Designing the Workplace for the New Ecomony

Sheridan explores the impacts of the emerging information-based economy on everything from the design of multifamily housing to corporate campuses.

"Not only are high-tech companies looking for unusual spaces that are reflective of their corporate culture, but firms in the knowledge sector are also reviving inner-city neighborhoods, spearheading the drive for sustainability, and even changing the way some new buildings are designed."

"Today's creative class drives the knowledge economy, and participants tend to want both their home and workplace to be in a walkable urban place with coffee shops, entertainment, and stores," says Christopher B. Leinberger, president of LOCUS, a real estate policy advocate for walkable and transit-oriented development (TOD).

"Thus, builders, architects, and designers must think in a different way. Over the past half-century, the U.S. real estate sector was like NASCAR, Leinberger adds. 'NASCAR drivers drive 150 miles an hour and just go straight or turn to the left,' he says. But building professionals now have to do things differently, he says, and learn how to develop complex and more risky walkable urban projects."