Local Culture, Politics, and Economic Development

Economic development is much, much more than mere economics and economic development strategies!

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Don’t agree? How about conducting a public hearing, making a presentation at a legislative budget hearing, reading a newspaper report on your last Board meeting, and stumbling upon some irate idiot at the grocery store or the Saturday night social event. Economic developers live in, and work for, communities full of people, not economic regions populated by statistics and methodologies. Communities have a history, cultural values and beliefs, governments and politicians, conflicting interest and demographic groups–and every so often some bozo from the State or Federal government wanders in to help put “order” in your life. Economics is important to economic development, but doing, working and living economic development is a lot more than just economics.

And that is why we have the theme Local Culture, Politics, and Economic Development.

Articles in 'Local Culture, Politics, and Economic Development'

As Two Ships: the History of American State and Local Economic Development Since 1789 to the 1980’s

American state and local economic development (ED) has been around since Day One (1789) of the American Republic. My recently-published “History of American State and Local Economic Development, 1789-1990: As Two Ships Pass in the Night” (As Two Ships) presents our historical evolution from George Washington to 1990—all 752 pages of it.
Future issues of the Journal will present observations drawn from As Two Ships along with additional insight and applied to current affairs. These observations will provide a base to rethink one’s ideas regarding the history–and purpose–of American state and local economic development. They can open you to new ways on how to approach your job, research, and your profession.

This issue will discuss the core fundamentals of my history and also will introduce what the “Chapter One Model” and the two approaches, Community Development and Mainstream ED–our Two Ships–that bisect our profession.

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Lessons from the Past for Urban Policy in the Era of Trump

BY RICHARD COWDEN
The stunning election of Donald Trump as president throws the future of urban policy into doubt. During the campaign he promised to bring new jobs and improved infrastructure to the inner cities, but so far he has furnished no details. Some of the strategies carried out by cities and states in the past may offer the incoming administration some guidance.

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Bloomberg: The Neo-Liberal Economic Developer?

I’ve been reading stuff lately about the goings on in New York City. The new De Blasio administration is proclaimed by many to be the wave of the future? For me it’s too early to tell. Only fair to give the poor soul at least a full year before we see what his new approach shakes down to be. […]

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You Think Working Where You Work is Bad? Try Working Here

Communities, even in the same state, want different things from economic development. They choose similar policies and programs sometimes, but “operate” their economic development programs in rather distinctive ways. And so, political culture enters into the day-to-day of economic development.

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Part II: How to Stop Digging the Legacy City Hole Deeper

A few weeks ago we published Part I of  our commentary on the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy report, Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities by Alan Mallach and Lavea Brachman. To refresh the reader, the Lincoln Institute report defines and identifies eighteen “legacy cities” as central cities with a minimum population of 50,000 (2010)  who have suffered more than a twenty […]

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First Step in Revitalizing Legacy Cities: Stop Digging the Hole Deeper (Part I)

It’s no secret in economic development that some American cities are in deep, deep trouble. They are deep into a hole that at times seems bottomless. Detroit made the headlines in recent months, but we all know that many Great Lakes big cities and several older manufacturing centers have very serious issues. The Curmudgeon spent […]

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Detroit: Why Bankruptcy? Why Bankruptcy Now?

Like it or not, the Detroit bankruptcy filing is a page turner. What insights and lessons might an economic developer glean from it? That is our task in this issue. Since July 18th when the City of Detroit filed for the nation’s largest ever (in terms of debt) municipal bankruptcy, the Curmudgeon has been buried under an avalanche of different ideas explaining […]

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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?

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Political Culture: the Mistoffelees of Economic Development

Economic Development is a frustrating profession! Everything an economic developer reads these days offers the great magic strategy or solution to the revitalization of your community. No economic developer is likely to admit it, but they have tried most of these strategies and, while some work better than others, none really works as advertised. Why? Because there is a secret known only to a few economic developers. What is that secret? One size-fits all-magic bullet-strategies don’t work because each community is in its own way different. Why is each community different? Because of something called political and social culture. What is political and social culture? Read on and get introduced to the Mr. Mistoffelees of Economic Development.

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Patchwork Nation

Probably the most well known and often used approach to classifying your community’s politics and local culture–PATCHWORK NATION. What’s the theory behind it’s classification system? How can it help you in your economic development initiatives?

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The Big Sort

The Big Sort may be one of the most underappreciated books applicable to local economic development. Dealing with how the culture wars emerged in our cities and towns over the last serveral decades, the Big Sort provides some valuable perspective about the links between culture, politics and local economic development.

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American Nations

If you want to make sense of your community’s politics and political values, maybe you’d best understand how the Founding Fathers (and Mothers, of course) thought! American Nations goes back to the beginnings to explain how citizens think and vote today.

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Looking for Help in all the Wrong Places!ORWhy Urban Political Scientists are Little Help to an Economic Developer

The topic this month is urban political science theories and approaches. The question we pose is if urban political scientists offer any guidance to economic developers in field on how to cope with politics in their daily job? Do they provide some description, case studies, outlines or analysis of the forces which whipsaw practicing economic developers? Do their theories and approaches offer some degree of understanding what goes on politically with the sub-state politics and program administration? This question allows the Curmudgeon to present a review of how urban political scientists conceptualize urban politics in a vein similar to last month’s assessment of the underlying economic theory of innovation and the knowledge economy. At the same time, the review could offer nuggets of assistance to the struggling economic developer. God knows, the economic developer in the field can use some help with politics.

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The Deepest Trench: Distressed Communities that Refuse to Revitalize

As our initial review, I wanted to select a theme on which I was eminently qualified to speak. That issue has to be “decline”. I spent over eleven years as CEO of a major economic development organization in Erie County (Buffalo), New York. During my tenure, I presided over a decade of frustrating, solution defying population and job loss, and to make matters ever more pleasurable, was usually cited as an important cause of that decline. Accordingly, when I read the Hamilton Project report I was impressed that a prominent research think tank had called attention to a real but ignored, situation; a group of beleaguered communities no longer had to suffer in shame and isolation.

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