New Urban Work Environments
Exactly where the workplace is headed, though, is less clear.

In Nashville, though, there was no dearth of ideas. Some of the most far-reaching came from Landscape of Change, a research report on digital technology's impact on real estate. (The Prince of Wales even contributed the foreword, which reads in part, "Just as we shape our built environment, it, too, shapes our lives.")

Urban work environments, for example, will be reshaped by digital technology, the report says. "[We] will see a move away from the importance of traditional central business districts," explained Douglas Barrat, a director with Ballast Wiltshier, the UK-based construction firm that released Landscape of Change.

"Existing functional zoning into separate commercial and residential city areas will gradually give way to mixed-use zoning [that] does not draw sharp distinctions between industry, offices, places of education or residential areas," Barrat asserted.

Bell South's 'Atlanta Metro Plan'
That sort of urban redefinition may already be unfolding, a Nashville workshop suggested. Bell South's precedent-setting "Atlanta metro plan" is reshaping the company, and Atlanta as well, by relocating 13,000 of its 19,000 metro workers.

"The Atlanta plan is the first in America on this scale to be built around mass transit," CEO Duane Ackerman noted. "We are going to make the space fit the business, not force the business to fit into the space. We are using real estate to improve our competitiveness."

The Bell South plan reverses the corporate out-migration that's embedded "urban sprawl" in the U.S. lexicon. Instead, with many Atlanta-metro leases expiring, Bell South seized a prime opportunity for workplace redefinition. It's closing 75 Atlanta-area offices totaling 2 million sq. ft. (180,000 sq. m.) and building three new business centers spanning 3 million sq. ft. (270,000 sq. m.) along North Atlanta rapid-transit lines. And the new centers' added space will vanish rapidly, for mercurial growth spurred Bell South's new approach.

"We didn't pay enough attention to space issues because we were growing so fast," Ackerman conceded. "This new plan was an opportunity to take a totally clean slate and look at how to group our work functions to better serve customers."

The uncommon inward migration entails a hefty US$750 million investment. But that's a far less pricey proposition, say Bell South officials, than continuing to expand the existing patchwork of locations. In addition, the new centers are located where Bell South projects that its future work force will live. And, a la Landscape of Change, the emphasis is on integrating the facilities with the city.

"We don't call the new centers 'campuses'," Ackerman explained. "That suggests something that stands alone. We want them to integrate and blend with the community."

Outmoded Infrastructure
But IDRC's conference demonstrated that no brave new workplace world will arrive overnight. For one thing, huge chunks of outmoded infrastructure remain.

Steelcase's Keane, for example, noted that cabling and power systems inside facilities built as recently as the 1980s can't adequately support current trends like higher churn rates and virtual work.

Concurred KLR Consulting principal Ken Robertson, "In most organizations, facilities are still a bit of a Model T."

Obstacles to optimal workplace performance also abound within most organizations, Robertson added: "The coordination of people, technology and space are today's three basic competitive resources, yet each of these three elements tends to be in its own silo."