The term “social responsibility” is an ideology that holds an entity, whether an individual, a corporation, or government, has a responsibility to society.  This responsibility is twofold: first to act when action is warranted to improve equality, freedom, and/or quality of life, and second to refrain from acting when such action would be detrimental to the same.

For a corporation to be judged as “socially responsible,” there are four areas of measurement to consider:

1. Economic Function: give an indication of the economic contribution the corporation is making
2. Quality of Life: focus on whether the organization is improving or degrading the general quality of life in society
3. Social Investment: deals with the degree to which the company is investing both money and resources to solve community social problems
4. Problem Solving: focus on the degree to which the organization deals with social problems

Timeless Designs Corporation is committed to being a socially responsible corporation.  In fact, the vision at the very core of this company and our projects – and the central reason for the individuals that make up the corporation becoming involved – is rooted in that commitment.  Let’s look at each measure:

Economic Function

There are many facets to the economic impact that TDC will have on its partners, its investors, its residents, its partner businesses, the community itself, and the region, county, and state in which it is built.  Some of these impacts will have to be carefully crafted and planned, while others will simply happen as a byproduct of the success of the company.  The key to being economically functional is having a solid business model that focuses not simply and solely on making money, but that places a high order of value on all stakeholders: partners, investors, the community, and local government.

I call it the “if you build it, they will come” mentality, and by “they” I mean dollars, not people.  If you expend your effort focusing on what customers (and potential customers) want and don’t waste energy trying to trim every possible penny off cost while extracting every possible penny from those customers, you’ll attract more customers and the money will come.

For example, there’s a huge groundswell of public sentiment focused on global warming and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Burning fossil fuels is still the least expensive, most productive means of generating energy.  But there’s a large potential market for a community run entirely on alternative energy.  Between research and development costs, infrastructure and energy storage difficulties, and inherent inefficiencies in most alternative energy sources, the cost of providing energy from those sources is relatively quite high.  To the “in-the-box” bean counter, that might make it seem commercially unviable.

What is more difficult to assess, however, is the impact on consumers of having that ready source of energy that is clean and friendly to the environment.  The growing concern about clean energy, rising oil prices and domestic dependence on foreign oil, will draw people to a community that has a solution for those concerns.  The impact on the community as a whole is a lower vacancy rate and higher revenues from businesses in that community.  While it would be hard for an accountant to accurately attribute those benefits directly to alternative energy sources, it can certainly be considered contributory.

Quality of Life

In addition to being a key attribute of a company’s social responsibility, quality of life has real business relevance as well.  In the Regional Economic Development section of the CareerOneStop.org website, “Perceptions about quality of life in a region can heavily impact attraction and retention efforts of companies, skilled workers, and entrepreneurs.”
Nonetheless, “Quality of Life” is a subjective measure because different people have different perceptions of what constitutes quality.  Here are some measures of QoL that Timeless Designs thinks are important:

1. Cost of Living

Particularly in recessionary times, people are very concerned about money and their personal cash flow.  There are two ways that TDC plans to help improving cost of living within Mathias Island at Fortune Bay.  First, the “Everything’s Included Lifestyle” (see Living in the Twenty-First Century, the previous blog entry) serves to limit the degree to which monthly expenses fluctuate by taking services that have traditionally been individual, pay-as-you-go basis and roll them into a single flat monthly bill that can be paid in conjunction with rent (for leasers).  For some, the net result could be a slightly higher, but stable, monthly payment.  For most, however, it will be less than what the same person might pay outside the community.

Second, TDC is setting lease rates at or below the regional average – and in many cases, far below.  We have conducted analyses that show clearly that we can make ample profit charging minimal lease rates – as discussed above, the desire to provide a reasonable cost of living supersedes any need to extract as much income as the market will bear from our rental properties.

2. Commuting Times

As the urban center is expanded and surrounded by suburbs, and those suburbs are further extended by sprawling tracts of cookie-cutter neighborhoods, the time spent to get from home to the workplace and back again is ever-increasing.  Even with the use of public transportation, which is notoriously slow and has to make many stops, and high-occupancy vehicle lanes, the average commuter in the US spends approximately 25 minutes each way commuting to and from work (US Census Bureau).  The larger the city, the longer the commute.  This contributes to such problems as stress and road rage, climate change, and increased cost of living due to auto maintenance (or bus/train fare) and parking costs.

In the Mathias Island at Fortune Bay community, our goal is to ensure that everyone who works in the community is able to live in the community.  In addition to providing free public transportation to residents, people who own or rent a home in the community that also work in the community will get a discounted rate on rent or condominium fees.  We want to encourage people to both live and work in the community.

Because the 1000 acre community is at most 6 miles in circumference, no one should have to spend more than 8-10 minutes commuting, whether by public transportation, small vehicle (scooters or golf carts), by boat, or in some cases even by walking.  This affects QoL in several ways: first and foremost, a daily commute of 10 minutes each way results in each worker reclaiming 30 minutes a day of his personal time.  Assuming a 250-day work year, that’s 125 hours a year of added personal time.  It also eliminates waiting on crowded freeways or searching for parking spaces (the time spent finding a suitable parking space each day is NOT considered in the average commute time).

3. Crime Rates

Timeless Designs Corporation is passionately dedicated to crime prevention, detection, investigation, and prosecution within our communities.  Our plan calls for engineering an integrated command and control infrastructure for law enforcement, emergency medical response, fire fighting, and maintenance services.  One of the lessons of 9/11 is that when disparate branches of public safety services, and even different units within one branch of service, do not have adequate and integrated communications, their response to emergencies is significantly impacted.

TDC’s infrastructure will co-locate the top commanders of all public safety services in a single Emergency Command Center (ECC).  All communications will be routed through a single C4I system (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence) and appropriate responses quickly and efficiently determined and dispatched to regional Emergency Dispatch Offices (EDO).  Dispatch Offices will be strategically positioned throughout the community and each will provide a base of operations to one or more Rapid Response Teams (RRT).  RRT’s can be quickly dispatched to reported emergencies in a matter of minutes or even seconds from their EDO.  To eliminate the need for expensive emergency vehicles, equipment vaults will be placed in various locations throughout the community so that wherever an RRT is dispatched to, they will be only steps away from everything they need.

In the ECC and EDO’s, sophisticated and automated sensor and surveillance equipment will alert command teams to problems or threats as they are detected.  This equipment will be carefully designed to protect the privacy of individuals while still providing early threat detection, isolation, and decision support capabilities to the emergency command staff.

Timeless Designs Corporation also intends to augment public emergency responders with privately contracted services to reduce the burden on the local government.  By doing so, TDC can enhance emergency response teams with specialized help on an as-needed basis.  Police may use specially trained private squads for ordnance disposal, for example, or for providing security at large events – leaving the actual police force to see to their critical job of responding to 911 calls.  Paramedics may have access to a pool of medical specialists – like toxicologists, diagnosticians, neurologists, and so forth – to enable them to provide better care faster in medical emergencies.

End of Part 1

Continue to Part 2

Timeless Designs Corporation has a vision of the community of tomorrow, with dreams that cover the gamut.  We believe that high-density, mixed-use structures are the key to modern urban development.  We believe that fossil fuel-burning vehicles should return to their roots: that is, that they should return to being luxuries rather than necessities, used for entertainment rather than commuting.  We believe in building, nurturing, and supporting the ephemeral spirit of a tight-knit community, yielding that elusive “small town” feel even in the midst of a highly populated city.  We believe the time has come for wide-scale use of alternative energy, innovations in public transportation, education, and public safety.

But all these aspects of our vision for the future has a common undercurrent; a driving philosophy.  Timeless Designs Corporation’s driving desire is to take the dreams of past visionaries and bring them to fruition; to take every scenario in which intelligent and thoughtful people have said, “This is what should be done,” and actually do it.

One such vision of the future has been around for more than half a century: the vision of computers and digital telecommunications integrated into the very fabric of everyday life.  Twenty years ago, the Internet was in its infancy.  It wasn’t even called the “Internet,” but rather “ARPAnet” after the federal agency that invented it: the Advanced Research Projects Agency.  The opening of the network to commercial interests actually began in 1988, but it wasn’t until the mid-1990’s that the term “Internet” reached the common vernacular.  As the world raced toward the end of the second millennium AD, the Internet was growing (by some estimates) at the amazing rate of 100% per year – that is, the number of nodes connected to the Internet and consequently the number of computers with access to it was doubling every year.  To put that in a little perspective, if you had invested $100 in 1996 (around the time the Internet became popular) and it earned 100% interest every year, your investment would be worth over $1.6 million by the end of 2009!

Visionaries long before the Internet (or even ARPAnet) was conceived had dreams of every citizen of every developed nation having computers integrated into their daily lives.  The Internet truly made this vision possible.  My question to the world is, why hasn’t it happened yet?

After almost two decades of the Internet, with existing technology capable of providing a gigabit of bandwidth (that’s more than 1 billion bits per second – common DSL service only provides about one half of one percent of that capability) – why doesn’t everyone have Internet-based services?  With the digital capability provided by a robust and widespread Internet, and technology capable of gigabit speeds, all of the following should be possible:

• Digital high definition television, including a vast array of video-on-demand.  Movies, of course, should be available.  But regular television programs should also be recorded and available on-demand as viewers desire, from sitcoms to news programs, from sporting events to reality shows.
• Digital high definition audio
• Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) telephone service, including video and all the features currently available from standard phone and cellular service providers

Let’s pause right there a moment.  All the above services should be Internet-based, and should be available anywhere in the home.  If you’re watching the Big Game and a phone call comes in, there’s no technical reason why you shouldn’t be able to hit a button on your television remote to mute the TV sound and take the call without having to get off the sofa.  If it’s a video call, there’s no technical reason why the caller couldn’t appear in a picture-in-picture window on the big screen.

With services like Pandora and even iTunes, there’s no reason every radio couldn’t be connected to the Internet as well.  If you want to hear a particular song or playlist, you should be able to browse an extensive list of online songs and play them on any audio-capable device in your house – even a wireless personal device like an iPod.

Once your entire home has Internet-based voice and video, there’s no technical reason why Mom in the kitchen couldn’t place a call to daughter Jane, in her room studying, to tell her that dinner is ready.  If the family’s wireless devices (cell phones) were also connected to the same network, Mom should be able to reach Jane regardless of where she is with the same message.

The possibilities are truly endless.  If wireless devices were integrated into the home network and the devices were sufficiently intelligent, Mom could simply tell the kitchen video phone to “call Jane” and the call would be routed to Jane wherever she is.

Other Internet services should also be accessible from any connected device.  Again, the technology that exists today could easily support it.  Check e-mail while watching television.  Check stock quotes while talking on the phone.

These capabilities are in existence right now, today.  Some of them you may have read and thought, well yeah, I can do that now.  We recognize that.  Timeless Designs simply wants to take all these services to the next logical step: integrating them all into one convenient package, for one price.  In other words, instead of paying for satellite TV, paying for cell service, paying for music downloads, paying for Internet access, and so on and so forth, residents of our communities will get a complete, integrated digital communication solution for one flat rate.  We want everyone to have this service, because the wider its use the more convenient it will be for everyone.

But really, it’s not about what can be done now or for how much.  You techno-geeks out there: think for a moment what you could do in terms of community portals, services, telecommunications, and so on for a community where everyone had gigabit Ethernet in their homes.  This is the next digital playground, and we want to attract players who can see into the future.  What could Google do for a community with that level of bandwidth?  What could an Intel or Oracle do for businesses whose customers and colleagues and partner businesses had access to that kind of speed?  Who has the next-generation online content management website, like YouTube, that could benefit from gigabit speeds?

It’s fine to run along the ragged edge of the envelope, for a publically traded company.  When your stockholders are demanding results, and now, you need to push forward to the next wave of technology, but do it in a way that inspires confidence in your stockholders so they don’t sell their shares – and your corporate value goes up.  Timeless Designs is not publically traded, and we don’t have to answer to five million stockholders.  We want to step over the ragged edge and build a newer, bigger envelope for people to push.

This project, for me, is about looking at every nook and cranny of our vision and saying, “Wow, how cool would it be if we could do that,” and then actually do it.