Where should the new LI headquarters be?

As at Summer 2009, the existing headquarters building is too expensive and there is a legitimate debate about where to relocate. But I find it strange that the debate is about a building.

We are not architects, we are landscape architects. Therefore we should not be having a discussion about a building, rather we should be having a discussion about a sustainable landscape and its human community.

We shouldn't be asking Kevin McCloud (or "Phil and Kirstie"), we should be asking Ian McHarg or John Lyle (if he was still alive)

Architects have BRE at Watford? What do Landscape Architects have to let the world know what we are capable of designing?

We need a showcase for a self contained community that:
- creates and retains it capital value (and has its own money, e.g. Brixton pound) through using local skills and resources;

- has no unemployment by creating local sustainable jobs and retaining value-add;

- generates its own energy (and export over-production);

- generate its own drinking (and other) water;

- is self-sufficient in many food stuffs;

- doesn't need to commute much by car to work or play;

- recycles all human (black and grey) and non-human waste;

- does not pollute or add to the flood-risk of its downstream water catchment;

- has increased the area of non-fragmented habitat;

- has an increased biodiversity of the area through new habitat;

- has a natural succession not an exotic horticultural green infrastructre and aesthetic- etc.

Once we have found or created that place, then we can build our LI Eco-headquarters there.