might justifi-ably feel the employer needs protectionagainst the employees. The classical stance isonly justifiable if one assumes employersgenerally have the whip hand – they are largewealthy enterprises easily able to outspendand outgun the humble employee in court. Itdoes not make much sense to the entrepre-neur who has mortgaged his house to prop uphis fragile company and take on three or fourstaff. The classical stance makes sense in acompany engaged in Taylorist managementof routine production activities in which thehuman work element is itself routine andwhere the employer does indeed make all thesignificant decisions. It does not make sensein a dynamic, market-led enterprise that isdependent for success on empowered employ-ees and contractors making the day-to-dayand minute-by-minute decisions they believeto be right for the enterprise.

None of this should be taken to imply“approval” of the new chaotic mix of workstyles and relationships and disapproval ofthe old style of mass employment in largeundertakings. My own belief is that thechange is an inevitable social and economicdevelopment that can be positive if we under-stand it and work to help people to respondpositively to it, but very damaging if weeither ignore it or pretend that it can be

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reversed or even delayed by some kind of“rearguard action”. The change itself is nei-ther good nor bad, what makes it good or badis our response.

If we are to develop a European environ-ment of high skills, plentiful work opportuni-ties, innovation, entrepreneurship, growthbased on small firms, acceptance and rapiddeployment of new technologies, a highdegree of individual freedom of choice ofwhere and under what conditions to work,then presumably we need to start framinglabour laws, health and safety regulationsand social security provisions for a workforcethat is as much out of “employment” as in it,where self employment is at least as accept-able as employment, where we recognize thatthe small firm is a fragile and fluid not a sta-ble entity and cannot carry heavy burdens ofresponsibility for the general well-being of itsteams – whether full-time, part-time, tempo-rary or self employed, where unions focusmore on services for their individual, self-determining members and less on represen-tation of serried ranks of “wage slaves”,above all where the individual is assumed tobe self determining and responsible for his orher own working patterns and the exceptionrather than the rule is the individual whoneeds help in deciding how to work, or evenwhat work to do, or may need “protection”from people (as much as companies) who willexploit his or her inability to make such deci-sions. Our present mechanisms tend to treat“not being employed in a stable job with asingle employer” as somehow a defectivecondition; we need to recognize that it isbecoming the “normal” condition for manypeople most of the time and for all peoplesome of the time.

Of course, in the short term our problem isthat we have not yet bred enough innovative,self starting individuals and that not enoughEuropeans are seizing innovatively theopportunities of the Information Society. Avery large proportion of today’s workforcehave had many years of being led to expectemployers (or unions) to make their decisionsfor them and are lost unless someone “pro-vides them with a job”. The unemployed, theunderemployed and the about-to-be unem-ployed need all the help we can give them. Butit is deeply cruel to pretend we can reinventthe era of mass employment in fixed jobs instable companies, when all the evidence isagainst this. Telework is a very importantaspect of the new styles of working. It isdeeply influenced by technology. It mostattracts those who are more inclined to be selfmotivating, self aware and self sufficient. Itcan lose work from Europe just as easily as itcan help to generate new work opportunities.

Our efforts should surely err on the side ofinnovation and change in the approach tolabour law, health and safety regulation andsocial security provision, rather than striv-ing to conclude that “telework is not differ-ent” and “the existing provisions generallyapply”?

I do appreciate that from a purist or acade-mic standpoint it is easy (and defensible) toconclude “telework is not necessarily differ-ent”, but I feel we are missing an opportunityif we emphasize the similarities and advocatethe adequacy of the status quo, rather thantaking the opportunity to probe for and sur-face the weaknesses in our inherited “envi-ronment for work”. Telework is neither thecause of the changes nor is it the only symp-tom; but it does turn out to be an excellentdomain in which to examine the issues andderive new policies.

We will get it terribly wrong if we concen-trate on the protection of existing workers inexisting “paid employment” against the per-ils of working at home rather than in anoffice, but fail to assess and respond to theimplications of the “flight of work” fromhigher cost, lower skilled to lower cost,higher skilled environments. We will get itequally wrong if we “over protect” those whoare still in conventional employment againstthe “risk” that they may have to move intosome of the newer work styles – by doing sowe would be perpetuating the myth that con-ventional employment is still the main andmost attractive model on which to base ourpolicies for work.

Relevance to transport and theenvironment

In 1994 I led an investigation for the UKDepartment of Transport into “transport-telecommunication substitution”[2]. Thefocus was on “local telework” amongemployed and self-employed teleworkers andour conclusions were approximately in linewith those discussed by Jack Nilles elsewherein this edition – except that our sample tele-workers were from a wider cross section ofenvironments and were not participants in“experimental” projects. As might beexpected, the sample had a much higher“prior to teleworking” commute distancethan the average for the population as awhole and (in line with the Californianresearch) had not replaced many of theirformer commuting kilometres with alterna-tive travel – “elective” teleworkers usuallyhave “less travel” as one of their motivations!Another interesting finding was that thetransport and environment benefits of local

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telework are motivators for teleworkers andfor society as a whole, but our study showedthat they are not prime motivators foremployers – unless “persuaded” by fiscalenticements or punitive threats.

The link with our more recent work on thesocial and employment implications of tele-work is that the 1994 study suggested thatemployees who opt for telework are morelikely to subsequently opt for alternativeforms of employment contract or relationship– possibly because the “mind set” that findshome-based teleworking attractive also findalternative models of work relationshipsattractive. For the transport or environmentplanner, the implications of both sets ofresearch are that:• Any programmes designed to encourage

telework as a transport-telecommunica-tions substitution must address people whoare in self employment and other alterna-tive work modes, not just people in employ-ment;

• Such programmes need to educate theemployer (or in the case of self employedpeople, their “work customers” to “allowand facilitate” telework but focus motiva-tion on the worker;

• Any strategy must also take into accountthe wider implications of telework, in

particular from a global environmentstandpoint the risk that work shifted fromone part of the world to another might gen-erate more commuting than it reduces, orby increasing affluence in the “work receiv-ing” region, generate more total transportkilometres than are being saved in the“work losing” region, unless policies andstrategies to invoke transport-telecommu-nications substitution as a whole arethought through and accepted at the globallevel.

Notes1 This paper is based on research commissioned

by the UK Government (Department of Trade& Industry), which was originally undertakenin 1991-1992 and updated in the light of experi-ence and further research since then. On-linediscussion of telework issues takes place in theTelework Europa Forum (accessible only toCompuServe subscribers – GO ECTF) and inthe Telework@Mailbase discussion list (opento anyone with access to email – contact MTAfor “how to join”). Additional material on tele-work can be found at the website http://www.mtanet.co.uk/.

2 For a summary see Website http://www.mtanet.co.uk/.

Horace MitchellHe has a long backgroundworking at the intersec-tion of technology, theeconomy and society.With IBM in the 1970s hespecialized in early uses ofthe computer in support ofmanagers and organiza-tions, later working on theapplication of expert sys-tems technology to prob-lems as diverse as match-ing people to jobs andhelping engineers to copewith unexpected behav-iour patterns in nuclearprocessing plants. In themid-1980s he became anindependent consultant,and now leads Manage-ment Technology Associ-ates, a “virtual company”that works with govern-ments, organizations andindividuals to understandand apply the “open elec-tronic networking” oppor-tunities. Having “optedout corporate employmentbefore it became fashion-able”, he believes themost profound changeaccompanying develop-ment of an InformationSociety is the shift from aculture of “jobs” deter-mined by “employers” to“work opportunities” thatoffer and require individualrather than collectiveresponses. He wants tosee society accept andwelcome this change andplace much more empha-sis on preparing and help-ing people to survive andbenefit from it, rather thanof putting (as he sees it)rather too much effort intodefending the past againstthe future. He is also keento see authors “sign” theirwork with an e-mailaddress to encouragepersonal networking – hisis [email protected]

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© Andrew Bibby 1996

What about the workers? Teleworking and the tradeunion movement

Andrew Bibby Independent Journalist, Author and Confirmed Teleworker, UK

Offers some observations onthe attitudes of the estab-lished trade union movementin Europe to the developmentof teleworking. Home-basedteleworking may be a solitaryactivity, but teleworkers are,like the rest of us, collectiveanimals with a need to cometogether, to network,exchange information andideas and to defend theirinterests. Gives some possiblesolutions as to how telework-ers’ needs may be met,including trade union involve-ment, although on first con-sideration their participationmay seem unlikely. Givesdetails of formal, satisfacto-rily negotiated teleworkingagreements, between tradeunions and employers, fromacross Europe, including theUK. Suggests unions couldrise to the challenge of newforms of working, by provid-ing services sought by self-employed members, and thatthe old concept of solidaritycould apply between tele-workers working at home andfor their own businesses.

First, an anecdote. Second, an assertion.Third, the main aim of this paper: to offersome observations on the attitudes of theestablished trade union movement in Europeto the development of teleworking.

But first, the anecdote.It is Christmas 1995 in the small town (pop-

ulation: 10,000) in the north of England whereI now live. The pubs and restaurants aredoing a good trade, providing venues for tra-ditional Christmas office parties. But, for thesecond year running, one pub is host to aslightly different event: the Not-the-Office-Party, informally arranged by home-basedworkers who want their share of the festivi-ties. All are welcome and about 30 turn up:computer people of various kinds, consul-tants, writers and editors, a trainer, a child-minder, several graphic designers, photogra-phers and many more. And in between theintroductions and the socializing, there isdiscussion of business tax, of the new localWeb site, of VAT ... The evening ends, and thetalk is of a follow-up event, a barbecue in thesummer.

One pub event does not make a social trend,and for various reasons my small town is insome respects atypical. But my story perhapsmakes the point that, though home-basedteleworking may be a solitary activity, tele-workers like the rest of humanity are collec-tive animals. Teleworkers have a need tocome together, to network, to exchange infor-mation and ideas, to obtain professional ser-vices...and also to defend their interests. Forthis is the assertion I want to make: that tele-workers share common interests.

How are teleworkers’ needs going to be met,and their interests defended? There are anumber of possibilities. First, the serviceswhich they require may be (and are being)provided commercially. Second, teleworkersmay develop (and already are beginning todevelop) their own informal or formal organi-zations.

And thirdly, teleworkers may be able toturn to the organisations which traditionallyhave existed to defend workers’ interests, thetrade unions.

This may seem to some people to be anunlikely alternative. Leaving aside the insti-tutional conservatism of some unions, it

could be argued that unions are by their verynature incapable of coping with recent formsof flexible working such as teleworking. Theunion movement in its present form emergedfrom out of the development in the nineteenthcentury of large-scale industrial workplaces,throwing workers together in an environ-ment where joint interests could be clearlyperceived and collective action undertakenwith at least some prospect of success. Howcan this creation of a past industrial age copewith today’s leaner, more casualized, moreatomized patterns of work?

Certainly, the growth of teleworking posesorganizational challenges to trade unions.There are, for example, obvious problems inrecruitment, in collecting subscriptions, andin maintaining effective communication withmembers. There are severe logistical prob-lems with undertaking any form of industrialaction. Unions would seem to have good rea-sons to defend existing work structures andto oppose moves towards teleworking.

But in fact the response of many tradeunions has been rather more subtle. Theposition now is likely to be a cautious accep-tance that new forms of working can be ofbenefit to workers as well as employers. Themotion submitted by the Danish Finansför-bundet (FSU) and four other Scandinavianbanking and finance unions, which wasadopted at the 1995 World Congress of white-collar unions affiliated to FIET (Federationinternationale des employes, techniciens etcadres) catches this attitude well:

For more than ten years computer-supported work outside the traditionalworkplace has been a practical option, so-called “telework”, “teletravail”. There arestrong indications that the number of tele-workers will increase substantially in com-ing years...

Telework may be, on the one hand, a toolfor employers to move work to geographicalareas, where working conditions, salariesand collective bargaining rights are thepoorest. But on the other hand, teleworkmay be an interesting alternative foremployees in certain phases of their lives,e.g. in connection with caring functions oras an attractive alternative to physicalmobility due to structural changes (FIETWorld Congress 1995, motion 44).

[ 37 ]

Andrew BibbyWhat about the workers?Teleworking and the tradeunion movement


A similar approach is suggested in a paper bya national officer of the UK white-collarunion MSF:

Trade unionists are deeply suspicious ofany extension of home based working.There is a long and discreditable history of,as well as on-going, exploitation of homeworkers. Whilst recognising the potential toliberalise the labour market many point toemployers as being responsible for the rigid-ity of the current workplace and are scorn-ful of the idea that they will be interested inliberating people from it ...

MSF has no illusions about this. There aregood and bad employers and there will bethose who will employ people on poor payand in unsatisfactory conditions, withoutsafeguards. However, for trade unions, aknee jerk reaction based on the experienceof worst cases is not a sufficient response.Nor does it indicate the confidence thattrade unionists should feel, in the basis oftheir record (Bill Walsh, MSF, Teleworking –A Trade Union Perspective (1993)).

Across Europe, there is now a considerablebody of formal teleworking agreements satis-factorily negotiated and signed betweenemployers and trade unions. In Germany, forexample, the German Postal Workers’ Unionthe DPG has recently negotiated a collectiveagreement with Deutsche Telekom, whichwill enable staff who undertake appropriatework to alternate between working fromhome and the office. In Sweden, the SIF unionwas engaged in 1994-1995 in discussions withthe Swedish subsidiary of Siemens Nixdorf,which have led to the introduction of a majorteleworking project for many of 200 or so staffwho would otherwise have been required towork from a relocated head office outsideStockholm.

In the UK, telework agreements have beenmade, for example, between British Telecomand three trade unions, the Union of Commu-nication Workers and the National Communi-cations Union (now both merged into a singleCommunication Workers Union), and themanagerial union the Society of TelecomExecutives. The Banking, Insurance andFinance Union (BIFU) has negotiated adetailed teleworking policy with financecompany Lombard North Central plc.

Interestingly, despite the different contexts,the same key points emerge again and againin these agreements. For example, theDPG/Deutsche Telekom agreement has beenreported as follows:

It is particularly important that the status ofthe employees will not be affected in anyway. The tele-homeworkers will remainTelekom employees and will not be pushedinto spurious self-employment...

The agreement protects the voluntarynature of telework. No-one may be obliged to

engage in tele-homeworking; the right toreturn to work on company premises isguaranteed. Social contacts with the com-pany must in any case be maintained...Working equipment will be supplied free ofcharge by the employer (“German Agree-ment on tele-homeworking”, P.T.T.I News,December 1995).

These issues have been formalized by the UKunion MSF into a set of Telework Guidelines.They include the following points: • Teleworkers should be employees of an

enterprise, not deemed self employed. • To avoid isolation, contracts of employ-

ment should require home workers toattend the office periodically.

• Teleworkers should enjoy the same rates ofpay and employment benefits as office-based workers, including child care provi-sion and family leave. There should be adefined number of working hours andteleworkers should be included in careerdevelopment and appraisal schemesincluding training opportunities.

• All computer equipment should be pro-vided, paid for and serviced by theemployer ...

• Teleworking should be voluntary andworkers should have the right to return toworking from the office (Teleworking –Code of Practice for Employees, MSF, 1995)

This is all very well as far as it goes. But, asanyone who has examined the development ofteleworking will be aware, companies whichconsider flexible working methods are ofteninterested, in addition, in the possibilities ofoutsourcing, of reducing their directlyemployed labour force by putting work out toexternal contractors and consultants. Muchof the growth in telework in recent years hasbeen among the self employed, rather thanthrough the set-piece telework pilots repre-sented by the Deutsche Telekom, BT orSiemens Nixdorf examples.

The self employed are not in the sameemployee/employer relationship with whichtrade unions have historically concernedthemselves. Just the opposite, indeed: the selfemployed are business people, running theirown ventures. So while self employed tele-workers may find the need to join, say, busi-ness associations or chambers of commerce,why should they want to become trade unionmembers? – where is the boss, where is theconflict of interest?

Trade unionists are increasingly ponderingthis themselves but, surprisingly perhaps,refusing to write off the self employed. Here,for example, is a comment of PG Svensson, aboard member of the Swedish bank union

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Andrew BibbyWhat about the workers?Teleworking and the tradeunion movement


Andrew BibbyA British writer and jour-nalist, who has made aparticular study of theissues associated withteleworking. His book,Home is Where the Officeis (published by Hodder,London 1991), was thefirst practical teleworkhandbook in the UK. Hislatest book, Teleworking:Thirteen Journeys to theFuture of Work, was pub-lished in November 1995by the CalousteGulbenkian Foundation,London. He is currentlyresearching trade unionresponses to telework forthe international white-collar federation FIET. “Myinterest in telework begansome years ago fromdirect experience since,like many writers, I workfrom an office in my home.In a global informationsociety, my PC could be –almost – anywhere: ithappens to be in one ofthe northern English val-leys where the first Indus-trial Revolution got underway two hundred or moreyears ago.” Andrew can bereached via [email protected], orthe URL:http://www.eclipse.co.uk/pens/bibby/telework.

Finansförbundet and himself a part-timeteleworker:

The challenge for the trade unions in thefuture is a situation where you have to goout and engage also those who are no longeremployed in the traditional sense. So far thewhite-collar unions have not wanted toorganise the self-employed even thoughtheir professional work well fits in under aunion branch area. I believe that it will benecessary to change this view if the tradeunions want to continue to play a role in theworking and community life (quoted inTwenty Seconds to Work by Lennart Forse-back, Teldok 1995).

Very similar opinions were expressed at alabour movement conference on telework,held in Manchester in 1995. Here, for exam-ple, is MSF’s Bill Walsh again:

The issue is one of…organising people whohave no contracts of employment, who areself-employed and are in fact running theirown small businesses.

The first thing unions have to do is tochange their attitude towards these peopleand not turn their backs on them. They needall kinds of help: for example, they needadvice on contractual arrangements and ontheir relationships with the people whoprovide them with services. They need legalsupport, insurance, tax advice, pensions,health and safety advice and information.. The trade unions…have head office depart-ments which provide support to people inconventional employment. They now needto expand these services to other groups ofpeople (quoted in conference report, Work-ing on the Infobahn, Teleworking and theLabour Movement, 1995).

It is significant that in the months since thatconference MSF has set up an internal Tele-working Interest Group (TWIG), which hasbegun to discuss the sort of information andadvice services which it could provide toteleworking members. MSF already has theexperience of servicing 2,000 members in its

Professional Sales Association, made upentirely of the self employed.

Other trade unions (particularly in themedia and arts fields) have considerableexpertise in dealing with self-employed mem-bers. For example, the National Union ofJournalists (which despite its name operatesin two nation states, the UK and the Republicof Ireland) now has about 25 per cent of itsfully paid-up members running their ownbusinesses. The actors’ union British Equitypoints out that almost all its members (“atleast 99 per cent”) are self employed. The UK’slatest official Labour Force Survey recordsthat about 280,000 self-employed people (about9 per cent of the total) declared themselves asmembers of a trade union or staff association(though this figure should be treated with alittle caution, since it may include farm own-ers in membership of the National FarmersUnion, a trade association).

So it may not simply be wage serfs who aresigning up for union membership. Unionswho rise to the challenge of new forms ofworking, and of providing the sorts of ser-vices which self employed members are likelyto require, will find themselves changing.They may take on, for example, some of theattributes of the continental “assistance”tradition (such as represented by Mondialand Europ Assistance), with the provision of24- hour helplines on legal and other issues.

But there will clearly remain a core philo-sophical area which will separate unionsfrom simple commercial information andadvice services. There is still the concept ofsolidarity – the idea that individuals who joina union do so not just to help themselves butalso to help one another. Solidarity betweenteleworkers, working at home and for theirown businesses? Talk about it over a fewdrinks together in the local pub, and perhapsthe idea is not so impossible after all.

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© Andy Lake 1996

The city in 2050: how sustainable?

Andy Lake Home Office Partnership, Cambridge, UK

Looks at the evolution of newways of working and thedevelopment of the informa-tion society, so see how thesemight affect the developmentof cities, and whether thesedevelopments based on thenew Information and Commu-nication Technologies (ICTs)will make cities more or less“sustainable”. Rather thanmaking speculative predic-tions, however, the focus is onthe variety of factors thathave influenced, and willcontinue to influence, thedevelopment of cities. Itsapproach is somewhat hereti-cal, or at least politicallyincorrect, arguing that trendsto greening the city will beonly one among many com-peting influences, some ofwhich may be profoundlyecologically unsound.

Introduction

This article looks at the evolution of newways of working and the development of theinformation society, to see how these mightaffect the development of cities, and whetherthese developments based on the new Infor-mation and Communication Technologies(ICTs) will make cities more or less “sustain-able”. Rather than making speculative predic-tions, however, the focus is on the variety offactors that have influenced, and will con-tinue to influence, the development of cities.Its approach is somewhat heretical, or at leastpolitically incorrect, arguing that trends togreening the city will be only one amongmany competing influences, some of whichmay be profoundly ecologically unsound.

The city in 2050

Sixty years ago (1936) in A Short History of theFuture, John Langdon-Davies predicted,among other things, that in 1960 people wouldwork only three hours a day, every one under21 would be in compulsory full-time educa-tion, the family unit would be obsolete andEngland would cease to be an empire andhave the role of a garden and a museum. Healso predicted that there would be no war inWestern Europe in the next five years, andthat Japan would fight the USSR.

A work such as this is interesting, in thatyou can see why, in the context of the times,the future would have been interpreted astaking such directions. In all probability,however, an observer from 1936 transportedto 1995 would not suffer too much culturaldislocation: the demise of Fascism and Marx-ism might be surprising, but all in all theelements of continuity would probably bemore apparent than those of discontinuity.Indeed in some parts of the world there maybe a greater culture change in moving from arural to an urban environment, than time-travelling 60 years in urban Europe.

Given the probability of being strikinglywrong about everything I could predict forcities in the year 2050, I approach this attemptat futurist thinking with some trepidation.The history of the future is littered with

unfulfilled prophecies – multi-level cities,personal jets, robot servants and the like, aswell as premature obituaries for the phenom-enon of work.

Even worse perhaps are the part-fulfilledprophecies of post-war urban planners. As Iwrite, regeneration plans in Birmingham areseeking, as part of a Millennium project, tobring part of their raised road system down toearth, back to a human scale. I dare say thatin 2050, the children and grandchildren of thepresent generation may be forming pressuregroups and making bids for funds to take outall those tram systems restored to UK citiesin the 1990s.

Continuity and diversityThe twin themes of this essay are continuityand diversity. “Futurologists” market them-selves by selling a vision of a different world.The twin faults in many of the assumptionsthat are made are in assuming a startingpoint that is insufficiently diverse, andanalysing historical processes as if they haveled to a culmination in the present state ofthings, rather than that our current situationand preoccupations may be something of adigression. For example, assuming that thefuture will be “green” may reflect more apolitical/cultural preoccupation of the 1990sthan anything more substantial in terms ofenduring social and economic trends.

One example of how present considerationsinform theories of historical processes can beseen in the following summary of waves oftechnical change and their infrastructurecharacteristics (Table I), based on roughly 50year “Kondratieff cycles” (based on neo-Schumpeterian economics) starting from thelate eighteenth century (Freeman, 1995):

The dating and nature of the latter waves isadmittedly speculative. However the sixthwave is a mixture of where we appear to begoing at the moment, plus a good deal ofwhere we would like to be. One has to askwhat are the prospects for renewable energyif we find we can tap into, by around 2030,huge new and relatively cheap sources of non-renewable energy (whether under the oceans,on neighbouring planets, etc.)?

The other issue in looking at technologicalhistory in this way is that we tend to follow

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Andy LakeThe city in 2050:how sustainable?


very much a Western model, and assume itstransferability to other areas of the world. Thedating, too, of the cycles is very culturallyspecific: perhaps referring to a “leading edge”of technological-industrial innovation that,for all its power, directly affects the way ofliving of only a small proportion of humanitywithin the 50 years of the cycle. This kind ofProcrustean analysis has severe limitations.

Usually it is also very culturally specific,assuming the dominance of Western forms oforganization and production. Given the his-tory of the past few centuries, this latter pointis to some extent forgivable: but the economicdominance of the West has not by any meansentirely shaped the evolution of citiesthroughout the rest of the world. It is interest-ing to note that in Marco Polo’s time, if onewanted to find the largest cities one wouldhave to go to the Orient. Similarly, thedescription by Bernal Diaz of the Aztec capi-tal before the conquistadors levelled it, showit to have been one of the wonders of theworld, which astonished the author with hisEuropean background.

Factors affecting urban developmentIt is not solely the workplace, property prices,and transport networks, (i.e. things which aremore easily countable) which have shaped thegrowth of urban areas: the relationship of thetown to its rural hinterland, the power offamily ties, ethnic considerations, religion,politics, and other cultural factors all playtheir part.

To take some examples of this, one can com-pare the relationship of a French market townin a typical rural area to an English one: pat-terns of settlement are different, the economicroles are substantially different, and much ofthis is to do with different patterns of farmingand land ownership in the two countries.

Another kind of relationship to rural areascan be seen in the role of worker migration.Just as in the development of many Euro-pean industrial cities, workers in developingThird World urban centres often retainstrong links with their families in villagesback home. Family and tribal links areimportant, and the attitudes of their hostenvironment too: racism and tribalism arefrequently transferred to new urban centresand affect patterns of settlement, work oppor-tunities, and the aspirations particularly ofminorities. These factors also affect thespread of communications infrastructure, asdoes, more crucially perhaps, the gulf thatexists in most cities between the wealthierand poorer citizens.

Gender roles – a factor affected by religiousattitudes, among others – also affects urbandevelopment, and transport systems. Cul-tures where women are expected to stay athome most of the day, and where perhaps theyare not expected or not allowed to drive willevolve different types of transport problemsand solutions. Or changes in cultural valuesin such societies will have a transport spin-offeffect. In the West, personal control overmobility has been an important instrumentof women’s emancipation, associated withadvances in employment opportunity andgreater choice (subject to income) in child-care and purchasing decisions. There is atrade-off here between social equity and par-ticipation on the one hand, and the protectionof the environment on the other – a trade-offbetween sustainability objectives.

We need also to look at the changes cur-rently taking place in rapidly developingcities across the world, where for the major-ity of the citizens involved in those changesthe “information society” is barely on thehorizons of consciousness.

Table ISummary of waves of technical change and their infrastructure characteristics

Kondratieff waves Transport communication Energy systems

1st industrial revolution Canals Water powerfactor production Carriage roads Horse power

2nd age of electricity Railways (Steel) ElectricityTelephone

3rd age of electricity Railways (Steel) ElectricityTelephone

4th age of mass production Motor highways Oil(“Fordism”)

5th age of microelectronics Information highways Gas/oiland computer networks Digital networks6th “green” techno-economic Telematics Renewable energyparadigm

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Assuming the further development of thenew information and communication tech-nologies being one of the factors affectingthe development of the city, we can thenbegin to look at how it will interact withsome of the other influential factors men-tioned above. For example, the interaction ofcities with their rural hinterlands may wellchange, in those areas where there are highlevels of commuting. But cities are likely toretain a role as regional or sub-regionalcentres for a variety of other services. How-ever, the “flight to Colorado” is less likely tobe the pattern for settlements where strongfamily or ethnic associations are still veryculturally important. Decentralizing workfrom Sarajevo would involve more than tech-nological considerations.

Diversity and the role of the stateLooking at the past 200 years, the factorymodel of production has been dominant, buthas not been the only one. Arguably it has notbeen a unitary phenomenon either. Factoryand intensive clerical work developed in theWest mainly by imitation of (assumed) bestpractice; in the communist East it developedthrough state compulsion (building onTsarist “state capitalism”), accompanied byslogans of modernity such as Lenin’s “Com-munism = Soviets + electricity”. In the“Third World”, the development of such phe-nomena has been only sporadic, and remainsincomplete.

One issue affecting the development of theinformation society is whether strong gov-ernment or a more laissez faire approach willhave the greater impact. The benefits ofstrong government are asserted in Singapore,which is bounding down the superhighwaywith its IT 2000 project. But generally theexperience of authoritarian governmentsimplementing modernization, for example inthe former Soviet bloc, is that grand schemesentrench worst practice and stifle innovationand initiative.

On the other hand, at the appropriate level,authorities with the funds and the freedom topush through projects which are in their owninterest have a higher degree of success.Local authorities wishing to stimulate thelocal economy and tackle their transportproblems may in due course lead to a revivalof municipal autonomy. By the mid twenty-first century, in many places, the national tierof government may be seen to be increasinglysuperfluous, acting mainly as a barrier tolocal initiative in an increasingly globalizedeconomy.

National government may be at its mostrelevant when supporting innovation at locallevel. In France the Government is support-

ing numerous local teleworking projects,with a view to disseminating best practice.This is an approach adopted by the EC, too.

The EC also has a vision. Promoting tele-working in all its forms is one of the mainpriorities of the European Union: ambitioustargets were set in the Bangemann Report,including the desire to have 2 per cent ofwhite collar workers in recognized teleworkschemes by 1996, and 10 million people insuch schemes by the year 2000.

It is one thing to have a vision, another tosee it implemented. The indications at themoment are that despite major changes in theworld of work, teleworking has not taken off(yet), and has had no appreciable impact onthe structure of cities or their transport net-works. For most transport planners, it isbarely on the agenda.

The role of the state has hitherto often hada profound impact on the development ofcities. Capitals, and major administrativecentres tend to grow in different ways toother commercial centres. The need to locate,for reasons of influence, physically close tothe corridors of power is likely to remain. Butif power is slipping away upwards and down-wards from the national tier, this may have aneffect on existing capitals. New centres ofpower concentration may emerge.

One interesting irony at the moment, giventhe EC’s promotion of teleworking, is thetendency of UK organizations, including localauthorities seeking funds to promote tele-working, to set up office in Brussels. Thevirtual smoke-filled room may be some wayoff.

Changes in the world of workMajor changes are taking place in the world ofwork. The most recent survey of businesses’long-term employment strategies, undertakenby the Institute of Management and Man-power plc (1995), indicates that there is no letup in the pace of change. In this survey of theUK’s largest employers, they found:• over 70 per cent anticipate restructuring

programmes over the next four years;• over 50 per cent of employers anticipate

that at least a quarter of their workforcewill be complementary to the core in fouryears’ time.

Flexible working practices have taken rootand appear to be here to stay:• teleworking and homeworking have been

adopted by around a quarter of employers;• over the next four years, 80 per cent pre-

dict an increase in flexible working;• 68 per cent predict an increase in the use of

teleworking.

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Given this kind of data, and the current levelsof interest in the information superhighway,distance working seems to be poised to comeof age. These kinds of trends seem bound tohave an effect on the way cities develop intothe twenty-first century. As it says in Mega-trends 2000, “In many ways, if cities did notexist, it would not be necessary to inventthem” (Naisbitt and Aburdene, 1990).

Cities growing todayThen again, one needs to refer to other kindsof statistics, for example:• four billion out of the world’s population of

five billion do not have a phone;• in Latin America only Argentina and

Chile have over 10 per cent penetration offixed lines;

• China has only three telephones for every100 people; and

• 600,000 of India’s villages do not have asingle phone.

Ironically, it may be the case that in 2050,unless communications infrastructurestretches out into the rural areas, it will benecessary to come into the city for “locationindependent” information society employ-ment for most of the world’s inhabitants.

The point is that in moving towards the“global information society”, different partsof the globe are setting off from very differentstarting points. We can be sure that the desti-nations by 2050 will be many and varied, andin all likelihood embrace extreme inequality– just as it does now.

A recent conference in Manila on managingAsia’s cities, the number of “megacities” inAsia – that is, with a population greater thanten million – will double by the year 2020. By2015, Shanghai, Bombay, Beijing, Jakarta, andKarachi will join Greater Tokyo in havingmore than 20 million citizens. By 2020 Tokyo,Shanghai and Bombay will have populationsnearing 30 million.

An Asian Development Bank study for theconference says that $1,500 billion will beneeded to finance the urban infrastructureover the next decade to cope with this. Thisbeing beyond the resources of governments,it will have to come mainly from the privatesector. It seems unlikely that, given the scaleof expansion, the infrastructure problemswill be solved by the year 2050, or that theprivate investment needed will necessarilymake sustainablity a high priority.

One also cannot assume from currenttrends that people in cities in the developingSouth will make a great leap towards sustain-able traffic solutions without going throughother stages first. For example, in Egypt,passenger car sales have risen from 20,000 in

1992 to a projected 75,000 in 1995 (FinancialTimes, 1995). People, especially young people,aspire to car ownership for all sorts of rea-sons apart from the convenience of getting towork under their own steam. Perhaps evenmore important, the automobile industry isone of the world’s largest and most powerful,and will not relinquish its role in the econ-omy and society without a fight.

Currently one of the most ambitious trans-port projects in Asia is the Ove Arup schemefor an elevated transport system in Bangkok.This is for a dual carriageway, a mainlinerailway and a high capacity commuter rail-way running on different levels, with shopsand offices beneath at ground level. It isscheduled for completion by the opening ofthe Asian Games in 1998. If it does go ahead, itwill surely still be around in 2050. This high-lights another historical factor for the futureof “sustainable cities”. In 2050, the transportsystems existing and the transport solutionsbeing proposed will not necessarily be thosethat the technology of 2050 could theoreticallydeliver. Like our cities today, they will be to alarge extent the fruit of thinking decadesearlier. And the more expensive the project,the more difficult it is likely to be for futuregenerations to reverse it.

Technological innovation and motor carsIn all probability, cars, of one form or another,are here to stay, and will be around in enor-mous abundance in the year 2050, andwhether or not the oil has run out. It will infact be a great challenge to policies for urbansustainablity when marketable non-pollutantcars are developed. Much of the thinking ontackling urban pollution has to do withdemand management, road-pricing, develop-ing public transport and cycleways etc. Amore significant blow against urban pollu-tion, however, will come with the locally non-pollutant car, run by some form of electricpropulsion.

The motor industry is now investing heav-ily in research in this field, sometimespushed in that direction by legislation, butmore essentially by enlightened self interest.

It is generally the case that new technolo-gies do not revolutionize society, at least notin the short term. Diffusion of technologytakes time, although modern communica-tions reduce the time it takes. Inequality ofwealth (whether of individuals or nations)remains a significant barrier to diffusion ofnew technologies. It is, however, typicallyalso the case that new technologies areabsorbed into the existing cultural structuresuntil such time as they begin to transformthem, a few generations on.

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So, for an electrically propelled car to bewidely adopted, one can expect that ease of“refuelling”, whether by, for example, super-fast recharging, or by exchanging lightweighthigh-powered batteries, will be a prime con-sideration. In all probability, this would takeplace at something remarkably similar to afilling station, still run by BP, or Shell, or Q8 –possibly Duracell (now a subsidiary of Gen-eral Motors or Esso) – so the social and eco-nomic structures supporting autonomousmotorized mobility could have changed verylittle. After all, charging up cars outsideevery house and apartment, with cables trail-ing everywhere, or storing one’s own (proba-bly highly toxic) batteries, seem unlikelydevelopments. And the production and distri-bution of energy for car use is too economi-cally important simply to drop out of thepicture due to pollution controls or the oilrunning out.

I foresee, then, no major changes in thedemand for cars and roadspace for them,particularly in the new developing megaci-ties, by the year 2050. Urban pollution fromcar traffic may cease to be an issue, but con-gestion will be. Without the pollution argu-ment for sustainability, what will impel met-ropolitan authorities and their citizens toinvest in sustainable transport systems?Essentially the pollution will have beenshifted elsewhere, and will have less impacton the consciousness of the urban man andwoman. It will be in someone else’s back yard.

This does not, of course, mean that urbanauthorities and national governments shouldnot, or will not, grasp the nettle of “greening”the cities.

Doomsday scenario?

Consider the following:Today’s pioneer telecommuters will be thepathfinders for a whole range of experi-ments over the coming years, the end resultsof which will be higher productivity, bettermanagement, greater job fulfilment, theblossoming of neighbourhood communities,and the silencing of those drear Dickensianfootsteps [trudging to work]. Praise be(Kinsman, 1987).

Cities for a new millennium will be energyand resource efficient, people-friendly, andculturally rich. In Northern mega-cities,such as London and New York, prudentinward investment will contribute to achiev-ing higher levels of employment. In cities inthe South, significant investment in infra-structure will make a vast difference tohealth and living conditions (Giradet, 1995).

The potential for new ways of working tocontribute to a better way of life and urbanregeneration are well documented.

Another view challenges the necessity forthe existence of the city at all. For example, aseries of ironic articles in Personnel Manage-ment, the magazine of the Institute of Person-nel and Development looked at the future of25 years from now under the heading “Newsfrom 2020”. The lead article, entitled “Home-working blamed for the demise of city shops,pubs, and traffic jams”, says:

With two thirds of employees now workingfrom home, the campaign for communalworking seeks a return to “traditional val-ues”. It says homeworking is destroying citycentre economies, with thousands of shops,restaurants and offices closing down. In afew years time, the idea of a drink with yourcolleagues after work will be a distant mem-ory (Personnel Management, 1994).

This is sometimes referred to as the “dooms-day scenario” of teleworking, and although itis perhaps the logical extreme of currentdevelopments, most pundits see it as being anunlikely development. However, if develop-ments did move in that direction, what wouldbe the consequences for the city? It has to beborne in mind, that were this flight from thecentre to happen on any significant scale, theeconomic loss for the urban centres, could beto the economic benefit of rural and suburbancentres.

Possibly (perhaps after a period of transi-tion), lower central property values couldonce again make the city centre an attractiveenvironment in which to live. The city, onceagain, could see greater integration of homeand work.

To some extent this is already happening:in cities such as London and Cambridge, thebeginnings of moves to convert offices intoflats is detectable. Whether such trendsdevelop into anything significant, with localservices developing to sustain communitiesof (possibly home-working) residents,depends on a number of factors, includinglevels of business rates, planning controls,adequate policing, pollution levels, etc. Oneuse for such conversions is student housing,which is often felt by planning authorities tobe more appropriate for intensive mixedcommercial/residential areas, with manyevening venues for entertainment.

This highlights another function of the city,in bringing people together for recreationalpurposes. Many activities are less amenableto being delivered on-line (such as restau-rants, theatres, ten-pin bowling alleys),although it is very unwise, given the rise, falland resurrection of cinema-going, to predict

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the impact of new tele-entertainment serviceson existing travel-and-see services.

The mid-twenty-first century city

The argument thus far has emphasized plu-ralism, and the difficulty of assuming thedominance of any particular model of urbandevelopment given the varieties of input.

However, I can foresee the emergence of anumber of different models of urban develop-ment, which could be characterized as fol-lows:• More of the same – cities which are con-

gested, high energy consumers, and withlarge divisions between richer and poorersectors.

• Cities which have moved a long way downthe path of improving their environment,but where the improvements are concen-trated to the benefit of wealthier residents.

• Cities where there is greater equality –either in relative poverty or, as is the trendin some European cities, relative prosper-ity, but where there is little collective will,or too much institutional or cultural inertiato move towards a more environmentallysustainable framework of living.

• Cities where serious attempts have beenand are being made to live according to a“green techno-economic paradigm”.

It is interesting that the way of life of many ofthose in work in any of these models could besupported by environmentally costly activi-ties located elsewhere. In particular, thegreenest of cities could be the fruit of entre-preneurs migrating from unpleasant environ-ments to more attractive ones.

In reality, many cities are likely to be mixesof each of the above, containing both pocketsof deprivation and crumbling archaic infra-structure, and elsewhere “ghettos for therich”, sustainable communities within com-munities with services supported by resi-dents working largely from home, guarded byremotely monitored CCTV and, as a lastresort, barbed wire.

Conclusions

The essential conclusion of this article is thatthe city in 2050 will be a wonderfully pluralphenomenon. If one takes a selection of cities,the diversity speaks for itself: Los Angeles,Edinburgh, Moscow, Sao Paolo, Lagos, Singa-pore, Ottawa, Freiburg. Or take an historicalsample: Mohenjo-daro, Babylon, Rome, Tim-buktu, Potosi. Reasons for the flourishing anddecline of cities are also many. Cities withinthemselves, too are usually very diverse.

People come together in cities for a variety ofdifferent reasons, not only to work. Nor is itsimply work, or access to work, which affectslocational choices.

New ways of working, then, will have animpact on cities in 2050, but that impact willbe more pronounced in some sections of somecities than others. New technology is as likelyto be a force for continuity in the structure ofcities (with more “intelligent” vehicles,telematics for transport systems, and newpropulsion technologies) as much as a forcefor change. The reasons for access to citycentres in the wealthier parts of the worldmay have changed, but the imperatives foraccess will remain, and, I suspect, personalpreference and economic forces will combineto make personal motorized mobility still thefirst choice, public transport a congestion andpoverty related alternative.

If this is not to be the case, governmentsand municipal authorities across the worldmust take serious action soon: tomorrow’surban infrastructure is being built today.

What is to be done?

I see little evidence from the past that ourpoliticians will be able to deliver urban plan-ning and transport systems that will create asustainable future. But to be fair, given therange of factors cited above, their influence islimited more by external constraints than bytheir own vision or competence. But it isclear that we do need to build a framework forsustainability, and I suggest that the follow-ing are some of the keys.• More urban autonomy is vital. Towns and

cities themselves, rather than regional ornational tiers of government have a betteridea of what is in their own environmentalinterests.

• Local authorities need to build up a com-prehensive picture, or register, of environ-mental interests and indicators to informpolicy planning. Democracy is a generallyeffective mechanism for asserting inter-ests, but one of the key of challenge is iden-tifying “mute interests”, that is interestsof importance but without a vote, such aswildlife interests and the interests offuture generations. These latter are oftenthe first to go overboard when it comes toany trade-off of interests.

• People must be allowed to defend theiridentified interests. Politicians and gov-ernment officers are fond of talking ofmaking “hard decisions”, including onenvironmental issues. But it is all too easyto create grand schemes which are inthe “general interest”, and to go from

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community to community decreeing thattheir particular interests must be sacri-ficed for the benefit of the whole. Often it isonly that community who value a particu-lar environmental characteristic orresource.

• The role of central (and international)government has to be to support localmunicipal activity, without being too pre-scriptive. Local authorities need to con-tinue to network to compare innovativepractice. This is beginning now in Europe,but in the UK the achievements are limitedby flabby government guidelines, and therestrictions on local government activitiesand funding.

This is particularly the case with planningguidance asserting that people should workmore at home or near home, only to leave it tolocal councils within their severely limitedpowers to work out how to achieve this.

Nonetheless I believe that this goal is right,and both urban and rural authorities must doall they can to promote home community-based working. It requires, for many, a trans-formation of attitudes. For example urbantransport engineers in many European citiesare working on schemes to improve publictransport and promote innovative demandmanagement schemes, and may be involvedin EC-backed schemes in transport telematics;however, all too frequently they have notgrasped the potential significance of seekingto transport bits rather than atoms.• The promotion of teleworking, which local

authorities can do as both employers andregulators/advisers, and the promotion oftelebusinesses, and electronic networkingof businesses, should be at the heart ofeconomic development strategies. Theeffects of such a strategy must also bereflected in land use and transport plan-ning; the old equations relating floorspaceto employees to car parking spaces needscomplete revaluation in the light of thenew technologies.

• At a global level, there remains concernthat developing industrial nations willexploit the difference in labour, health andsafety, and environmental costs and legis-lation to undermine the development ofthe new information-related industries inthe industrialized world. There is anurgency in pressing for comparablehuman rights, social and environmental

legislation across the globe, through mech-anisms such as GATT, the World tradeOrganisation and the UN. Hope for theeconomic underpinning of sustainablepolicies to a large extent may depend onthe workers of the world receiving a fairday’s wage for a fair day’s work, andbecoming a valued and active stakeholderin their local environment, which is to beprotected and safeguarded for their chil-dren rather than to be ravaged for thenecessary priority of subsistence.

Ironically, a workforce with well-protectedrights and consumerist aspirations may bebetter situated to press for the safeguardingof (what is left of) their environment, if West-ern experience so far is any guide.

There is no single solution. Road pricing,carbon taxes, car-sharing lanes and otherforms of regulation will all be tried in variousplaces, no doubt. But the necessity is to keepthe options for flexibility open, recognizingthat the sustainable city will not be a Utopiaset in aspic, but will itself evolve, and in allprobability be the fruit of complex and oftencontradictory dynamics. And a dynamic,high technology economy is more likely tocreate the structures and provide the meansfor making the more environmentally sus-tainable choices.

Urban authorities imitating best practicewill be a more effective means of diffusing theprinciples of and technology for sustainabil-ity. Green and prosperous cities are morelikely to be the model for others: nothingbreeds imitation as much as success.

ReferencesFinancial Times (1995), “Egypt enters the age of

the foreign car”, London, UK, 25 October.Freeman, C. (1995), “Unemployment and the

diffusion of information technologies: thetwo-edged nature of technical change, inProgramme on Information and Communica-tion Technology, Research Paper No. 32.

Giradet, H. (1995), Sustainable Cities in an Urban-izing World.

Kinsman, F. (1987), The Telecommuters.Langden-Davis, J. (1936), A Short History of the

Future, Routledge.Institute of Management and Manpower plc

(1995), Survey of Long Term EmploymentStrategies.

Naisbitt, J. and Aburdene, P. (1990), Megatrends2000, London.

Personal Management (1994), Vol. 26 No. 13.

Andy LakeWorks for the Home OfficePartnership in Cambridge(UK), a consultancy whichresearches new ways ofworking and implementsprogrammes of corporatechange. He is also theeditor of Flexibility: Busi-ness Innovation andHuman Resources Man-agement, a monthlynewsletter acting as aforum for issues connectedwith new ways of working.As a consultant his partic-ular expertise is in work-ing with local government,advising on the implica-tions of the new informa-tion and communicationtechnologies for how theyorganize their workprocesses and delivertheir services. He is alsoan elected Councillor forCambridge City, and hasresponsibilities in strate-gic and land use planning.His experience in localgovernment inclines himto believe false starts willoutnumber achievements,and the propensity to talkrather than do will out-weigh both. He is anxiousto move the debates aboutsustainability and theinformation society onfrom theory to practice,and believes smallerscale, democraticallysupported projects on thewhole have a betterchance of success thancentrally driven megavisions. He advocates anintegrated approach, asorganizational develop-ment, economic develop-ment and service deliveryinnovations will be thedrivers for transport sub-stitution, as much asactual transport planning.

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© Mattias Hoejer 1996

Urban transport, information technology and sustainable development

Mattias Hoejer Department of Infrastructure and Planning, Royal Institute ofTechnology, Stockholm, Sweden

Discusses how four principlesof sustainable developmentcould be implemented by theuse of information technolo-gies in the area of urban roadtransport, namely: car pool-ing; dynamic route choice;extended public transportand a dual-mode system.Says it is important to open abroad public debate on theoptions and risks that comewith IT, as in a democraticsociety it is the voters’ prefer-ences that create the frame-work for politics and IT devel-opment is ultimately a politi-cal issue.

Introduction

The information society that so many talkabout so freely, leaves us with a rather foggyimage of the future. There are many possibili-ties. For example, we can think of it in moreor less positive terms either as a future soci-ety where a good portion of the population isemployed in the information sector, a societywith a high information content (as economicvalue) in products, or as a C-community(communication/creativity/culture/cogni-tion/complexity) such as it has beendescribed by Åke E. Andersson. Or we canthink of it as a world divided in two: of thosethat have information technology (IT) andthose that do not. But whatever this societylooks like – divided or not, just or not, effi-cient or not – it is sure that information tech-nology and telecommunications are going toplay important roles in it.

There is however nothing that guaranteesthat the move towards this information soci-ety is going to prove a positive developmenton broader human, social or ecologicalgrounds. To ensure that this happens, we aregoing to have to come up with some kind ofcommonly accepted conception of what isgoing to constitute a desirable future – and adesirable development path toward thatfuture.

This is where the concept of sustainabledevelopment enters the scene. Sustainabledevelopment can be seen as an over-archingpolicy goal. This goal has been defined andredefined on innumerable occasions over thelast ten years since it was adopted by theBrundtland Commission on Environmentand Development (WCED, 1987). Forty-one ofthese interpretations were listed in Moritaet al. back in 1993. A forty-second interpreta-tion is proposed in this article.

In order to realize the potentialities andrisks of developments within the transportfield, we in our group at the Royal Institute ofTechnology in Stockholm have felt it isimportant to engage in open discussions ofwhere we want to go and why: consider, forexample, an urban transport system loadedwith information technology. What could itlook like? What might be its use? What posi-tive and negative impacts could it have? Do

we want it? In what form? Can we resist it?Has this anything to do with sustainabledevelopment? And what is sustainable devel-opment anyway?

Unfortunately I do not have the answers toall these questions. Instead, I will discusshow four principles of sustainable develop-ment can be affected by IT in urban roadtransport. Examples will be taken from anongoing scenario study on information tech-nology in urban road transport which iscurrently being carried out by my institute.

It is likely that what we call the informationsociety will influence the way we organizetransport dramatically. This can take at leasttwo shapes: it can lead to changing lifestyles,with quite different travel patterns thanthose we know today. And it can come aboutas a result of new transport technology. Thescope of this paper is concentrated to thelatter of these.

Four IT/transport scenarios forthe future

In an ongoing scenario study at the Depart-ment of Infrastructure and Planning, RoyalInstitute of Technology, we have for the lasteighteen months been investigating theprospects for information technology in anurban transport system. We have taken ascenario approach to our work. The scenarios– four in all – are placed in the context ofindustrialized cities and focus on passengertransport, but they could be extended toinclude goods distribution as well. It would beless straight forward to apply them to devel-oping regions, since they all are technicallyrather complex.

A first set of technology scenarios weredefined. One hundred experts from aroundthe world were then contacted and respondedto a detailed questionnaire coupled to thescenario descriptions. They evaluated thefour scenarios (see below) with regard totechnical feasibility, customer acceptance,market performance and long-term effectsfrom a large-scale introduction of the scenar-ios. The scenarios, incidentally, do notexclude each other technically, but they takedifferent paths to fulfilling the basic

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Mattias HoejerUrban transport, informationtechnology and sustainabledevelopment


transport mission. In actual fact, all fourscenarios could be implemented side-by-side– but that would of course be very costly,while the benefit might turn out be limitedsince the systems and sub-systems wouldcompete with each other. All scenariosinclude five basic features or building blocks: 1 State-of-the-art traffic control centres.2 Route guidance systems.3 Road pricing.4 Smart cards.5 Pocket terminals.

These are, however, used in somewhat differ-ent ways in the different scenarios.

Our four proposed “visions of the future”were as follows:1 Car pooling-scenario: In this scenario, a

traffic control centre matches orders fromtravellers who want a lift with drivers whowant to give one. All communication goesthrough terminals connected to the centre.A route guidance system is used to directdrivers to the place where passengers wait.The driver is paid by the passenger foreach trip with the use of a smart card and acard reader in the car. A card is also usedto pay road user fees.

2 Dynamic route choice-scenario: In thisscenario, the cost for each trip is calcu-lated in advance by a traffic control centre.The fees depend on a number of factors(congestion, air quality, place). The driveris given the opportunity to choose betweenthe cheapest and the fastest (more expen-sive) routes. If one of these is chosen thedriver is obliged to follow instructionsfrom a route guidance system and thecharge is drawn from the smart card. Thedriver can also drive freely, but at higherroad user cost. A pocket terminal candeliver information about projected costsand travel time before the driver gets intothe car.

3 Extended public transport-scenario: In thisscenario, public transport users can use apocket terminal, connected to a trafficcentre, to get information about possibleconnections between any two addresses ina region. The information containsapproximate departure and arrival times,travel cost and changes. From the terminalit is also possible to reserve a cab or arental car, in which cases a car will bewaiting at the PT-destination. Road usercharges for road transport are here used toencourage public transport use. Amongother features for cyclists, a route guid-ance system for bicycles is included.

4 Dual-mode system scenario: The dual-modescenario includes a fine-grained rail net-work and electric vehicles that can run

both on rail and on road. Trips can bemade in a number of different ways (onroad, automatic trips between stations inthe rail network or combinations of these).A smart card is used for debiting the use ofvehicles. It is also used for identifyingusers when a vehicle is hired. A trafficcentre directs the flows on the rail net-work. User charges are lower on the railnetwork than on ordinary roads. Pocketterminals can be used to call for a vehiclewhen an automatic trip is wanted.

First reactions to the scenarios

The reactions to the scenarios, as mirrored inthe answers to the questionnaire, were vary-ing. For example, one respondent’s commentto scenario 4 was “Too dumb (in 1995) to com-ment!”[1] and another respondent thoughtthat “Dual-mode is a door-door own vehiclesystem which is in fact an ideal transportmode”. With this reservation I wouldnonetheless like to make a few observationson the answers to the questionnaire.• Many experts thought that the car pooling-

scenario would suffer badly in acceptancegiven that it required that people unknownto each other would have to share a car,and also that everybody that wanted to bea part of the system was identified. Theidea of getting paid for picking up passen-gers was, on the other hand, given ratherhigh ratings.

• The criticism against the dynamic routechoice-scenario was edged at the complex-ity of the system and against some bigbrother-like control functions. The parts ofthe scenario that got positive responseswere these dealing with traffic directionand parking.

• The use of information technology in thepublic transport-scenario was appreciatedby the experts. The scenario got somecriticism for being overloaded, especiallysome services for bicyclists were deemedas unnecessary. But apart from that thisseems to be the way of IT-usage most of theexperts liked best.

• The dual-mode system-scenario was criti-cized for the integrity loss that compul-sory identification implies and for beingunrealistic and extremely costly. A posi-tive part was the opportunity for fullyautomated direct trips. A technical featurethat was questioned was whether it ispossible to balance supply and demand ofvehicles.

The experts were in general very negative toall kinds of control and integrity violationsuggested in the scenario descriptions. The

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criticism is important and points at an often-mentioned risk with IT-development. Arecent example from Stockholm can illustratethe fears:

A proposed zone-based system for chargingroad user fees has been criticized for failingto respect individual citizen’s right to pri-vacy. In that system cars that do not have avalid unit for automatic debiting would bephotographed and billed afterwards. This isobviously a much lower degree of privacyintrusion than in the scenarios, and still it iscriticized on these grounds.

It is not clear to me how this criticism shouldbe interpreted. The arguments can just aswell be based on a negative view on road usercharges as such, that is the perhaps justifi-able fear that the resulting tolls will substi-tute yet more big investments in road infra-structure. It is also difficult to know hownumerous the critics are. Most travellerswould, after all, get into the city incognito,since the normal way of getting there wouldbe by using a car equipped with a special unitfor automatic debiting or by public transport.

Another notion that can be made is that itmay be easier to design less control-demand-ing systems on a smaller scale. Car pooling,without organized passenger-debiting, routeguidance and matching, is already commonin the USA. An easier way of implementingadvanced car pooling would perhaps be tostart from there, introducing the matchingsystem at large companies’ computer net-works, or in locally based networks with alimited number of subscribers. Such a systemwould use IT as in the public transportscenario, i.e. for information rather than forcontrol. This would lead to a higher degree ofbuilt-in social control in the system, possiblyrendering compulsory identification of userssuperfluous. On the other hand, small scale isnot a guarantee for integrity. I believe thattoday’s large telephone networks provide mewith a higher degree of integrity (unless I amwanted by the Swedish security police), thanold-time switchboard operators did.

Information technology andsustainable development

It is obvious that IT will have a strong influ-ence on future transport patterns, just as allsocietal changes have. It is however impossi-ble to say what this influence will be like.Below I will present four principles of sus-tainable development and discuss these inrelation to information technology and urbantransport systems. Examples will be takenfrom the scenario study described in theprevious section.

The examples must be read cautiously,since any scenario that manages to get sub-stantially implemented will have secondaryeffects that are very difficult to foresee. Theseeffects can be on the relation between trans-port modes, but they can just as well be onspatial development such as urban sprawland the location of activities. For example thecar pooling-scenario could make passengerschange from public transport to car pooling,thus eroding the bases for public transportand leading to a higher amount of car traffic.

Sustainable development can be dividedinto four principles (Gudmundsson andHöjer, 1995), two of them relating to sustain-ability and two of them to development. Theseprinciples are:• Sa – Preserving natural resources for

future generations.• Sb – Preserving the option value of human

and man-made capital for future genera-tions.

• Da – Improving quality of life for individu-als.

• Db – Securing fair distribution of quality oflife between individuals.

The natural resource principle can be dividedinto four criteria, dealing with non-renewableresources, renewable resources, biodiversityand ecosystems used as sinks. For transportthe dependence on non-renewable resourcesat both the production phase and during theactual transport activity (traffic) indicateunsustainability. The pressure on renewablesin terms of over-harvesting is close to zero,since renewables are hardly used at all intransport. Biodiversity suffers from land-scapes being fragmented by roads. Ecosys-tems are used as sinks for a number of pollu-tants stemming from transport. This leads toa heavy stress on ecosystems.

There is nothing in information technologythat triggers a major shift from non-renewables to renewables. Neither is thereanything that says that pollution will fade outwith increasing use of IT. However, the effi-ciency improvements that many hope willcome with IT, both in terms of better plannedroutes and in terms of more efficient flows,can lead to a lower degree of negative impactson these criteria. The scale of this changedepends on secondary effects as well as on thedegree and way of implementation.

Some completely new systems, using otherfuels and possibly other raw materials inproduction, might be made possible withinformation technology. The dual-mode-scenario is an example of this. Here theeffects do not come directly from the use of IT,but rather from the introduction of a com-pletely new system where IT is one important

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link. The type of power-plants used for elec-tricity-production will be crucial for the over-all effect of any electricity-based transportsystem. So, here other technologies will be atleast as important as IT for total effects.

The second principle, preserving the optionvalue of human and man-made capital oftransport, is concerned with keeping theservice that is provided by transport. Thisservice is naturally nearly related to theaccessibility to services and products andthus it includes possibilities to exploit remoteresources and options to choose among awide variety of goods. If this service can beprovided by means that have smaller negativeeffects than transport, then we must takethese other means into serious consideration,before we take major decisions on transportinfrastructure enlargements. Thus, this prin-ciple is very closely related to the IT-use thatis not discussed in this paper – the exchangeof transport for telecommunications.

This second principle must not be taken asan excuse to lead society into a social trapwhere increasing capital resources are tiedup to maintain mobility with decreasingmarginal return. But it can be concluded thatIT used for increasing physical mobility only,does not seem to be compatible with thisprinciple. On the other hand, efficiencyincreasing combined with higher prices (pos-sibly with the use of automatic fee collection),may be exactly the force that takes us out ofthe trap. Moreover, if IT can make the use oftransport infrastructure more efficient andthus make further enlargements unnecessary,then resources might be made available forkeeping existing infrastructure in good shape– which is another aspect of this principle.

The third principle deals with improve-ments of quality of life. The main negativeeffects of transport on well-being are casual-ties, noise, congestion and local air pollution.The benefit is a high level of mobility and ahigh variety of goods. It can be questioned ifthe current balance between cost and benefitis the one that gives the best overall life-quality.

The most obvious advantage with IT inrespect to the above mentioned effects, is thepossibilities for efficiency improvementsthat it holds. In principle, the same amountof traffic should be able to pass with lessemissions, purely by controlling the flowswith IT. These gains are most evident withthe use of IT as in the dual-mode scenario,where IT is used to actually introduce a newtransport system, with very low emissions.However, with electric vehicles or low-emis-sion vehicles the benefits from the use of ITcompared to non-IT diminishes in thisrespect. Another important example is of

course the substitution of physical mobilityfor access through telecommunications. Inthis case we would eliminate the negativeeffects of the trips that used to be taken com-pletely.

But whenever the effects are reduced oreven eliminated, one must be careful not tointroduce new negative effects. We can seethat these new technologies can influence thequality of life by introducing changes in thequality of transport. Among the most hotlydebated parts of this change (in Sweden, atany rate) are the eventual impacts in terms oflosses of privacy and personal freedom ofchoice. Other possible jolts are changes intravel costs and (as in the dual-mode-scenario) physical alterations that might bemade in the urban environment. When itcomes to the exchange of transport fortelecommunications, it is also important totake the alternative use of time into account.(Time “lost” in transport can be highly val-ued by some. It may be the only time of theday when you can read, contemplate, exerciseor get impressions from people other thanthose you already know.)

The last principle that needs to be consid-ered is that of fair distribution of quality oflife. It relates to the same elements as theprevious principle, but here the question isone of the actual distribution of benefits andcosts. Our test scenarios provide us with twoexamples that differ in principle. In car pool-ing and dynamic route choice, car drivers aregiven the opportunity to pay extra chargesand continue the driving as before. Thosewho can afford this will also get the advan-tage of more room on the roads. The distribu-tional effect of this will depend on how thecollected fees are used. This is partly true forthe dual-mode scenario as well, but here thepublic gain from the new network is (poten-tially!) strong. In the public transport anddual-mode scenarios, more resources arespent on systems that offer a generalimprovement in accessibility. The welfareimplications in terms of mobility and accessi-bility, will thus be distributed among a largerpart of the population, by the very implemen-tation of the system.

Conclusions

Information technology is of course tightlybound up with many features of daily life andto the development of urban structures.Therefore it is important to open a broadpublic debate on the options and risks thatcome with it (if, and it is a very big if indeed,we can figure out a way to do it with realpublic participation and inputs and not, whatI would call, “managed participation” or

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“rote participation”, which unfortunately iswhat we see in most places most of the timeunder this otherwise glorious and generouslabel). The four scenario descriptions men-tioned here had this in mind.

In a democratic society, it is the preferencesof the voters that create the framework forpolitics. The development of informationtechnology is ultimately a political issue,since it is likely to have a considerable influ-ence on many people’s lives. It is now in goodpart guided by international companies inwhose interest it lies that people get a positiveview on the IT-features they provide. But seenfrom a broader sustainable developmentperspective, this could lead towards a tooshort-sighted and narrow-minded develop-ment.

The concept of sustainable developmentshould make us think more deeply about thelong-term consequences of our choices. Oneway of doing this is to design scenarios ofsome crucial sectors of society.

So companies’ influence on people’s prefer-ences affect and emphasize short-term utility,while if we take sustainable development asthe goal this obliges us to consider thingsfrom a broader perspective and to emphasizelong-term utility. The positions taken bypoliticians, short-sighted or foresighted, mayhave far-reaching consequences. They affectdecisions on infrastructure investments, thussetting the boundaries for implementationopportunities for many IT systems.

Hopefully, the use of a set of solid explicitprinciples for sustainable development as ahigh-level policy goal can reduce the risk thatimportant effects will be omitted in the deci-sion making process. The idea of organizingthe four principles in two sustainability prin-ciples and two development principles mayhelp here, since it can help us spot the con-flicts between short-term and long-termeffects. This is a major objective of the con-cept.

Until quite recently the main thrust ofpublic policy was to try to handle all trafficproblems by building new infrastructure, butawareness of the limitations of road buildinghas become widely spread the last few years(OECD, 1995). With the development of infor-mation technology and telecommunications,a new dimension has been introduced totransport and traffic planning. Road trans-port informatics (RTI) or Advanced Trans-port Telecommunications (ATT), is said toaim at higher efficiency, fewer accidents andlower environmental deterioration. But if theeffect of building more roads is more traffic,why would increased efficiency on the roadsbe all that different?

The answer is that impacts from informa-tion technology depend on how IT is imple-mented – and on how it is connected to roaduser charges. If IT is used as in the dynamicroute choice-scenario, i.e. for sheer efficiencyimprovements, but without the road usercharges, then we may expect continuingincreases in traffic volumes (the same “rose”,just another name), and thus in negative eco-impacts and, in many ways, on well-being. Ifthis is going to be the strategy, then IT offersno advantages except more efficient trafficflows.

It may even lead to increased shares of car-traffic and to overall higher traffic volumes.This would bring society even further intocar dependence.

The other scenarios represent differentways of changing the character of urbantransport. Therefore the effects will be thesame whatever charge is used, if they areimplemented and adopted. Parking policies,traffic light adjustments, driving restrictionsand changes in user attitudes are examples ofother factors that can change the competitive-ness between the modes. However, road usercharges will be among the most efficientmeans of control, and thus the level of suchcharges will be crucial for the effects of usingIT in urban transport systems. Other factorsmay be more important in an implementationphase.

The potential for privacy invasion in an ITintensive scenario is getting debate as well.We must not lose sight of the fact, however,that in this new world of end of centurytelecommunications, anyone who carries amobile telephone can be traced as long as thetelephone is in use or in stand-by mode. Andthe market for mobile telephones is of courseexploding. This might suggest that the pri-vacy debate is exaggerated. At the very least,it means that all new systems must bedesigned very carefully so that control mech-anisms are not built into them unnecessarily.But the arguments from the critics should beobserved closely. The privacy argument hasbecome an argument against road user fees,but few would use that argument againstmobile phones.

Finally, the theme of this special issue is“Information Society and Sustainable Devel-opment”. In this short article, I have onlydiscussed the implications on sustainabledevelopment from the use of more advancedinformation technologies in the urban trans-port system. A question that quite possiblyhas even greater potential for changing theimpacts of the transport system on sustain-able development concerns teleworking – atopic which, happily, is well treated elsewherein this special issue.

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Mattias HoejerPhD-student at the Depart-ment of Infrastructure andPlanning, Royal Instituteof Technology in Stock-holm, Sweden. He hasspent the last three yearsworking part time at theInstitute. His project,reported on here andfinanced by the SwedishCommunications andResearch Board, is con-cerned with sustainabledevelopment, informationtechnology and urban roadtransport. The other partof his time he has spentwith his two children. Inorder to combine thesetwo occupations he hasbecome a teleworker, oneday a week and for a cou-ple of months each sum-mer. The author can bereached at [email protected] [email protected]

It is my view as a non-specialist in thisparticular area (but as an active practitionerfor several years), that telework and its manyvariants are going to have vast implicationsfor how accessibility can be achieved. But forthe scale shift from physical transport toelectronic communication that is needed tomove towards more sustainable transport totake place, prices for transport are going tohave to rise (and further that the cost for eachtrip must become visible). This indeed couldprove the most important contribution ofinformation technology both to the transportsystem and to the more sustainable planetand life styles that we now need to movetowards (instead of away from).

Note1 The reader may be interested to know that this

comment came from the guest editor of this

special issue who, we are pleased to report,was somewhat more helpful in commenting onthe other proposed scenarios.

References and further readingAndersson, Å.E. and Stromqvist, U., K-samhallets

F. (1988), The Future of the C-Community,Prisma, Stockhom (in Swedish).

Gudmundsson, H. and Höjer, M. (1995), “Sustain-able development principles and their implica-tions for transport”, forthcoming in Journal ofEcological Economics.

Morita, T., Kawashima, Y. and Inohara, I. (1993),“Sustainable development – its definitions andgoals”, Mita Journal of Economics (translationfrom Japanese), Vol. 4 No. 8.

WCED (1987), Our Common Future. The Report ofthe World Commission on Environment andDevelopment, Oxford University Press, p. 400.

OECD (1995), Urban Travel And SustainableDevelopment, Paris, p. 238

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© Noel Hodson 1996

Oxtail: a true story

Noel Hodson Telework Practitioner, Specialist and UK Co-ordinator of ECTelematics Forum, Oxford, UK

Describes the tribulationsthat befell a university-city’sTraffic Engineer throughouthis career, ranging initiallyfrom the conflict between themany cyclists, pedestrians,motor cars, to the pollutedtraffic-choked city centre thatquickly evolved, aggravatedby a motorway system thatadded thousands more heavytrucks an hour on to the ringroad. Reveals how advice wasalways sought from a mostunlikely source, and withhindsight shows that theadvice given was not alwaysgood. Perhaps a cautionarytale?

A true story of one man’s heroic quest tofind his soul through chickens, goats andrenewable, urban, modern, sustainabletransport policies.

Long ago, in the secret heart of England,holy monks settled in marshland scored bymyriad rivers and streams, hard by a placewhere oxen might cross the waters in safety.They built Rewley Abbey, a scholarium,placed advertisements on the from page bot-tom right hand corner of national newspa-pers – Improve Your Memory, Speed Readingin Fifteen Minutes, Speak any Language ofYour Choice in Just Ten Minutes a Day, and,How to Run the Country – and went into theeducation business. Safe from warriors andlandlords in their damp fastness, the monksprospered and a city grew up around theAbbey. The city was called Ox-Ford.

One thousand one hundred and fifty-fiveyears later, the City of Oxford appointed aneager, young applicant with an engineeringdegree from Aston University and a PhD inTown Planning from Reading Polytechnic,one Horace Yasucovitch Michael IvanskiEmmanuel Silverstsone, or Hymies for short,as the City’s traffic engineer. Hymies washappy and the City was pleased.

But, as one peerless Hilary term drew to aclose, the responsibilities of the job started totake their toll and so Hymies sought guidancefrom his Rabbi, Ibn Ben Noyberger, a man ofdeep wisdom with snow white beard; whohaving coincidentally just returned on theQueen Mary after flying out on a jet aeroplanecalled a Comet to stay with his wife’s sister’ssecond cousin in Poughkeepsie, New York,had quietly learned much about transport.

“O Rabbi (Hymies used the Roman form ofaddress as Oxford always requires), O Rabbi,to coin a phrase (which indeed he was,decades ahead of his time), I’m suffering fromwork related stress disorder” he shuddered;and the Rabbi could see from his pale andsweating countenance and the dark shadowsunder Hymies’ eyes that this was indubitablyso. He nodded, not unkindly, for Hymies tocontinue his story.

“The City is torn between ‘Town’, thetraders, shopkeepers and citizens; and‘Gown’, the dons, the colleges and the students.In years gone by, they fought and killed each

other…” (the Rabbi knew this to be true)“…and they still seem to be at war – so I cannever please both sides,” sighed Hymies heav-ily.

“I plan the transport to the best of my abil-ity. I work hard. I try to do the best for every-one; but they complain all the time. All thetime. It is killing me Rabbi. What should Ido?”

“Tell me how it is with the transport now,”suggested the Rabbi; for he wanted more timeto examine the soul of this honest, hardwork-ing, God fearing member of his congregation– to decide the best for his eternal develop-ment.

Hymies was eager to unburden himself,“Many of those from the University cycleeverywhere. There are bicycles of everyshape, size and colour, ridden by young, old,middle-aged, men, women, youths, ladies, fat,thin and some who are … just right” he addedmeditatively. The Rabbi chussed him along;reminding him of his lovely wife and youngchildren. Hymies shook himself andresumed. “The streets are full of bicycles,mostly University people. The citizens,mostly they walk. They complain they mustwalk. They come to shop at the covered mar-ket, they buy bags of food – and then walk tothe bus stops. They say the bus stops are toofar. Everywhere they walk they bump intobicycles. And they complain. Mostly to theLord Mayor – Good John, the People’s Friend.Then Good John shouts at me to get the Uni-versity bums out of the sodding way (sorryRabbi) of his upright and right-voting citi-zens.”

“In turn,” Hymies rushed on wildly, “every-where the bicyclists go, they are hampered byoverburdened pedestrians, blocking theirway. The cyclists complain all the time too.They write sarcastic letters to the OxfordTimes. They write witty, humorous, mockingletters to the Guardian, the Observer and theTelegraph – which get published and poke funat Good John. They attend our public plan-ning meetings which I Chair, and confuse meby quoting archane laws in Middle English,Latin and Greek. Worst of all…”, breathedHymies, “…they write powerful letters topoliticians – including the Prime Minister –in fact…”, Hymies’s voice rose hysterically,

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Noel HodsonOxtail: a true story


too upset to notice the Rabbi rocking slowly,his piercing gaze rapt on Hymies’s hiddensoul “…in fact, …in fact… one of the cyclistsis the Prime sodding Minister,” he yelled.Then got control of himself and started tocalm down.

“But whoever they are. They complain.There’s a particular young lady student whocomplains more loudly and arrogantly andeffectively than the rest put together”. Heruminated darkly, “Her name’s Margaretsomething or other … and she needs watch-ing that one. God help the country if she evergoes into politics. But they all complain. AndI get it in the neck. Then there are the con-spicuously wealthy in their new motor cars,Morris Oxfords, Austin Sheerlines, Morris1000’s and the odd Rolls Royce which have tothread their way through the cyclists and thepedestrians and the buses, of course. Theycomplain – and come the St Giles Fair whichblocks off half the main roads, they all com-plain all the more. The pedestrians complainabout the cyclists and car drivers and com-plain they should have cars. The cyclistscomplain about the pedestrians and the carsand complain they should have cycle lanes.The drivers complain about the pedestrians,the cyclists, the buses, the road markings andthe weather. It’s Hell out there Rabbi – its justsheer Hell. Hell for me, Hell for all the roadusers, Hell for the residents, Hell for the shop-keepers. Just Hell, Hell Hell.” Hymies nearlybroke down – but didn’t quite cry – not yetawhile.

“Hymies, Hymies,” comforted the Rabbi,“don’t distress yourself. There is an answer.But first we should speak of metaphysics.This is a most important situation with wide,wide ramifications.” The Rabbi paused andalmost frowned, then he continued. “We arehere dealing with a university town. Univer-sity, smooniversity, schooniveristy” he mur-mured, pleased to make rhymes which onlyhe knew were valid or nonsense and whichnobody ever had the temerity to question.“University” he suddenly said strongly“comes from universe. Universe is the wholeof creation. We are dealing here, Hymies,with the whole of creation. Did you knowthat?”

Hymies had not known that and stayedsilent.

“Universe means one-turn, Hymies. Didyou know that? The whole of creation aroseout of one-turn. Of what, Hymies? What doyou think turned? It was what we choose tocall God, Hymies. It was God who turned.Before the beginning of time. In the era whenthere was no-thing, there was also no resis-tance, no impedance. The energy that wasGod flowed, from nowhere to nowhere, in

no-time and there was no-thing. How doesthat feel to you, Hymies – stop for a momentand feel how that feels. Flowing along, any-where you please, free, infinitely powerful,with infinite potential and unimpeded. It feelsblissful, Hymies. It is what we call bliss. Thisis what all road users seek – unimpeded bliss.And bliss is not all that it’s cracked up to be.So the energy created a resistance, it impededit’s own progress, Hymies. It made one turn,back on itself. And where it met its own infi-nite energy, a whirlpool arose and everythingwithin the whirlpool began to spin. And eachspinning zone was matter. And the Universeemerged and there was no longer nothing.Your problem Hymies, is of infinite impor-tance and is taking place here in this specialplace, in this university town for cosmic pur-poses”.

Hymies found no response to his suddenimportance in logological affairs. A wiserman would have enquired further. Hymiesput his metaphorical and metaphysical headin the sand and said nothing.

The Rabbi stopped rocking. “What youmust do Hymies is this.”

Hymies pushed his lower jaw back up tomeet his upper jaw and listened attentively.He started taking notes.

“You must work even harder and ensurethat the Oxford car factory builds more andmore cars and cars that will last forever. Thiswill not be easy – but you will do it. Thenevery citizen will have their own car. Believeme Hymies, this will happen. So you muststart now to build a huge multi-storey carpark in the centre of Oxford and all the citi-zens of the new car owning democracy willcome in their thousands to enjoy the plea-sures and sights of Oxford. Marginalize thebicycles. If they are stolen – ask the police notto look for them. If their front wheels arebuckled by cars – sue the cyclists for damag-ing the car’s tyres. Herd the pedestrians on tonarrow pavements, harried and oppressed bythe motor cars. If they step off the pavements,arrest them for jay-walking. If they don’t stepoff the pavements, accuse them of obstruc-tion. This is what you must do. Now get onwith it and come and see me in ten yearstime.”

Hymies never questioned the wisdom ofwhat his Rabbi told him to do. He left with anew certainly and confidence in his step, tofollow the Rabbi’s advice.

Ten years later, Hymies was a shadow of hisformer self He no longer looked young. He nolonger acted young. He no longer felt young.He looked wretched, he felt wretched, he wasa persecuted wreck of a man. But as he satin front of the Rabbi again, the Rabbi couldsee a soul that had grown and, with the right

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conditions, which would one day flower. Hadhe asked Hymies if he wanted to flower, at theprice being asked. The answer may not havebeen wholly in the affirmative.

“The traffic problems in Oxford are terri-ble.” he bemoaned; without a trace of blamefor the advice he had taken and followed –dare we say – religiously.

“Everybody complains more than they everdid before. There is nowhere to cycle, nowhereto walk that’s free from the cars. Huge snort-ing European sized lorries lumber throughthe narrow streets, stinking of diesel fumes.Even bigger buses queue in endless lines toget up the High Street. Every side street isblocked by badly parked cars and motorbikes. The noise is awful. The air is awful.The journey times are twice as long as tenyears ago. And everybody has a car. And theyuse them for tiny journeys. They’re unfit, offwork sick all the time. Their children haveasthma and the fumes are eating away theColleges’ walls. And they all blame me. I’m afailure. A laughing stock in my own city. It isterrible, terrible.” he moaned – and nearlywept. But Hymies hung on. He would notweep yet.

The Rabbi, jet lagged as he was having justreturned from the new State of Israel wherehe had spent a rugged week on his brother’suncle’s son’s fruit-growing Kibbutz on theborders of wild desert lands, was neverthe-less eagle eyed in his attention. His eyes, evensharper than ten years earlier watched care-fully. He saw the universe swirling in Hymies’soul; which became the centre of that uni-verse. He put up a solicitous hand to his lessold than he was friend and told him that itwould all get better – quite soon, but not untilhe had taken more action.

“Hymies. You have done well. You havefollowed my advice perfectly. All will be well,in God’s good time. What you must do now isthis. The City bus service needs to be thrownopen to free competition. Companies will givecheaper fares with single manned buses. Letthe free markets rage through Oxford. MakeCornmarket the main shopping area, a pedes-trian only zone – but let in the cheap privatebuses to ferry the good citizens from shopdoor to home. Hire teams of grim faced, mer-ciless traffic wardens to levy crippling fineson illegally parked vehicles. Say you willcreate bicycle lanes – but on no account dothat. Create bewildering one-way systems inthe city centre, make them mazes whichwould phase the Minotaur. Build a multi-lanehighway right around the city at hugeexpense and make sure it is linked to thenational motorway network. Encourage out-of-town shopping at dozens of sites on thering road. Fit all official vehicles with nerve

shattering sirens so they can beat their wayrapidly though the densest traffic. Continueto ignore the railway that has a route, largelyunused, straight into the heart of the City.And ignore the wonderful canal that used tocarry millions of tons of goods to the centre.Now go and get on with it, Hymies; and mayGod go with you.”

Hymies, tired but unbowed, thanked theRabbi and sallied forth to do more battle.

Another ten years passed. Hymies was nowwell into middle age. He still had his lovelywife and had seven children. Three strongboys and four beautiful daughters. He stillhad his job as Oxford’s Traffic Engineer andthere was no reason for life not to be good. Ashe dragged himself wearily; heavily andfinally in the Rabbi’s room -– Hymies lookedspectacularly and truly awful.

The Rabbi was well rested and alert fromhis recent trip to St Petersburg and Moscow,where he had had the very great pleasure ofriding in an open horse drawn sleighwrapped in great blankets. A system he wouldrecommend to Oxford if only it ever snowedthere.

As Hymies started to speak to the Rabbi – atlast he wept. “Every road is full of traffic allday long. The motorway system brings thou-sands of heavy trucks an hour thunderinground our ring road. The noise is intolerable.Some of them wander into the City for adetour and some sightseeing. They shake thefoundations of the old colleges and the fumeshave eaten away half of the stones facing NewCollege. Criminals drive in, commit theircrimes and are a hundred miles away beforethey are discovered. The privatized buses viewith each other for passengers in the pedes-trianized shopping areas. There are so manyand they leave their engines running – lastyear a child in a buggy chair died fromexhaust fumes. They only have the driver, soas they manoeuvre round they cannot seewhat’s around them. Old people too slow tojump aside are being knocked down daily. Thebus drivers take the fares, all following trafficwaits while this is done. It takes three timeslonger to enter or leave Oxford by car than itdid when I started the job. Parking is impossi-ble. Drivers fight in the streets for places.Cyclists are unprotected – accident rates havesoared and many of them are deliberate,through road rage. Children must wear smogmasks in the summer because the air is dan-gerous to breathe. This is all my fault. Thishas all happened during my time here asTraffic Engineer.”

Still Hymies betrayed no sign of blame forthe advice he had followed. Even in extremishis code and faith was unshaken. The Rabbilooked with both his earthly and his mystical

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Noel HodsonHe has teleworked since1979 and was an entrepre-neur, launching and man-aging an accountancypractice, a science parkcompany, a vehicle proto-type company, and in1983 the UK’s first tele-worked business consul-tancy – now with 54offices covering the UK.Since 1988 he has spe-cialized in telework stud-ies, producing the TheEconomics of Teleworking,Teleworking & Employ-ment in Europe and TheCase for Teleworking, andco-authoring and co-edit-ing Teleworking Explainedin 1993. He is the UK co-ordinator for the EC Telem-atics Forum and leads theEC project “Experts Unlim-ited”, which is deliveringprofessional advice overthe networks. Noelrecently (1996)completed work on Tele-work Auditstm, acosts/benefits softwarepackage for businesses.He is heavily involved ininteractive distance learn-ing and the SOLOMONproject for telephone vot-ing and wired democracy.He still visits majoremployers to calculate theeconomics of their tele-working programmes andspeaks at internationalconferences.He can bereached at [email protected]

gaze. The first saw a sad and defeated man.The second saw a soul about to bloom. He, theRabbi would provide the final intelligent,intensive energy for the buds to start open-ing. But he waited.

“It is all my fault and my friends and neigh-bours know it” wept Hymies. “Oh, they saynothing but in that nothing is the biggestguilt trip on the planet. I, the Traffic Engi-neer of Oxford for more than 20 years, havebrought us to this chaos. Magdalen Collegesay traffic pollution costs them over two hun-dred thousand pounds a year in maintenance.St Johns’ bursar (the Rabbi knew that youcould walk to London on land owned by thefabulously wealthy St Johns College – or atleast you could if you find a safe way acrossthe raging city ring road –- and that thereforethe bursar was an important man on theearthly plane), the bursar says they fight acontinuous war against exhaust fumes eatingaway the eight hundred year old stone work -eight hundred years it lasted for before I gotthis job – and I destroy it in 20”, he sobbedand hid his face.

The Rabbi leaned forward a little. “Hymies”he said quietly. “This is what you must do”.As he spoke, the Rabbi watched Hymiesstraighten and hold himself up with pride. Hesaw his soul open and burst into flower asHymies arrived at the end of his implicit,tacit quest. With that special vision given tosome masters in the spiritual realm, theRabbi could see forward a few months, andthe whole of Oxford was rejoicing as theycarried Hymies shoulder high round the City.

“You must ban all the cars and buses to theedge of the ring road. You must make pro-tected space for the cyclists and the pedestri-ans. Let the University cycle and walk and letthe City cycle and walk in exhaust gas freestreets without fear of being crushed byangry vehicles. The cyclists and pedestrianscan mix freely in the centre. They will some-times fall over each other – but they will do sothankful it was not a Mack Truck that hitthem, they will embrace each other. You mustbuild carefully planned cycle and walking to

allow people to move within, in and out of theCity. You must equip the residents with bicy-cles, roller skates, and small electric cars andthe visitors with cycles of different design.You must work with the merchants and localtransporters to ensure that goods are deliv-ered to the shops and residents in small, non-polluting vehicles. And finally you must workwith the residents and merchants in order torestore the economic life of the City. Yourguiding principles are first to eliminateunnecessary traffic and congestion, reducetravel distances, and substitute non-motorizedfor motorized transport wherever you canwithout destroying the economy of the cityand its resident, Second, to reduce the weightof everything being transported – most is theweight of vehicles not the goods or peoplewho are travelling, and in reducing weightyou will greatly reduce energy consumed.And third, to immoblize all energy sources sotheir exhausts can be more easily cleaned –do you really need and want to cart one-and-a-half tonnes of car and 150 pounds of fuel withyou when you travel the five miles from hometo the library – no you do not – so find a way toleave it behind”.

The Rabbi stopped speaking for a moment.“Do this and it will make you and all the

people of Oxford rejoice”.Hymies did as the Rabbi had told him and

within a year he became the hero of Oxford.The University awarded him an honourarydegree and the citizens, marking their plea-sure at the clean air and safe travelling, car-ried him shoulder high round the BodleianLibrary. Even College Bursars wererumoured to have been observed smiling –though this was never scientifically proven.

Needless to say, Hymies lived a long anduseful life, had many grandchildren and,when it was time for his soul to unravel theno-thing that comprised his mortal frame, hetravelled most sustainably on into the nextrealm in a state of unimpeded bliss.

The End.

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© MCB University Press [ISSN 1352-7614]

Sustainability in an information society: view fromthe European Commission

Robert Pestel and Peter Johnston, DGXIII, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium

Refers to the European Com-mission’s support to anexpert “working circle”charged with the task ofclarifying the potential contri-bution of advanced communi-cations to sustainability.There is growing public andpolitical awareness that oureconomic prosperity andgrowth is unsustainable. Thenew constraints are environ-mental, associated withmaterial use and transfer. Re-materialization, in the senseof reducing the amount ofmaterial extracted from,synthesized and dispersedinto the environment per unitof GDP is therefore now thekey to long-term sustainabil-ity. Warns that sustainabilitywill not be achieved by Gov-ernment-led legislative actionalone, nor by European-levelaction alone; a much broadercommitment to a commonpurpose is necessary – per-haps co-operation for a globalinformation society?

The potential contribution a rapid transitionto an information society can make to sus-tainable employment and growth has beenextensively rehearsed in the Commission’sWhite Paper on Growth, Competitiveness andEmployment[1] of 1993. There is less discus-sion and understanding about the contribu-tion that can be made to sustainability inenvironmental impact, materials use, energyuse and transport, but the potential is not lessimportant.

Two recent initiatives at European levelwill help to raise the issues in policy debateand research:1 The Information Society Forum[2], set up

as an independent advisory body by theCommission, has chosen to focus on “sus-tainable development, infrastructures andtechnology” as one of the six themes of itsfirst report.

2 Building on exploratory research in 1994and 1995, DGXIII of the European Commis-sion is supporting an expert “workingcircle”, which has been charged with thetask of clarifying the potential contribu-tion of advanced communications to sus-tainability. An attempt is also being madeto explore the degree of common interestin industry and sustainability lobbies towork together to a common agenda andgoals.

The background against which these groupsmust work is one of a growing public andpolitical awareness that our economic pros-perity and growth is unsustainable, eventhough we are not hitting limits to growth inresource depletion, the major concern of the1970s. Energy resources are not infinite, butneither are they running out. In addition, ourenergy use affects the overall energy balanceof the planet by less than 1 per cent. The newconstraints are environmental and associatedwith material use and transfers: we haveincreased natural material transfers in theenvironment by over 100 per cent andreleased into it tens of thousands of newchemical and biochemical products, withoften surprising results.

For example, ozone layer depletion is anartefact of industrial chemical use andrelease; greenhouse gas accumulation isa “material transfer” problem, more thanan “energy use” problem; dioxin and DDT

legislations are responses to industrial andmedico/agro-industrial material use.

“Rematerialization”, in the sense of reduc-ing the amount of material extracted from,synthesized, and dispersed into the environ-ment per unit GDP, is now the key to longer-term sustainability.

Dematerialization and the information societyDematerialization can be realized by processimprovement, product improvement, productto service conversion and structural change.All can be influenced by the information andcommunication revolution, but in differentways and to different degrees.

Process re-engineering management hasbeen given a major stimulus by the emer-gence of multi-media information infrastruc-tures. All the Fortune 500 multinationals havebeen through at least one “re-engineering”exercise in the last five years under competi-tive pressures to improve their use of skillsand resources. While dematerialization andenergy saving have not been goals, benefitshave been realized and the business benefitsand methodologies of re-engineering havebeen recognized and tested. If these proventechniques can now be applied with the goalof reducing material use and transport, fur-ther incidental business benefits will almostcertainly emerge.

Product improvement has been driven bymarket forces and material technology: newmaterials, better suited to the product’s func-tion. But, the “information content” of prod-ucts in terms of their market value has risenfaster than their material content has fallen.Over 50 per cent of the market value of a car isrelated to its “information” content – throughresearch, design, production and retail man-agement. Even for a packet of pasta, most ofits retail value is information related. Interms of their market value, most productscan be substantially dematerialized.

With advanced communications, otherproducts become services. A newspaperbecomes an on-line news service; an instruc-tion manual becomes an interactive technicaladvice service; cinema film reproduction andcinema chain management becomes a “video-on-demand” service in the home; a post-

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Robert Pestel and PeterJohnstonSustainability in an informationsociety: view from theEuropean Commission


operation recuperation institution becomes amedical surveillance service in the home.The dematerialization is evident.

Structural changes in the way markets areorganized, in the way our transport infra-structures are organized and used, in the waywe work and live; these are the hardestchanges to stimulate. But it is here that thegreatest benefits in sustainability are to berealized. The emergence of information infra-structures as the new element in economicand social development changes all theground rules of an industrialized materialistsociety.

Occupational and sectorial views of dematerializationInformation managementIn the 1990s, most people work in informationmanagement: bankers, business executives,accountants, salesmen, secretaries, graphicdesigners, researchers. Of all activities, infor-mation services ought to be the easiest todematerialize – but we tend to see only the tipof the iceberg: the piles of paper on desks. Thebulk of the material iceberg is made up of theoffice desk, the PC, photocopying machinesand photocopies, archives, the office buildingitself, with its marble hall, its restaurants,parking, the executive cars … It is no goodsimply trying to get rid of the paper. It is notenough to dematerialize the Frenchtelephone directory through Minitel. Anyreal dematerialization must also cut into thebulk of the iceberg: it must “dematerialize”the office – at least per unit of businessturnover. This may sound an incredible goal,but it can be done, and has been done – tele-working and “hot desking”; the office as ameeting place and occasional base for anomadic and decentralized workforce is bothan attractive business proposition and realdematerialization.

The champions of this idea are of course theIT companies: Digital, Apple, IBM, and oth-ers: Digital has pioneered the flexible officeconcept; IBM has saved millions of dollars incity-centre office rentals[3]. The insuranceand the retail banks show another approach.The move to replace local branch offices, witha larger network of Automatic TellingMachines, is already a substantial demateri-alization of the retail branch network. Themove to direct banking over the phone orInternet takes the process even further – hereyou already have a “Factor of 10” in demateri-alization of a business process.

Material goods wholesale and retailIf information management is an “easy case”,let us look at some tougher problems. The“end-point” of material production is retailing

– buying food, cleaning products, clothes,shoes, and “do-it-yourself ” products accountfor over 90 per cent of everyday purchases.Again, we tend to see only the tip of the mate-rial iceberg – the food itself or the pair ofshoes, and since you cannot dematerializefood or shoes, the immediate reaction is thatthere are no opportunities for dematerializa-tion. However, this is not true for the bulk ofthe iceberg.

Recent trends in retailing has increased thematerial iceberg of retailing: large hypermar-kets, with large car parks have considerablyincreased the traffic associated with shop-ping – people “commute” to hypermarkets inthe same way they commute to work. Thestores themselves, with their car parks,restaurants and access roads, use more mate-rials (building, plumbing, wiring and packag-ing) per unit sold than ever before. Evenworse; this has not been associated with anyreduction in traffic and infrastructure associ-ated with provisioning the stores. Globalprovisioning, with over 10,000 separate itemshas increased customer choice, but hasincreased material use and the environmen-tal impact of the production, wholesale andretailing process.

How can information infrastructuresreverse this trend? Are we addicted to everwidening global choice? Are there ways to de-materialize some of the retailing iceberg?Better organization of provisioning chains isone: it makes no economic sense to truckpotatoes from Germany to Italy, to truck themback as crisps and chips. It makes no sense tofly fresh flowers from Israel to Amsterdamauctions, to fly the flowers back to Italy, oreven to Tel Aviv for retail.

Video auctions and better logistical man-agement, through better information to allparties concerned can catalyse a considerablerationalization. At the customer’s end, tele-shopping can preserve or expand choice andsubstitute delivery of a 20kg part-load to ahome for a 20km round trip of one or twopeople in a 1000kg vehicle, with all the park-ing and building space implications that gowith it. Of course, tele-shopping may neversubstitute for the social experience of “enter-tainment shopping”, but it is already makingbig inroads into “chore shopping” in Califor-nia.

TransportThe second most important purchase peoplemake in life is a car (or a sequence of cars).Can you dematerialize a car with informationand telecommunications? Better design canhelp – lighter bodies, more efficient engines,but the gains are more than off-set by the stillgrowing level of car-ownership – technological

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Robert Pestel and PeterJohnstonSustainability in an informationsociety: view from theEuropean Commission


progress has made cars more affordablefaster than it has dematerialized them.

Perhaps more radical progress can be madeby concept changes: new types of vehicle thatfill the gap between the car and the bicycle;new ideas for resource sharing that fill thegap between ownership and rental – perhapssmart cards to allow self-use of minicabs incities; that fill the gap between public andprivate transport. However, no single organi-zation, whether a vehicle manufacturer or acity transport authority, can act alone tomake these concept changes viable. Collectiveand co-operative action by public and private-sector bodies is the only way to structuraland conceptual change.

Shared-use may be the single most effectiveway to dematerialize personal transport, butit still presumes that physical transport ofgoods and people is necessary. Virtual pres-ence at a distant location, with high-resolu-tion colour, and 3D imaging, CD-qualitysound and even manipulative remote controlis within our technological grasp, but will beexpensive for many years to come – but nomore expensive than buying and running acar. Can people and businesses be persuadedthat high-quality and high-functionalityvirtual presence is as much or more a statussymbol and expression of their individualityas owning a 3-ton Mercedes? Video-conferenc-ing will not eliminate use of a car; but it candramatically reduce it.

But beware: not all uses of informatics andtelecommunications will contribute to sus-tainable development. The transition to an“information society” may well offer newopportunities for dematerialization in thetransport sector, but it can also make thingsworse. If telematic systems for route guidanceand anti-collision assistance only result inmore cars on roads; if better designed andcheaper cars make individual car ownershipviable for more of the world’s population, thenet effect will be to accelerate our rush to aprecipice of social and environmental crisis.

Are self-interested concerted actions the way forward?

Achievement of sustainability cannot beimposed on our societies by Governmentdecree. We are all familiar with the politicaldifficulties of following up the Rio EarthSummit through supplementary energy taxa-tion and legislation on recycling and waste.Genuine and substantial progress towardssustainability requires that all major inter-ests push in the same direction. We all “own”the problems of unsustainable use of materi-als and abuse of our environment. We mustall contribute to the solutions.

No one individual organization can actalone: no individual or retailer can decide tointroduce tele-shopping; no flower producerin Israel can decide to offer his products invideo-auction rather than in Amsterdam; noindividual or company alone can make anyimpact on congestion in city traffic by tele-commuting. Only collective commitment andaction by substantial groups of organizations– in both the public and private sectors can beeffective.

And everyone must benefit, not just in thelonger term through a better preserved envi-ronment, but in the short term in businessefficiency, competitiveness and in individu-als’ “quality of life”.

This was the goal behind the consultationby DGXIII on a draft “Memorandum of Under-standing”: can we find a set of common prin-ciples and goals, which businesses, publicauthorities, non-government organizations,and even influential individuals can sign upto – voluntarily? A framework for co-opera-tion that reflects their own short-term inter-ests, as well as longer-term societal interests.

The essence of European action is co-opera-tion: common objectives and a framework inwhich diverse interests can pursue their owninterests in the common good. The frame-works of European research and technologydevelopment, and the Information SocietyForum are there to be used. However, theseframeworks must be filled by concrete pro-posals from the “champions” of new ideas:the Commission itself cannot be the drivingforce, except in very specific areas such as thesingle market, or European Monetary Unionwhere all member states agree on the goaland it can only be achieved by coherent leg-islative and policy action at EU level. Sustain-ability will not be achieved by Government-led legislative action alone, nor by European-level action alone. A much broader commit-ment to a common purpose is necessary. Per-haps co-operation for a “global informationsociety” is the context we need.

Notes 1 “Growth, competitiveness and employment:

the challenge and ways forward into the 21stcentury”, Bulletin of the European Communi-ties, Supplement 6/93, December 1993.

2 A forum of 128 people from all walks of life,called together by the European Commissionin July 1995 to advise the European Parlia-ment, the Council of Ministers and the Com-mission.

3 Telework 94 – “Telework new ways to work”,Proceedings of the European Assembly on Tele-working and New Ways of Working, Berlin, 3-4November, 1994.

Robert PestelHas been with the Euro-pean Commission since1990 in the area ofadvanced telecommunica-tions research. He is theauthor of numerous publi-cations. A former Fellow ofthe International Institutefor Applied Systems Analy-sis (IIASA), he hopes torevive world models as anetworking tool to focusthe attention of a criticalmass of concerned citi-zens on key policy issuesof sustainable develop-ment, bringing togetherpeople from science, pub-lic policy, industry and thearts in a process of “engi-neering the future”. He isa supporter of Athena. Hecan be reached by e-mail [email protected]

Peter JohnstonHas worked with the Com-mission of European Com-munities since 1988. Asthe head of programmepreparation, he is respon-sible for the strategicplanning of Europeantelecommunicationsresearch, and for eco-nomic and social assess-ments of telecommunica-tions developments in theEuropean Community. Healso has responsibility forEC actions in the area oftelework stimulation, witha view to diversification ofemployment opportunitiesand increasing the flexibil-ity and competitiveness ofEuropean industry, and forliaison with the Informa-tion Society Forum onSustainable Development.He can be contacted [email protected]

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© MCB University Press [ISSN 1352-7614]

Who said we wanted an information superhighway?

Robert Theobald Author, Teacher, Consultant and Community Activist,New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Looks at the possibledirections in which theinformation superhighwaycould take us, consideringboth the benefits ofincreased knowledge andsubsequent increasedparticipation and also thedangers such as theexcess of raw information.Suggests that thisinformation needs to bestructured and packagedif it is to have a positiveeffect. Considers thesepoints in a global sense interms of humanity as awhole.

Maybe what we need is knowledge-based country roads

The growing number of mega-mergers in theinformation and entertainment field acrossthe world demonstrate the potential compa-nies see in developing the information super-highway. The speed of developments is dizzy-ing. Even those in the field know they are notkeeping up. Our imagination and creativityhave lagged far behind our technologies. Wecan today find a way to do almost anything wecan imagine. We must learn to ask what isreally worth doing in a world where environ-mental limits increasingly constrain oursustainable options.

As societies develop effectively unlimitedproductive and destructive technologies, weface two very different scenarios for thefuture. One of them will enable people toparticipate more fully than ever before in thedecisions which concern them. It will providethem with knowledge about their realchoices. It will permit them to be part of col-lective decision making in ways undreamedof in the past: the phrase “government of thepeople, by the people and for the people”could take on new meaning. For example, acitizen’s group is coming together in April ofthis year to design an “economic bill ofrights” and the potential of the Internet maymean that its voice will be broadly shared.

A growing number of people share thismore inclusive dream. But it would be naiveto assume that this is the “probable” direc-tion for the information superhighway. Therewill have to be many profound shifts in ourmind-sets if we are to benefit from the poten-tial rather than be overwhelmed by the dan-gers. These dangers include a growing gapbetween the rich and the poor as those withpoor educational skills and lack of access tocomputer systems are further isolated fromthe mainstream.

This trend is already underway. A recentfour-part New York Times article showed howpeople are having to fight harder and harderto maintain their standards of living. One ofthe profiles discussed a family with fourchildren and four part-time jobs which stillprovided a much decreased income: thisstrategy was essential because good jobs with

benefits could not be found. I talkedfrequently with individuals graduating fromhigh-school and college. This fear is unfortu-nately all too justified. MBAs are drivingtaxicabs. Skilled workers are serving atMcDonald’s and other low-wage jobs.

But the discussion is not limited to the USAalone, it is rapidly becoming global. The prob-lem is that decision making is lagging farbehind understanding. Even when the issuesreach the election process, the rhetorics areso confusing that the public cannot reallyunderstand what they are being asked todecide.

What are the dangers? The first is the mostobvious. The amount of information availablecontinues to increase at incredible rates. Thisis normally seen as a benefit. I, on the con-trary, see this as a profound problem becausewhen information doubles, knowledge halvesand wisdom quarters. We are overwhelmedby the sheer weight of data. Both individualsand organizations fail to make the time toprocess it. We see decisions being made with-out reflective thought.

Raw information is not useful. We need tofind ways to structure information so peoplecan access it. The user needs to be able to findwhat they need, when they need it, in a formand at a level which is useful to them. Peopleshould think through questions rather thanthrow more and more data at them. Failure todo so increases the danger that we shall con-tinue to persist with obsolete policies ratherthan commit to re-examining them.

We need to invent new ways of packagingknowledge and wisdom so that it is accessi-ble. This is an area which has preoccupied mefor years. It is surprising to me how littleattention we have paid to this area beingcontent to use obsolete forms of communica-tion.

The second problem is closely related. Mostof those controlling information systems arespecialist professionals. They tend to usetheir own unique jargons which are notunderstandable by the general public. All toomany of them look down on the average citi-zen and assume that the only hope for thefuture is for the “experts” to take control: alltoo often one hears “Joe Blow cannot hope tounderstand these complex issues.” My belief

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Robert TheobaldWho said we wanted aninformation superhighway?


is that it is only as committed citizens becomeinvolved that we can hope to make significantprogress.

People who are concerned with achievingfundamental change seem to moving in twodirections. Some are becoming more didacticas the gap between what “should be” and“what is” widens. Some, like myself, and thegroup of people behind this special issue ofWorld Transport Policy & Practice, are spend-ing more and more time drawing citizens intothe dialogue. Throughout the world effortsare being made to discover how people withradically different views can learn to heareach other. I am convinced that it is only aspeople talk at significant levels that appropri-ate directions can be discovered.

Perhaps our most serious problem is thatthe very rhetoric of the information super-highway draws our attention away from thedesign level which is most crucial. How canwe structure information so that it servescommunities, whether they be geographical,professional or linked by a shared interest? Ibelieve that the challenge of developing com-munication systems within communitiesposes more complex, and immediate, prob-lems than the information superhighway.Such efforts as the “Freenets” in place inmany communities offer opportunities toexplore positive directions.

The interstate highway linked existing roadstructures, ensuring rapid movement be-tween them. The pattern with the informa-tion superhighway is very different. We arebuilding it before we have a local knowledgesystem in place. We therefore risk reinforcingan already existing pathology of lookingoutside our own systems for the ideas weneed rather than finding competence withinour own communities: we look for experts ina world where the very concept of “expertise”is obsolete. We also risk drowning people inentertainment, consumerism, gambling,violence and, indeed, pornography whichwill be the core directions of the commercialofferings now being developed.

Decisions about the information superhigh-way are not therefore only, or even primarily,professional but rather philosophical andeven theological. What sort of society do webelieve will ensure a high quality of life?

There is an even more basic question. It istime to ask what sort of society will ensuresurvival. Our current information systemsare based on controlling access to informa-tion and knowledge flows. We must revolu-tionize our thinking so that everybody canfind the knowledge they want at the time theyneed it in a medium which they find attrac-tive and a level they can comprehend.

We need an accessible knowledge systembased on the fundamental values of honesty,responsibility, humility, love and a respect formystery. It is only in this way that we canhope to think clearly about the radically newquestions which have emerged as a result ofour effectively unlimited productive anddestructive power. This knowledge systemwill help people resolve their individual,family and value questions on the basis ofcurrent reality rather than an imagined past.

Decisions about how we use the potential ofcommunications and the computer will shapethe twenty-first century world just as ourdecisions about the automobile faced thetwentieth. We need a far higher standard ofunderstanding if we are to prevent unin-tended consequences as severe as thosewhich were caused by the dominance of theautomobile. It is the responsibility of every-body who cares about the future to under-stand this issue which will play a pervasiverole in shaping the universe of our children.

A lot of the material I raise above is com-mon to the other essays which appear in thisvolume, although it is in no sense a summaryof what has been said. There is, however, afurther issue to which Eric Britton referredin his introduction to this journal. Why, if weknow so much, are we so ineffective in chang-ing the nature of the debate in societiesaround the world?

I was brought up against this issue sharplyin January of this year. In 1965, I produced aseries of interviews for the Canadian Broad-casting Corporation, which they have decidedto rebroadcast as part of their thirtiethanniversary celebrations. I did not knowwhether to be pleased about how much I andmy colleagues knew back then, or to be frus-trated by how little I seemed to have learnedsince. Confronted with the unwavering evi-dence of the recorded past, I was forced to askwhat I had been learning over the last 30years. I decided that although I have somegreater clarity in terms of the directionswhich I believe are needed, it is all, realisti-cally, only incremental to what I and manyothers knew way back then. What I think Ihave gained, perhaps, is a far clearer sense ofwhat is going to be necessary if we are to haveany chance of changing the dynamics of theculture before it collapses around us.

In a profound sense, we need to “be” thechange we wish to bring about. We need toalter our behaviours so we model what wewant to see happen. It is not enough to talkabout the new behaviours that are needed:what we need is to act in ways which peoplecan perceive and copy.

Those of you who remember the Old Testa-ment know that Moses brought his people to

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Robert TheobaldWho said we wanted aninformation superhighway?


Robert TheobaldA widely read author,community activist,speaker and consultantbased in the United Statesand Scotland. He trainedas an economist, turnedinto a socio-economist,then a futurist, and nowdespises all labels. He hasheld numerous academicposts, and has beennamed the 1996 Masseylecturer, a prestigiousCanadian BroadcastingCorporation opportunity.He intends to use this setof five lectures to changethe debate about successcriteria and reward sys-tems. His two latest booksare Turning the Centuryand The Rapids of Change.He can be contacted at509 Conti Street, NewOrleans, La 70130 or 001504 524 5374.

E-mail [email protected] also via the Trans-formative Learning Com-munity: http://www.trans-form.org/transform andthe Dynamic LearningConsortium: http://www.transform.org/transform/dlc/index.html

the promised land but was not permitted toenter it. We, on the contrary, seem to me to beblocking ourselves from the new behavioursand directions which are required.

We face insurmountable opportunities. Todeal with them we must change in four areas:1 Communication skills. We need to think

about the message that those with whomwe are talking can hear and perceive –rather than what we think is most crucial.

2 Collaboration. We need to recognize thatwe are all part of a much larger movement,and that, while our particular area is mostcritical to us, it is only a small part of theoverall dynamic. We also need to face thefact that our understandings are limitedand partial. The Internet provides thepotential for new, powerful, lateral formsof organization which rely on theexchange of knowledge. They can bypassgovernments which, in most cases, aredetermined to maintain their power.

3 Commitment. We need to recognize thatfundamental change is essential if we areto preserve the quality of life for the “sev-enth generation.” Indeed, our own lives

will be negatively impacted unless we take advantage of the potentials of our time. Itwas argued at the time of the AmericanRevolution that people had to be preparedto pledge “their lives, their fortunes andtheir sacred honor” to the cause. We needthe same level of commitment now, but it isour lives, and not our deaths, which arerequired.

4 Courage. And in the end we need to havethe grit to stand for the moral virtues butto recognize that they have to be used as acompass and not as an anchor. None of usknow what the future will, or should,bring. We have to invent it together.

The Internet provides the potential for a newform of collaboration towards a creative andsuccessful future for the planet. I personallylive in two universes. I know how negativecurrent dynamics are and how powerful theforces of inertia are that are holding us backfrom change. The “probable” future is disas-trous. I also know that, if there are enoughpeople who want change and are ready to dotheir part, it could be achieved with extraor-dinary rapidity.

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