Desired configuration of live/work communities for information workers: a new perspective on an old debate between mixed-use small towns vs. mono-functional suburbia

Abstract

This paper investigates the desired configuration of live/work communities for the growing social group of community-based information workers who work, live and play in the same locality using telecommunication. It starts with a brief review of information workers and their urban preferences in the literature. It then refers to a long-standing debate between suburbs and old small towns as mono-functional versus mixed-use developments that leads to the case study choice for this paper’s empirical part. This paper then examines two case studies of recently developed live/work communities in Australia and the USA in which different urban configurations – mixed-use versus mono-functional – delivered different results towards attracting information work. This investigation offers a new perspective on the old debate between the two urban configurations that could contribute to the development of residential communities in the new era.