Lessons from Atlanta and Baltimore About Linking Economic and Community Development

ABSTRACTIn this article, we argue the need for a critical turn in community development practice and research in the face of two scalar tensions in the existing academic literature and US community development policy. The first tension is the perceived ineffectiveness of neighborhood-based community development in the context of globalization despite the increasing interrelatedness of neighborhoods and globalization. The second tension emerges in a growing body of academic literature and policy action that privileges the region as the place from which to understand urban decline and to address issues that have historically been the concern of community development. These two tensions dominate community development discussions and often undermine community development politics and policy by contesting its relevance for multiscalar processes. Instead, we argue that neighborhoods are more important than ever because it is from the place of the neighborhood that it becomes possible to understand the multiscalar (global and local) processes that shape it.

In this article, we argue the need for a critical turn in community development practice and research in the face of two scalar tensions in the existing academic literature and US community development policy. The first tension is the perceived ineffectiveness of neighborhood-based community development in the context of globalization despite the increasing interrelatedness of neighborhoods and globalization. The second tension emerges in a growing body of academic literature and policy action that privileges the region as the place from which to understand urban decline and to address issues that have historically been the concern of community development. These two tensions dominate community development discussions and often undermine community development politics and policy by contesting its relevance for multiscalar processes. Instead, we argue that neighborhoods are more important than ever because it is from the place of the neighborhood that it becomes possible to understand the multiscalar (global and local) processes that shape it.

This paper examines the relationship between and the effects of resource allocation and levels of professionalism on local economic development policies and strategies. In short, it asks a basic question; do cities get what they pay for in terms of economic development? A value judgment is, of course, inherent in this question; "what you pay for" serves as a euphemism for "good" economic development programs and policies. That is, if a local government devotes more budget and staff resources toward economic development, is the city more likely to implement effective economic development policies? Thus, this research examines the relationship between the resources and the professionalism of the local economic development agency, and the corresponding economic development goals and techniques employed in those communities.

Standing before exasperated delegates on June 12, 1992, at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, President George H. W. Bush spoke in vague terms. “We believe that the road to Rio must point toward both environmental protection and economic growth, environment and development,” the president proclaimed. “By now it's clear: To sustain development, we must protect the environment. And to protect the environment, we must sustain development.” President Bush's words left many onlookers baffled. On the one hand, Bush spoke the language of sustainability, noting the interrelationship between economic development and environmental protection. Soon after his speech, the president signed the conference's formal declaration, which proclaimed “sustainable development” as the discursive framework for the United Nations' development policies. He acknowledged the need to integrate environmental protection into all economic development policies. On the other hand, President Bush did not attempt to describe exactly how that process would occur. He also rejected many of the formal conventions on the table in Rio. The president refused to sign a treaty on biodiversity protection, and he only agreed to support an agreement on global climate change that came without any binding stipulations. Although the president had accepted the necessity of crafting environmentally friendly approaches to development, it was clear that full cooperation and significant concrete measures remained out of reach. The gulf between the president's rhetoric and actions revealed two salient aspects of how the relationship between environmentalism and economic development had evolved over the previous decades. As President Bush's speech indicated, the conference legitimized the use of sustainability rhetoric to acknowledge the link between environmental protection and economic development, which major environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) had been promoting for over a decade. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, many policy makers conceived of environmental protection and economic policy as separate policy domains; by 1992, every government leader acknowledged the interconnectedness of the two concepts and every leader spoke of “sustainable development.” In some respects, NGOs such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) had succeeded beyond their expectations in popularizing the sustainability concept.

ABSTRACTLocal economic development and environmental policy are two areas that are undeniably linked. While a great deal of research highlights the need to marry these two concepts in practice, much remains unknown about what cities are doing at that intersection. This article uses two recent International City/County Management Association (ICMA) surveys to explore the patterns that exist between local economic development policy and local environmental protection policy. The findings here suggest that localities have begun to make the connection between sustainability and economic development. However, the connection is constrained by economic context, level of economic competition, and whether a sustainability policy offers co‐benefit potential.

Multinetwork Management: Collaboration and the Hollow State in Local Economic Policy

The Role of Creative Placemaking

The community development and economic development literatures have evolved largely independently with little recognition of the critical relationship between the two disciplines. This omission is not so obvious when researchers focus on individual components of each discipline in isolation, but upon examination of how community and economic development systems work in theory and practice overall, this shortcoming becomes apparent. A proposed framework illustrates the links between community and economic development capacities, factors, and functions and shows the importance of community development to economic development outcomes. In particular, it focuses on the link between social capital and the outcome of community development and an economic development ready community. The framework provides an overarching paradigm that helps tie together some of the research in the two fields. Using data from a statewide survey, correlation coefficients are calculated, showing the connections between capacity factors, development factors, and development functions. Strong statistical results provide evidence to support the community and economic development framework and validate the use of subjective data.

This article hypothesizes that economic reforms become sustainable when the discursive conditions prevailing in society tip against the existing paradigm under exceptional circumstances. Thus, unless the pro-liberalization constituencies dominate the development discourse, economic reforms, initiated under the exigencies of crisis and conditionalities, or carried out by a convinced executive with or without the stimulus of a crisis, will be reversed. The discursive conditions are determined based on eight factors: the dominant view of international intellectuals, illustrative country cases, executive orientations, political will, the degree and the perceived causes of economic crisis, attitudes on the part of donor agencies, and the perceived outcomes of economic reforms. The paper seeks to prove this “discursive dominance” hypothesis for the Indian case through a cross-temporal, comparative review of the evolution of economic policy in India over six different phases.

The concept of Local Economic Development (LED) is an analytical tool that can be used to describe and measure economic conditions in a region. The territory in question may be administrative territory or region / region of particular business / commodity development, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are part of the most strategic economic sector, concerning the livelihood of the people and is an important pillar in supporting and moving the joints of the economy in many countries .. SMEs play several important roles in Indonesia, one of them important players In Local Economic Development (LED) and community development. The purpose of this study is directed to determine the factors - factors that affect Local Economic Development with SMEs as the base sector in the city of Medan. The research method used in this research is Quantitative Descriptive Research Method. Data collection is done by using secondary and primary data. Then the analysis used to test the research hypothesis that has been determined by using the sample data obtained. The Inferential Statistics Method used in the analysis of this research data is Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Descriptive result of this research is there are three variables have the average score of each - each variable is smaller than the middle threshold score 9. The three latent variables referred to include: social capital, socio-economic characteristics, and economic development policy However, when viewed From educational and skill perspectives, labor market and geographical characteristics greater than the middle threshold score 9. The results of this study are social capital, education and expertise, social characteristics, labor market, economic development policy and local culture are six factors Have a positive and significant impact on the succession of local economic development program of Medan city.

The concept of Local Economic Development (LED) is an analytical tool that can be used to describe and measure economic conditions in a region. The territory in question may be administrative territory or region / region of particular business / commodity development, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are part of the most strategic economic sector, concerning the livelihood of the people and is an important pillar in supporting and moving the joints of the economy in many countries .. SMEs play several important roles in Indonesia, one of them important players In Local Economic Development (LED) and community development. The purpose of this study is directed to determine the factors - factors that affect Local Economic Development with SMEs as the base sector in the city of Medan. The research method used in this research is Quantitative Descriptive Research Method. Data collection is done by using secondary and primary data. Then the analysis used to test the research hypothesis that has been determined by using the sample data obtained. The Inferential Statistics Method used in the analysis of this research data is Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Descriptive result of this research is there are three variables have the average score of each - each variable is smaller than the middle threshold score 9. The three latent variables referred to include: social capital, socio-economic characteristics, and economic development policy However, when viewed From educational and skill perspectives, labor market and geographical characteristics greater than the middle threshold score 9. The results of this study are social capital, education and expertise, social characteristics, labor market, economic development policy and local culture are six factors Have a positive and significant impact on the succession of local economic development program of Medan city.

The previous five chapters describe major program components of Children’s Aid Society (CAS) community schools, all designed to contribute to the learning and healthy development of individual children and their families. This chapter describes a different kind of programmatic focus—one that moves beyond individual child and family well-being to influence the health and welfare of the entire community. The central questions to be addressed in this chapter are: How do community schools contribute to community and economic development? How is the community schools strategy both intentional and responsive in making these broader kinds of contributions? How has CAS’s community and economic development work evolved over the past decade in response to changing needs and opportunities? According to John P. Kretzmann, a leading scholar and advocate of community development, schools are ideal partners for community development because they have tremendous assets. They have facilities for meetings and neighborhood celebrations and space for incubating small businesses; they have materials and equipment, purchasing power, the ability to raise funds, employment power, learning opportunities, skilled staff, energetic young people with ideas, and the capacity to attract adult involvement. This analysis is consistent with CAS’s original vision about the potential of community schools to achieve broader outcomes and also consistent with our experience over the past decade in implementing a wide variety of community and economic development strategies, first in the Washington Heights area and more recently in the South Bronx. The central idea of contributing to community and economic development in specific neighborhoods requires a long-term vision and commitment. Just as the early Progressive Era reformers understood the importance of “settling” into neighborhoods to achieve maximum impact, CAS’s leadership perceived the value of committing the organization’s resources to specific neighborhoods over a long term. In another similarity to the Progressive Era, CAS understood the importance of working on several levels or dimensions of activity at the same time. It is true that the original vision of community schools focused on improving outcomes for children and youth by addressing non-academic needs in the context of schools, families, and communities.

Training policy is a responsibility of the Scottish Parliament, principally through the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, and the Scottish Executive Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Department. Training policy is often a concomitant feature of economic development. Governmental economic development policies tend to emerge through more than one source, such as the Treasury, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for Education and Employment. Examples which come to mind are the Competitiveness White Papers, Welfare to Work and New Deal programmes, and the National Training Organisations (NTO) structure. The Scottish Executive therefore has the task of securing synergy at the point where United Kingdom government policy on such matters interfaces with Scotland government policy. Two key agencies assist in this process, Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Highlands and Islands Enterprise; they draw up economic development and training policies and deliver these through their respective networks of local enterprise companies (LECs). Local authorities are also important organisations in economic development policy and implementation. Securing the delivery of training policy also involves schools, colleges of further education, higher education institutions, private and voluntary sector training providers, employers and awarding bodies. So this is the super-structure which cluster developers have to navigate through and engage with in order to help make training policy work for clusters. Conversely it is also a super-structure which could learn from particular training policies which clusters might see fit to develop in order to contribute to their success.

The role of state policy in the industrialization of Third World nations has become the subject of increasing interest in recent years. In the past, the debate over economic development has either focused on the traditional modernization approach' or the dependency theory of underdevelopment.2 Dependency theorists base their model of development on the belief that foreign investment from core countries is harmful to developing nations' long-term economic growth. Economic relationships between the core and the periphery are structurally detrimental for the latter because of the inherent dynamics of international capitalism. Yet, despite the claims of dependency theory, the recent experience of the East Asian newly industrialized countries suggests a wider range of development possibilities which include government policies specifically designed to attract foreign investment. These countries appear to have structured their domestic economies in order to mitigate the pernicious effects of dependent relationships with core countries. This raises new questions about the development process and the role of policy and foreign investment in the economic transactions between core and peripheral countries. Dependency theory, a neo-Marxist predecessor of world-systems research, claims that First World nations become wealthy by extracting surplus labor and resources from the Third World. Capitalism perpetuates a global division of labor which causes the distortion of developing countries' domestic economies, declining growth, and increased income inequality.3 Those countries on the periphery cannot become fully modernized as long as they remain in the capitalist world

Multiple analytic methods are used to provide an analysis and evaluation of specific economic and neighborhood development policies undertaken by and continued by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the City of Louisville, and Jefferson County since the early to mid-1980s. Such policies were initiated under the 1982 Kentucky Revised Statute 154.45 (KRS 154.45), which introduced enterprise zones to the Commonwealth and its urban areas. The policy goals of KRS 154.45 that are examined include: 1) the improvement of the quality of life of individuals that reside within the Louisville and Jefferson County Enterprise Zone (EZ); 2) the encouragement of economic activity through business formation, job creation, and job retention within the EZ; and 3) the elimination of blighted and deteriorated areas within the EZ. Several primary and general methods of analysis are utilized: direct comparisons of descriptive statistics, surveys, shift-share analysis, cost-benefit analysis and quasi-experimentation. The politics and history surrounding Louisville and Jefferson County's Enterprise Zone will also be discussed and examined. Political considerations appear to have played a key role in the evolution of the EZ program. The study shows that the EZ program cannot be considered a total success based upon the goals and objectives of KRS 154.45. It is estimated that nearly $218 million in foregone tax revenues and fees were used to create jobs and investment that would probably have been generated regardless of incentives. In fact, job and investment growth in the EZ did not come close to the growth experienced in other parts of Jefferson County that did not have EZ incentives as well as to that experienced by Jefferson County as a whole during the same time period. This is true even when controlling for government incentives that may have existed in other parts of Jefferson County. This study addresses the issues of local economic development policies and planning. A lack of planning and focus is identified as one reason why the EZ did not meet expectations. Other reasons why the EZ did not fully succeed will be discussed as well as possible alternative economic development programs that could have benefited the area targeted by the EZ program.