Managing Economic Development

Abstract

The authors review six recent books on managing local economic development, focusing on how they join scholarship to practice. They note that the books provide sufficient information on tools and techniques of economic development practice but fail to describe or account for conflict so characteristic of the development process. Although the books emphasize the importance of creating partnerships in development, they ignore demands for inclusion by minorities, unions, and other groups historically not included in the partnerships that ultimately determine development strategy. Likewise, strategy formulation is treated as a logical outcome of economic analysis and the influence new participants might have in defining problems and developing alternative strategies remains unanswered. The authors suggest that these weaknesses can be overcome by developing generative metaphors integrating scholarship and practice. New insights might emerge from a methodology not guided exclusively by technical rationality, one more narrative and subjective in focus.

Overcoming the Neglect of Economics in Urban Regime Theory

“…Yet, the ''roots of the city's failures,' ' Elkin (1987) noted, lay not in the existence of these constraints but instead in how its ''impulse'' to act in response to them ''gets translated into action'' (p. 99). Certain ''interpretations of how to meet the problem of earning the city's keep''-i.e., certain economic development strategies-get pursued largely for political reasons, but these strategies generally fail to work well (Elkin, 1987, p. 179; also see Mier & Fitzgerald, 1991). Elkin's (1987) argument thus pointed to the fundamental flaw in Peterson's model.…”

“…Clearly, there is a general sense that this and related strategies are, as Mier and Fitzgerald (1991) succinctly state, ''not working'' (p. 270). The literature on urban economic development is replete with studies suggestive of this conclusion (see Barnekov & Rich, 1989;Elkin, 1987;Fainstein & Fainstein, 1983;Hill, 1983;Imbroscio, 1997;Krunholz, 1991;Reed, 1988;Riposa & Andranovich, 1988;Squires, 1989).…”

“The Right to Define the Question”: The Center for Urban Affairs and Neighborhood Activism in 1970s Chicago

“…Washington routinely put in 120-hour weeks-a punishing schedule that may have contributed to his death in office at age 65, shortly after starting his second mayoral term. 181 Washington made an unprecedented attempt to put neighborhood activists' ideas about governance and democracy into practice. 182 His death was a severe blow to the idea that organized neighborhoods of all economic backgrounds-and not only elite ones-should be able to express their communities' needs, access governmental data and have some say over the types of municipal services they receive.…”

Shaming the Inside Game

“…Cities may fail to solve problems not because they are isolated but because they are governed poorly. For example, governing regime after governing regime has pursued a corporatecentered urban-development strategy zealously, which many scholars suggest has been a grave mistake both on economic efficiency (costs vs. benefits) and on equity (distributive) grounds (Squires 1989;Barnekov and Rich 1989;Elkin 1987;Riposa and Andranovich 1988;Hill 1983;Mier and Fitzgerald 1991;Fainstein and Fainstein 1983;Reed 1988). If the massive amount of economic, political, and social resources dedicated to these flawed initiatives were redirected by urban regimes toward more productive development strategies, the exigency to capture the resources held by affluent but tightfisted suburbanites might be abated considerably.…”