CHANGE DISRUPTS CITY HALL 

During the past four decades municipal governments have had it pretty quiet -- at least compared to prospects they will be having to face in the very near future.

The industrial age compartmentized everything and life was simple. You were assigned a place to live, a place to work, a place to play, even places to eat (other than your home). The zoning process kept everything neat and tidy, just like your front lawn was supposed to be. Get ready for chaos.

Already the effects are noticeable. Almost all cities have a problem with "illegal suites"; people aren't following the rules anymore, for apparently sound reasons. The growing list of court rulings against any "discriminatory" action do not carry clout. People are no longer terrorized by bureaucracy (if anything, it is the other way around). Makes it tough to get the populace to proceed the way bureaucrats had planned (usually without getting your opinion).

Estimates in North America show that at least 10 percent of the working population (i.e., taxpayers) are working "at home". In almost every residential district that is technically, illegal. It will get worse (or better depending on the point of view -- city hall's or the taxpayers).

Thanks to modern technological devices, most small and highly efficient, capable of world-wide hooks-ups and conservative of electrical consumption, many new sunrise "industries" can operate in very small quarters with a surprisingly small staff. In many cases the "staff" doesn't even have to be at the same location as the official "office"; they "telecommute" via phone line. Such companies increasingly show a growth rate double that of sunset industry companies. They have lower overhead, show larger per capita dollar sales per employee and look at the world as their market instead of the more restrictive marketing areas of the past.

What are the implications for big city real estate? Now that it is unnecessary to pay $30 a square foot to store manila folders, won't space requirements drop? Will the large hierchy of staff required in the industrial age not drop dramatically as workers, utilizing the latest equipment, become more productive? And, for more progressive companies who treat workers as partners, shareholders or contract outside companies for some work, won't those individuals themselves be continually looking for way increase company sales and keep costs down -- since that affects their portion of the profits? Think what this will mean to those "easy" taxes paid in one lump from large real estate holding companies. Now city hall has to handle more of the smaller "retail" trade.

Even the definition of "work" takes on new meaning. Is working at a computer what was really meant by work when local by-laws were implemented? Back in the Thirties "working" was mainly physical. Computers and most of our other new toys didn't exist then. Fifty percent of current goods and services didn't exist even five years ago. 90 percent of all you will work or play with by the start of the Third Millennium hasn't yet been developed. City Hall will have trouble during the next decade, supposing even as much as 50 percent of all the laws now on their books.

Let's look at manufacturing. I turn columns into books. Not Gutenberg style where you can see and feel them but electronic books. Is that working? I sell books but I duplicate my master electronically on a 3 1/2" disc and mail it out. Is that "manufacturing"? If so, I'll send it electronically over the phone. That can't be manufacturing. I can make "motion pictures" with color and sound on my APPLE MACINTOSH II computer. Does that make me a television studio sound stage?

City hall will become overwhelmed not only by the differences now beginning to show up in society but also by the sheer volume and complexity of businesses. The world is now globalized. Any business can move almost anywhere at the speed of light. Does any city want to lose the dynamic entrepreneurship of its brightest and most job-creating citizens?

Look for a new and brighter day ahead as "by-pass" becomes routine. Any new technology is an outlaw. No rules have yet been developed for that field. With rapid change no government, trained in the bureaucratic procedure of the past, can keep up.

Become an outlaw. Get in, not on the ground floor but on the excavation. The rules are not yet written.

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