Abstract
This paper suggests telework, and work/life community created by it, as potential design tools for the sustainability of local communities, and investigates their possibility and issues through a case study of Loma Linda Connected Community Program (LLCCP).
A new work/life style enabled by information communication technology (ICT), often called telework, is expanding in the U.S. The environmental impact which this gives on community scale has been neglected. Yet, since telework can give the area economic advancement without huge development, make mixed-use zoning plausible, and grants sense of community, it could bring physical, economic and social sustainability to local communities.
LLCCP, as an example of emerging municipal ICT deployment programs, was examined on two levels; i.e. level of urban policy and of urban design. It was revealed that LLCCP, as an urban policy, has a good potential to create ICT-served work/life community, thus to contribute to the smart growth of the city. It does so by promoting new businesses yet small/home ones only, and developing new neighborhoods yet ICT-served work/life communities only. Its link to regional plans and to the building code which ensures the connectivity in entire city elevate its possibility.
The paper also pointed out that city's urban design strategies are not yet supporting LLCCP toward its goal. It lacks coordination with teleworkers' life style, and with spatial system for the entire city. A current design proposal overlooks teleworkers' driving habits and their specific needs to the types of retails/business-services, for example. The result implies that the use of telework in creating sustainable community may have started to be recognized on urban policy level, but that urban/architectural design for it is still behind to be developed.