Clusters, Central Cities, Suburbs, Rural Areas and Regionalism: Placed-Based ED

Central cities, suburbs, rural areas and small towns. We are concerned with each and from time to time will select some great articles or books on these metro and non metro areas.

The cluster approach has been around for quite some time. Referred to as “agglomeration” in the olden days, Michael Porter took it light years into the future.

Regionalism is another matter. The implicit goal of regionalism is to capture the economic base and sidestep those parochial yokels and their fragmented, place-based municipal and county governments.

 

Articles in 'Clusters and Regionalism'

Questioning Paradigms: Manchester England and the Plight of Legacy Cities

Manchester and other northern UK cities share many of the same problems as our Northeast and Midwest Great Lakes legacy cities–they have lost a great deal of their economic meaning because of changes in logistics and deindustrialization. At the moment their national government has launched a major effort to promote “northern cities” economic development. What can we learn from them?

 Main
Article

Silicon Valley and Route 128: The Camelots of Economic Development

Silicon Valley and the Route 128 Massachusetts Miracle are a bit of reality and myth tossed together like a Caesar salad. In recent years, the Silicon Valley, in particular, has become a Camelot of sorts for economic developers–a place where the mythical king of technology, innovation and creativity ruled over the dominion of the knowledge-based economy. These magical geographies have personified the holy grail of economic development. What are the realities behind these legends? What lessons can we learn?

 Main
Article

The New Geography of Jobs (Enrico Moretti)

Enrico Moretti’s, The New Geography of Jobs (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2012). has been exceptionally well received by many of the economic development literari. Some commentators have described New Geography as the best economic development book of 2012. And if you don’t read New Geography, you would also miss reading the best, most readable explanation and defense of innovation, knowledge-based economics and their effects on the location of jobs in the United States. There is a lot going on in New Geography. You should read on because what lies below the thematic visible tip of New Geography and innovation economics is its frank and realistic understanding of what innovation economics can do and not do, and, perhaps more important, the linkage of innovation economics with American culture and society.

 Main
Article

The American Dream

WHO STOLE MY LILY WHITE RICH SUBURBS???
Hardly anyone talks about economic development and the suburbs. Why should they-they are all the same: rich, white pillagers of central cities and purveyors of sprawl. In a world composed of mega cities, SMSAs, and multi-county economic regions, does anyone care what is going on in the suburbs? Saint that he is, the Curmudgeon does! In this review, he discusses Bernadette Hanlon’s Once the American Dream: Inner-Ring Suburbs of the Metropolitan United States.

 Main
Article

The Path Less Traveled

Rather than choose any one book or article in which the Curmudgeon will dutifully at least attempt to summarize– before burying it in skepticism if not outright hostility, the Curmudgeon will drop all pretenses of objectivity and offer what he can best describe as an essay.

 Main
Article

Calypso

Throw a rock out of any window these days and you’ll hit something written about regionalism, clusters, knowledge-based economy or innovation. Choosing to review any of these topics is an invitation to have your eyes burst from the strain of having to review the literature in order to choose an appropriate work to discuss. McGahey’s Regional Economic Development in Theory and Practice is in the Curmudgeon’s opinion one of the better discussions on regionalism that has been published in recent years. McGahey’s article offers important insights into current regional thinking. But it also forces the Curmudgeon to backfill the reader on a wide variety of past regionalist movements which have occurred over the last fifty-sixty years. Each movement or set of initiatives was distinctively inspired by a then in vogue perspective of why regionalism was desirable and necessary. The tale has evolved over the years, but in many ways seems to have remained in its essentials, rather constant. How current regionalism may have evolved from our historical past should shed some light into its essential message.

 Main
Article

Collaborate, Collaborate: Dance to the Music!

The awareness of regionalism has prospered greatly from its linkage and relationship to the clusters approach and cluster’s derivative approaches (innovation, knowledge-based economic development, and entrepreneur or start up).

 Main
Article

Clusters: Sexy but Mysterious and Elusive

Richard Dreyfuss looks out the window of his ascending airplane and sees the girl of his dreams, the girl he had spent a weekend chasing and never finding, driving off into the proverbial sunrise-never ever to be seen again. So ends American Graffiti. The frustration and disappointment which ends that story is the beginning of […]

 Main
Article