Re-Urbanization - Imagine No Personal Vehicle.

Brill Bullets were beautiful Interurban Trolleys
that were built by the J.G. Brill Company.
Lafayette Street in Schenectady (Circe 1931).
(Photo: Efner Research Center).

.

I imagine my hometown of Schenectady and Scotia, New York like it may have looked 80 years ago - with a population concentrated around the city - around where people worked, shopped and socially interacted.  A trolley running down the main street(s) with bus routes to and from the trolly stops.  People lived in an urbanized environment - simply "close".  We visited the country on our Sunday car rides or when we went on vacation.  Then came the 40s, 50s and 60s; cheap gas, a prospering economy, and a DOD project that became our Interstate Highway System (for moving troops quickly).  We went from a 15 minute commute to work to a 60 minute commute to work from the country.  I question the differences in quality of life, as a people, between the times of the early part of the 20th century and what we evolved into.  Would this have happened if energy had not been cheap, the Interstate Highway System had not been built and the times been less prosperous?  Maybe we would have been riding Brill's Baby Bullets to work and around town.

Now reset the clock to the current day.  Expensive energy, an aging interstate system in need of repair and a changing mindset where time is more valuable spent with family and friends than commuting on I95 (add to that the potential of shrinking service / professional wages).

I like San Francisco as my model city.  An arterial commuter train system (BART) that interconnects several major cities in the Bay Area.  A bus/subway system (MUNI) that connects from BART around and within the major cities and then free "around town" bus/trolleys that provide in town transportation between commerce and shopping locations. Oh, and just in case you need a car for a couple hours - walk up to the corner and get in a Zip Car - No more need for a personal vehicle - rent it by the hour. UPDATE: 1/2/2013 - NBCNews.com: Avis buying Zipcar in $500 million all-cash deal.


People will say "that they don't live near a city"... then for the sake of sleeping in the county, they will pay more for energy, pay more for vehicles, pay more for insurance and drive on roads that will remain in disrepair as the population will not pass the tax bonds to pay for the repair and replacement of roads they don't drive.  UPDATE: 1/3/2013 - Why This CEO Doesn’t Own A Car: The Rise Of Dis-Ownership.

Now imagine inner city/town high speed walkways (like in airports), convenient mass transportation, like in Portland, Oregon and high speed railways between large regional cities.

Which cities are ahead of the curve?  10 Best Cities for Public Transportation per U.S.News & World Report February 2011 article..


Will our cities and communities of the future look more like a Jetson's cartoon?

"Local" will become much more important in out future. Buy.Eat.Live.Local.

Quality of life will be redefined - In our lifetime.

Re-Urbanization - The Re-Urbanization of America - Reinventing Local

As much as I would like to take credit for this/these prediction(s), I can't as there are already so many government and business studies that talk about this trend, the whys and the outcomes.  What I will point out, in a series of blog entries, are the business opportunities that I believe will be created during, and as an outcome of, this evolution.

The biggest causes of the coming re-urbanization are somewhat obvious:

• Energy Costs
• Water Availability
• Services Availability
• Quality of Life

The whys and the outcomes are a bit less obvious.  Then there are the "Wheres"; where should you be in 2020 or 2030 and beyond.

I will relate this evolution to business and economic changes - changes that represent opportunities for some and a demise for others.

The Buy Local campaigns we see and hear about are just the beginning - some think they are just lip service put on by the local chambers - I believe they are beginnings of a change to self sustaining and complete socioeconomic microcosms - wow, that sounds way to technical; let's just call it our Hometown.

And yes, my thoughts and predictions are an opportunity I am betting on. - Buy. Eat. Live. Local. TM

I wish I were in my 20s again.

Localization - It's about Much More Than Printing.

Let's make this country a better place and there is no better place to start than in our own hometowns.

As anyone who follows this blog or knows the Time4 and LightsOn initiative; it is quite simple: Make Our Customer Succeed.  We are all about recreating local in a world that knows more about a Jersey Shore celebrity than their own neighbor.  Lets fix this by starting in our own home town.  The following three past articles give some background to this idea.

• Collaborative Marketing Efforts Make The Impossible - Probable. 
• Followup on "Who Me, Who Three - Fixing the Local Print Business" Can the Local Printer Survive?
• The Post Offices (USPS) Encore or the Beginning of the End

Over the last couple months we have been testing our "Buy. Eat. Live. Local." concept with the purpose of moving "Buy Local" from a lip service to a way of life - our lives and our future.  We have made the objective of "Buy. Eat. Live. Local." a product (evolving as it is) to help communities across the country by providing it to local entrepreneurs who, most importantly, live there, work there and buy there.  Have you ever been there?

"Buy. Eat. Live. Local." is the coming together of many environmental, business, social and economic factors.  One of the biggest factors is the forth coming re-urbanization of America over the next 20-30 years which I will be writing about extensively.  For those as old as I, think about it as Megatrends 2013.

How well grasped is this concept?

Here is the Town of Windham Maine's ad - a paid ad - giving 10 reasons why this just makes sense.  So Shop Smart and Shop Local.

 ....and here is what we say:

”Natural Communities Form Around Community and Commerce Centers”.

Buy. Eat. Live. Local

In almost all cases your Windham merchant will provide
Better Service at a Better Price with Less Hassle.

Why?  You know them – They depend on Windham people and they live in Windham.

Buy. Eat. Live. Local and watch Windham grow.

 This is not a concept coming to your home town, it's already there !!!

 

The Post Offices (USPS) Encore or the Beginning of the End

People unknowingly think the United States Postal Service is inefficient and burdened by "government employees".  Not true by any means - sure there are always a few bad apples, but that is true everywhere.

Imagine - a private company spending millions in research and then, the moment the research is complete it must be put into public domain for all competitors (UPS, FedEX, etc ) to use.  How can it survive when your competition, which you are not allowed to compete with, has access to all your market and product research and can skim the most profitable portions of the market with that research.

Add to that a collective of general, dis and mis information and attacks on an organization that does not have a PR budget to defend itself.

Every Door Direct Mail  (EDDM) could be the savior of the USPS.  A USPS encore? For the sake of the public, let's hope its not the beginning of the end.  More to come.

A Tale of Two Cities

I very rarely express a political opinion, but I believe our politicians are tying our hands behind our backs and then holding us responsible for scratching our bellies and fining us if we don't... I fear that in our lifetimes we will experience not only what we saw in Greece, but, as an extreme, what we saw in Egypt. It will not be one groups, classes, corporations, or parties fault, but what we, as a people, ignorantly chose and even voted for - thus its what we want. Then someone will, in their documentation of history, say: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."..

From Wikipedia

In spite of what we learn, how smart we are, and the wisdom we have - history continues to repeat itself - Read about, (or even READ) A Tale of Two Cities.

The Perfect Storm (Economically Speaking)

The perfect storm involves many components coming together in sync creating a much larger storm as each of the components, rather than opposing each other in some way, support each other.

We have that in our economy now as the following components seem to be in sync, or at least they are in my opinion.

1. Pent up capital goods demand - there is lots of need to spend and buy big things, from bridges to roads (in the infrastructure arena) to fork lifts, manufacturing equipment, communicating equipment, sales tools and systems.  This trickles down in a big way to household items and discretionary luxuries. UPDATE: September 5, 2012: Auto sales rise as higher gas prices, aging vehicles spur demand (Link Expired).
2. Capital sitting and waiting for someplace to be spent.  Huge amounts of dollars are starving for a place to go - a major contributing factor to why our interest rates are so low.

So why isn't capital demand hooking up with capital supply?  In my opinion (for some reason I feel the need to clarify that all the time), political uncertainty and instability; people (its all about people) do not invest until the rules have been defined and show some form of stability.  So why do we have political uncertainty and instability today?  The media...  The media is creating news, in my opinion <smile>, for the sake of selling news - and luckily, rapidly failing as well.  Stability is here (or coming quickly).  No matter who or what is, or will be in power, stability is here, more spending will occur and the economy will be perceived and recognized as better.  The who or what will only effect the level of good - all's good.

It's a great time to have business problems and be a business owner as people dream to have the problems you are about to face.

UPDATE: September 6, 2012: Someone told me today how "Office Furniture" is one of the economies leading indicators (Forward Looking) - and how hot it is NOW...

UPDATE: December 27, 2012: Jobless claims fall to lowest in almost 4-1/2 years.  ~ NBCNews.com Business.

UPDATE: January 3, 2013: Businesses added 215,000 jobs in Dec., survey shows.  ~ NBCNews.com Business.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is one of those abstract needs where the return is difficult to quantify, but we know we need to do it because that's what everybody says (?#?#).

Here is my bottom line on this - if you have a need, learn to do it as the return is high (assuming you have the need).  The cost of good SEO is also high and since it is very much abstract, you want to know you are getting what you pay for - and watch out for the snake oil salespeople.  Note: We do it, we don't sell it - www.LightsOnGraphics.com - www.Time4Printing.com - www.Time4Texas.com - www.Time4SacramentoPrinting.com.

SEO comes in many flavors and levels.

The first, and least expensive, is that tuneup you may hear about frequently ($149 - $499). My opinion on this - if your website was built correctly in the first place it is already done. If you are being sold this, you probably don't need it.  But then again, its 500 bucks - it may be worth getting someone elses opinion.  You will hear people say things like relevant page name, page titles, page descriptions, meta tags, keywords and search engine submissions at this level.

The next level comes from those service providers who do monthly SEO service - it's kind of like getting maid service for the first time - a start-up fee (like $499) and then a monthly fee of anywhere from $39 - $99 per month.  Here we begin to move in the right direction as SEO is not a snapshot, but a process.  Regretfully, customers rarely see a return and terminate the service as this becomes apparent.  When this group is selling you, you will hear all the same words from the previous paragraph plus one other - "relevance"...

Finally, for those people who can actually benefit (financially speaking) - learn to do SEO as the process (yes, a process) needs to be continuously worked.  Think of it like marketing - it's not something you do once.  Add to that, people who know what they are doing with SEO are either doing something themselves or charge BIG $$.  Test your need with PPC (Pay-Per-Click (or CPC - Cost-Per-Click); it is not abstract.  If PPC provides a return, so will SEO and you will want to do BOTH - this, is not an either/or.

 Finally, we don't sell it - we don't buy it - we do it.