In times of crisis, think proactive not reactive
This is a briefing paper - we recommend it be printed out and read at leisure. To understand the context of this memo, we suggest that you read the article on Telepresence.
If a corporation came to you and said it was looking for a place right now to invest a billion dollars in a site that would bring in about $ΒΌ billion per year in new income, take 6,000 cars off the road, have no adverse environmental impact, and create hundreds of jobs during construction, and that it wants to begin right now, would you be interested? Would you be prepared to sponsor such a project to make it easy for that corporation to move in?
That is what we propose, only the corporation is not a mono-culture, but rather the host for about 4,000 different businesses and jobs that form the local economy of what we call a parallel village: a 10,000 population community worth over a billion dollars in capital value, generating over one third of a billion dollars per year in new income, yet not requiring an upgraded regional infrastructure because no one will be commuting by car - everything is within a ten-minute walk. Everything means people's daily destinations including:
- their job
- shops
- recreation and leisure
- schooling
- homes, including private homes, elder homes, youth homes, etc.
We call it a parallel village because it offers people choice; a new way to live that focuses on creating a much higher quality of life while lowering the cost of living. It is not some utopian ideal or eco-village, but mainstream competition to more suburban sprawl. It is based on solid, proven, market principles and a hard-headed look at the mess we have created by pursuing the wrong goals over the past fifty years. While it appeals to many for its sustainable features, we do not regard these as bragging points - what drives it is quality of life, not the fact that it takes 6,000 cars off the road or manages its own waste smarter. It builds a community around positives, not the absence of negatives.
To understand the context, let's take a look back to history, for it is said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
If we look back to the events starting with the Great Depression through the beginning of the longest economic boom in modern history - especially in America where they invented much of what the rest of the world followed, we see how policy makers - elected officials - used technology to pull the world out of economic depression.
In the USA, the first thing officials did was to create work-programmes. Get people into gainful employment even if it was make-work. Then along came World War II, and the government borrowed to fund the war. Suddenly factories were running at maximum capacity, everyone was either at war or at work. When the war was coming to an end, American leaders saw that millions of soldiers would return home looking for jobs just as the war contracts dried up - just the right mix for another great depression. Since the war had been won on gasoline (fact - all US planes, tanks, trucks and jeeps used leaded gasoline to fight the war), and the most influential advisors to the President were the heads of those companies (General Motors, Standard Oil, Dupont, etc.), the government decided the best way to keep America out of a depression was to reinvent itself around cars, trucks, planes and petroleum to run them.
To create a market for such products, however, one could not have soldiers returning to apartments in the cities or large extended family homes in the villages and towns of America where folks got around by walking, or taking the tram, trolley or train. They had to create new housing, new job locations, new schools and new shopping that required a car to accomplish the mundane chores of daily life. Whereas before the war cars merely replaced horses in the villages, towns and cities, after the war they tore down the cities (or let them become slums), and radically transformed the towns and villages into suburbs, shopping malls, office and industrial parks all connected by a concrete network of motorways and wide multi-laned streets. It worked and America became a superpower. While the government did its part to make it possible, unlike the war effort, the primary capital investment came from the private sector. Not long after Australia, New Zealand and other new world countries adopted the American model and now we find suburban sprawl world-wide... the plan was a fabulous success.
Of course there was a down-side that we are seeing today. We pumped a lot of oil out of the ground and converted into fuel and chemicals. While this engendered one of the highest standard-of-living for the masses ever seen in history, it also resulted in global pollution at such a scale that scientists now fear we may over-cook the climate. We also found this precious resource was not unlimited and engineers predict affordable petroleum will be gone within a generation. The unanticipated side effects are proving to be very bad. But beyond these big-picture negatives, we also found that while the freedom of driving the open road in our shiny new car was most alluring, the mundane drudgery of being stuck in the same traffic everyday is not much fun. Cars cost a lot to keep up, they rob us of quality time, and when we lose our license to drive, we must segregate ourselves from society in a retirement complex. In short, the promise failed to deliver because we asked the wrong questions.
So how can we come up with a similar economic recovery plan for the 21st century, but this time consider the negative side effects?
The answer is in telepresence. Telepresence is the culmination of the computer revolution, the internet revolution and the "convergence" revolution, where the telephone, PC, TV, internet, robotics and other related technologies are now blending into a world-wide system that enables a person to earn a living, meet with people, perform tasks and engage with the world without actually being there. Cisco's Telepresence product now enables people to have a quality face-to-face meeting with others across town or across the world. Now doctors at teaching hospitals are present in remote hospitals to help with difficult operations. Within ten years we are told they will be able to don gloves and run surgical robotics to actually perform the operation on the other end of the earth.
Right now, there are millions of people who can move their jobs anywhere in the world where they have high speed broadband, overnight delivery and can get to an international airport within two hours. Some of these people already use telepresence in creative ways, but most still go to an office where they sit down at a desk, turn on their computer and then work. They use the telephone at the office, and then go to meeting rooms to connect with customers, colleagues or professionals. This is similar to the 1910 to 1945 era where people replaced horses with cars, but did not change the infrastructure to take advantage of the new technology.
We propose parallel villages for a very different reason. The suburbs failed to deliver on their promise. They are bland, they consume vast swathes of land for paving, they separate people and they create a hierarchy of privilege - especially bad for old people, which is becoming a concern now that the baby boom is set to retire.
We developed the idea of parallel villages to bring the romance back into life, to make it fulfilling, in an enriched social and cultural environment where the things people love in life thrive. As the trans-port era gave us food trucked thousands of kilometres, we discover that local foods taste so much better, and cost less because the transport and distribution costs are cut out. We read where Richard Florida's books on the Creative Class are becoming required reading by forward thinking politicians, especially when Dr. Florida demonstrates that investing in attracting the creative class, artists, scientists and designers, creates the strongest economies, whereas building another convention centre or sports stadium actually weakens the local economy. We see where old people have awful options, and we notice that today's leaders - the Baby Boomers - are finally waking up to the fact that while they rode the biggest wave of prosperity and privilege for most of their lifetime, the endgame looks decidedly bleak. They much rather live in a supporting community where they need not drive a car, and which provides for them among young people all the way to the end of life.
However, while we developed parallel villages to pursue a higher level of quality of life and to avoid the adverse effects of contemporary development, they also offer today's policy maker another alternative to help keep New Zealand out of the next Great Depression.
- Australia needs housing - let's build it so we don't need to build more roads.
- Parallel villages create their own local economy, so they can be built in relatively undeveloped areas rather than be the next extension of sprawl.
- If Australia's CSIRO is right, and petrol may be $8 litre (NZ$10) in 2018 then it makes sense to build 10,000 population communities that take painlessly 6,000 cars off the road
- Some of New Zealand's best and brightest are overseas - let's get them to return home because we offer so much more than the bright lights of Sydney, London or Dubai.
What we need from you:
Understanding - It's a new idea, getting our national and state leadership to champion it is important.
Cooperation - If you are funding development projects, have a look at the idea of parallel villages, it may make a whole lot more sense
Legislation - We intend to use existing law, especially corporate law, to establish parallel villages. However, it could be much easier if legislation were tailored for such developments.
About us:
The Auckland project is emerging because the home of the international Parallel Villages Ltd is in New Zealand, and we would like to build a parallel village in New Zealand. Many of our international advisors are saying we should concentrate on countries with more population and wealth, such as Australia, but we would like to give New Zealand a try. How responsive central and local government are will be a key determinant.
We are different than the conventional developer, where pecuniary interest is not only the paramount, but too often the only consideration. Yes, we are successful and practical business people who run businesses for profit, but we find in the real estate business, the effects of development are equally important. Develop a place with positive effects that people love, and the people will come to buy. Develop a place that avoids adverse effects and the local planners and councils that must give approval will be pleased to do so. For this reason, we are an effects based company.Our team is motivated to create a wonderful place to live, a 10,000 population village where all have the opportunity do well, lifelong - regardless of their financial aspirations. And by all, we do not mean a social elite, but a wide cross section of society (one reason the village has an Industrial Park, for example, to provide jobs for blue collar workers who actually make things). We then seek that this wonderful place become a model for other development, that conventional developers see the parallel village model as good business. We expect the first villages will become major visitor destinations, especially among the professions related to real estate development, and we expect to establish training schools, so the good ideas can be spread and those parts that did not work so well serve as skinned-knee lessons.
Let there be no doubt, a project of this scale and character will be profitable. It creates a higher quality product, a life style for which many people yearn. It pays strong attention to cutting out the inefficiencies and waste that characterises the building industry. It looks to cut the financial exposure from years to months, and to enrol the buyers from the beginning, thus reducing risk and increasing certainty. In the process, it seeks to give the buyers a lower cost of living as well as a higher quality of life. It is the epitome of win-win. Beyond the company goals, however, what drives us to select this project and not just another solely profit-driven business opportunity is simple. We want to live with the result. We want to live in a parallel village; we want to grow old in a parallel village; we want to visit other parallel villages around the country and around the world.
We invite you to become a part of "us" in this adventure.
Call us. Click the Contact Button and use the phone, email or send us a letter. We are ready to go, and the sooner we find the right land, the sooner we will begin attracting the people who will make the village happen.How to work with us:
