American Planning Association Economic Development Division

Economic Development Division Annual Conference Session and Events!

2011-04-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

Nearly 200 members of the Economic Development Division (including you!) have plans to attend the 2011 APA National Conference in Boston. We're very pleased with the turnout of EDD members, and want to remind you about the various Economic Development Division activities that will take place during the conference.

SUNDAY EVENING: Special Dinner Event

Growing the Green Economy: Linking Environmental Sustainability and Economic Development

A dinner sponsored by the Economic Development Division and the Environment, Natural Resources, and Energy Division

Sunday, April 10 – 7:00 p.m.

Legal Seafoods, Boston

Join your APA colleagues over dinner to discuss the challenges and opportunities of connecting economic growth to environmental sustainability. Our speaker will be Joan Fitzgerald Ph.D, Director of the Law, Policy, and Society Program at Northeastern University and author of Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development (Oxford University Press, 2010). This event is $50.00 and includes a three-course dinner (drinks not included). You can sign up for this event at the APA conference registration page or on-site. CM credit (1) has been requested for this event.

MONDAY AFTERNOON: EDD Session

Opportunities/Challenges in Rural Tourism Planning (S527)

Monday, April 11 – 2:30 p.m.-3:45 p.m.

1.25 CM credit

Tourism-related activities are an increasingly important component of rural economies providing income and diversification to rural communities. This session will examine current trends in rural tourism, which are being shaped by a rapidly shifting economic landscape and ongoing demographic change. Session speakers include Anne Krieg, AICP, Planning and Development Director, Town of Bar Harbor, Maine; and Robert Billington, Founder and Director of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council in Rhode Island.

MONDAY EVENING:

Economic Development Division Business Meeting and Reception

Monday, April 11 – 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.

Sheraton Beacon B

Join your fellow Division members for our annual business meeting and reception. Refreshments will be served and we'll have a sponsored bar (i.e. free drinks!) Come network with fellow members in an intimate setting, celebrate our award winners, discuss the EDD work plan, and more! Please RSVP if you can join us!

TUESDAY: EDD-Sponsored Mobile Workshop

Sustainable Devens Eco-Industrial Park (WO56)

Tuesday, April 12 – 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

4.00 CM credits

Discover how sustainability served as the organizing principle for the redevelopment of the 4,400-acre Fort Devens. Explore this live-work-play community where a third of the land is slated for protection. Learn why Devens is considered a premier example of a light industrial park operating as an eco-industrial park. This event is $75.00 and includes lunch.

Please forward questions about any of these events to Adam Ploetz, AICP, EDD Conference Chair, at adam.c.ploetz@hud.gov.

Want to lend a hand? We are seeking volunteers to help out in small teams to "staff" the Divisions Council exhibit booth for a couple hours on Sunday and Monday. This is a chance to work with people from other divisions and talk to planners from around the country. Let us know (by way of a reply) if you're interested in participating!

Finally, if you haven't yet read the Winter 2011 edition of News & Views, download it on our division's newsletter page.

We look forward to seeing you in Boston!

CITY OF HAMPTON, VIRGINIA, WINS 2011 EXCELLENCE IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PLANNING AWARD FOR PENINSULA TOWN CENTER PROJECT

2011-03-28T20:54:00.001-07:00

March 25, 2011   For Immediate Release

CITY OF HAMPTON, VIRGINIA, WINS 2011 EXCELLENCE IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PLANNING
AWARD FOR PENINSULA TOWN CENTER PROJECT

The City of Hampton, Virginia, is the 2011 recipient of the Donald E. Hunter Excellence in Economic Development
Planning Award from the Economic Development Division of the American Planning Association (APA).

The City of Hampton’s Peninsula Town Center is a successful redevelopment of an enclosed mall into a vibrant
town center providing approximately 2,400 new jobs and significantly increasing the taxable sales base in
Hampton. Prior to its redevelopment, the former Coliseum Mall was inwardly focused and obsolete with
increased vacancies and declining investment. The City of Hampton, through its community planning process,
developed the Coliseum Central Master Plan and design guidelines that recommended fundamental changes to
the property’s configuration into appropriately-scaled urban blocks supporting mixed-use pedestrian-oriented
development. The commitment by the City of Hampton to reinvigorate its aging business district motivated the
mall owners to partner with a development team to transform the site from a deteriorating enclosed shopping
mall into a vibrant mixed-use town center serving as a regional destination.

The panel was impressed with the project’s quality, contribution to the community, and successful
implementation and results as well as the role of planning to bring about the redevelopment. The panel was
unanimous in its selection of the City of Hampton as the 2011 Award recipient.

The Excellence in Economic Development Planning Award, which is accompanied by a $1,000 grant, will be
formally given to the City of Hampton at the 2011 National Conference of the American Planning Association in
Boston during the Economic Development Division’s annual meeting and reception on April 11.

The panel also awarded two Honorable Mentions to the City of Irvine, California, and the Town of Marana,
Arizona:

City of Irvine, CA: “Irvine Business Complex Mixed/Use Vision Plan”: The Irvine Business Complex (IBC)
Residential/Mixed-Use Vision Plan and Overlay Zoning Code development standards were developed to facilitate
the evolution of a primarily office and industrial center (the IBC) to a fully mixed-use business and residential
community. The IBC Vision Plan, adopted as a new element in the City’s General Plan, represents policy direction
to create both a neighborhood and economic growth framework for the IBC. The IBC Vision Plan project
encourages more housing units in the same area as one of the City of Irvine’s two major job centers in the 2,800-
acre IBC, the largest employment center in Orange County. The new mix of land uses will further facilitate infill of
underutilized properties in the area. The panel appreciated the “non-traditional” approach to economic
development and was impressed with the plan’s originality, comprehensiveness and to a certain degree,
transferability. As suburban areas, particularly inner-ring suburbs, experience increasing infill pressures, this
approach to developing a complete “economic ecosystem” is likely to become more desirable. The approach
taken by the City of Irvine could serve as a model for other areas of the country. (Contact: Bill Jacobs, AICP,
Principal Planner, City of Irvine Community Development Department, bjacobs@ci.irvine.ca.us, 949.724.6521.)

Town of Marana, AZ: “Marana Economic Roadmap”: The Marana Economic Roadmap is the Town’s first
strategic plan for economic development in its 34-year history. The Roadmap process was inclusive and focused
on the Town’s existing industry base, seeking to build supply chains and facilitate sustainable growth of major
employers. The Roadmap has been instrumental in the development and adoption of two incentive programs for
high-wage job creation in the town. The Roadmap process and programs directly led to the retention and
expansion of the Town’s largest manufacturer after potentially losing the company due to consolidation and
expansion of its worldwide facilities. The panel recognized the quality planning of this applicant as well as the
Roadmap’s comprehensiveness, transferability, and initial results. (Contact: Joshua H. Wright, Director of
Strategic Initiatives, Town of Marana, jwright@marana.com, 520. 382.1938.)

The awards committee consisted of members of the Economic Development Division of the APA:  Julie Herlands,
Principal, TischlerBise (www.tischlerbise.com); Chair-Elect, EDD of the APA; Courtney Anderson Mailey, AICP,
Adjunct Faculty, Virginia Commonwealth University; Apprentice, Albemarle CiderWorks; former Regional
Community Development Manager, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond; Della Rucker, AICP, CEcD, Principal, The
Wise Economy Workshop (www.wiseeconomy.com); and James Stevens, Senior Associate, ConsultEcon
Management & Economic Insight (www.consultecon.com)


The Hunter Economic Development Division of the APA provides an opportunity for APA members to join others
who share an interest in and responsibility on matters related to economic development. The mission of the
Economic Development Division is to advance the practice and state of the art of economic development by:

Increasing the understanding of economic development as a key element of public policy formulation at all levels of government;
Promoting economic development as a critical element of neighborhood community, regional, and national planning processes;
Disseminating materials and information about current economic development practice and theory to members of the division;
Assisting APA in positively influencing economic development policy; and
Promoting professional communication among members of the division through a variety of member services, including, but not limited to newsletters, web page, conference sessions, workshops, and other publications.

The Excellence in Economic Development Award is named for Donald E. Hunter, who passed away in late 2009.
He was a long time and very active member of the American Planning Association, always urging greater attention
for economic development planning.  He was President of Hunter Interests Inc., an award-winning real estate
development and consulting firm based in Annapolis, Maryland.  Don also served as a board member of the
International Economic Development Council (IEDC) and the International Downtown Association (IDA).  He was a
frequent speaker on real estate trends and development and financing techniques, and received recognitions and
many other national awards during his long career.



                                      Awards Committee Chair                            Redevelopment Manager   
                               Economic Development Division                     City of Hampton   
                               American Planning Association                     Economic Development Dept.   
                               c/o TischlerBise                                  One Franklin Street, Suite 600   
                               4701 Sangamore Road, Suite S240                   Hampton, Virginia  23669   
                               Bethesda, Maryland 20816                          800.555.3930   
                               301.320.6900 x15                                  www.hamptonva.biz   
                               www.tischlerbise.com                              ajordan@hampton.gov   
                               www.planning.org/divisions/economic         
                               julie@tischlerbise.com

Job Posting: VT Office of Economic Development

2011-03-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

Virginia Tech's Office of Economic Development is seeking a senior specialist with an interest in both technology-based economic development and community economic development. The office provides leadership for the university and the Commonwealth in these areas. Recently this has included leading a $1.7 million effort to support new product development and process improvements in transportation equipment manufacturing funded by the US Economic Development Administration. The office is also spearheading partnerships managing almost $9 million from the US Department of Labor to develop and implement advanced training programs in green building and health information technology. For more information on the office see this link: http://www.econdev.vt.edu/

The senior specialist will develop and conduct applied research and technical assistance projects and provide leadership for the unit on collaborative design and implementation of projects. This position, reporting to the director of the office, is a restricted calendar year, administrative and professional faculty appointment. More information and online faculty application at www.jobs.vt.edu Posting #0110268. Review for this position http://tinyurl.com/48f68kv begins April 25.

Upcoming Event: NLC Leadership Academy

2011-02-15T11:59:00.000-08:00

The National League of Cities (NLC) will be hosting a Leadership Academy on Local Economic Competitiveness in a Global Era in Seattle, April 20-21. Those interested are invited to participate in a brief audioconference, on Monday, February 21 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time, to preview the academy agenda and ask questions about the event. Register for the audio conference here.

The Leadership Academy will bring together teams of local elected officials, staff and key stakeholders with experts from all levels of government, academic and business sectors to discuss critical opportunities and challenges of foreign direct investment and trade promotion and to showcase promising practices from cities and regions across the country.

As part of the academy, NLC is partnering with the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Treasury to host a delegation of Chinese mayors, senior business executives and economic officials to allow U.S. and Chinese local officials to have a policy dialogue on core issues of local economic growth and development. U.S. local officials will also have the opportunity, in a session facilitated by the Department of Commerce, to directly engage foreign businesses seeking job-creating U.S. investment opportunities.

NLC’s Leadership Academy will provide participants with:

New knowledge and skills to understand the global economy in the context of local realities
A venue to put these new leadership skills into practice
Practical steps and strategies to translate new skills into action at home
NLC’s Leadership Training Institute credits

Application Information

The academy application deadline has been extended until Friday, March 4, to accommodate those participating in the audioconference. Competitively selected academy attendees will receive complimentary registration for this event. Attendees are responsible for covering travel and boarding costs. For application and more information about the Leadership Academy visit, www.nlc.org or contact Christiana McFarland, Program Director, Finance and Economic Development at mcfarland@nlc.org or (202) 626-3036.

Adapting Old Cities to Emerald Cities

2011-02-09T04:29:00.000-08:00

Today's Emerald Cities Book Review Series blog post comes from Economic Development Division Chair and Principal of Development Strategies, Bob Lewis, AICP.

The City of St. Louis is just now embarking on a formal study to effectively determine how it can adapt to the themes raised by Joan Fitzgerald in her 2010 book, Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development. My company is delighted to be part of this rather innovative and experimental venture by St. Louis, and I’m thankful that I read Ms. Fitzgerald’s book before the City called me! You should read it too—just in case.

Our role in what has a working title of a St. Louis Climate Sustainability Plan is to identify metrics that economically justify going green. Yes, we all know that going green is the right thing to do. My urban planning degree is from the Earth Sciences, Geography, and Planning department of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. While the planning component was budgeted out a couple of decades ago, I was immersed in the importance of environmental sensitivity when planning for and undertaking urban redevelopment. This is a movement with immense momentum around the globe today. But it is a movement that still has to prove its economic value.

Thus the need for economic metrics. Mayor Slay of St. Louis is insisting on it. He is a green believer, but he also needs to sell the concept to skeptics, like the city’s residents and businesses, who are asked to pay for going green. The questions become, “Does this save money?” and “How?”

Ms. Fitzgerald’s book contains a quote from Douglas Foy that addresses our economic challenge—but also the opportunity. The quote is, “Cities are the Saudi Arabia of energy efficiency.” My interpretation is that “thar’s gold in them thar cities.” All we have to do is find ways to mine it. What savings do we get from greener approaches to managing and operating our cities? Savings equals found money. What added economic development do we attract by going green, or at least greener? Jobs and businesses equate to found money and more tax base. Tax base adds to sustainability, and even growth, in the ability to support quality of life services in our old cities.

Thankfully, Joan Fitzgerald defines a slew of potential metrics that the Mayor can convincingly use as he manages the politics of a 200-year old city that has transformed from a commerce center to a manufacturing capital back to leadership in commerce, health care, and finance. My company’s job will be to translate Ms. Fitzgerald’s fine research into pragmatic measures directly applicable to St. Louis that demonstrate sounder economics in the urban setting. What a wonderful and fulfilling challenge for an economics guy with a background in earth sciences, geography, and planning.

Now, plan to join us to hear Joan Fitzgerald speak at our first annual Economic Development Division “open dinner” that we are co-hosting at the Boston APA National Conference with the Environment, Natural Resources and Energy Division on Sunday, April 10 at 7:00 pm at Legal Seafoods. Sign up when you register for the conference whether you are a division member or not. The networking will be fun and we’re going to learn a lot about adapting our old cities to emerald cities. See you there!

New Series: Blogging Joan Fitzgerald's Emerald Cities

2011-02-03T04:25:00.000-08:00

This is the first in a series of blog posts by EDD Board Members and our extended leadership team on Joan Fitzgerald's Emerald Cities. The Economic Development Division has teamed with the Environment, Natural Resources and Energy Division to host a dinner on economic development and the green economy with Joan Fitzgerald as the keynote speaker on Sunday, April 10th at 7:00pm at Legal Seafoods in Boston during the National Planning Conference.

This first blog post is by Adam Ploetz, AICP EDD Conference Chair and the Deputy Director of Sustainable Development Programs at the 495/MetroWest Partnership in Westborough, MA.

Aaron Renn, author of the blog Urbanophile, recently posted an article lamenting the failure of urbanists to communicate their goals appropriately to the general public. Renn argues that nowhere has this been more evident than around the issue of sustainability – particularly during the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression. Renn states,
“Urbanists prattle on about sustainability all the time as if the last few years didn’t even happen. No wonder it’s not working. And because pretty much all urbanist policies have been sold as about sustainability, there’s a linkage in the public’s mind, so that if they don’t believe in climate change or don’t rate it highly in favor of more immediate concerns, that takes urbanism down with it. The good news is, it doesn’t have to be that way. With better packaging, I believe there is a case for pro-urbanist policies (including those that promote sustainability), one that can work with the times and the trends instead of against them. … I’m convinced there’s a lot more people who would be open to various environmental and urbanist ideas if we talked about their practical benefits rather than how they are good for the planet (even if they are).”

Renn is correct; sustainability is a hard sell in good times and a nearly impossible one during bad. Considering that they are at the intersection of economic development and sustainability, planners who focus on economic development and planners who focus on natural resources/environmental issues must deal constantly with the failure to communicate the positive connections between sustainability and economic growth outlined by Renn.

In an effort to advance the dialogue on the challenges and opportunities of connecting economic growth to environmental sustainability the Economic Development Division has teamed with the Environment, Natural Resources and Energy Division to host a dinner on Sunday, April 10 7:00pm at Legal Seafoods in Boston during the National Planning Conference.

Our guest speaker will be Joan Fitzgerald, Director of the Law, Policy and Society Program at Northeastern University and author of the book Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development (Oxford University Press, 2010). In Emerald Cities, Fitzgerald shows how in the absence of a comprehensive national policy, cities have taken the lead in addressing the interrelated environmental problems of global warming, pollution, energy dependence, and social justice. Cities are major sources of pollution but because of their population density, reliance on public transportation, and other factors, Fitzgerald argues that they are uniquely suited to promote and benefit from green economic development. For cities facing worsening budget constraints, investing in high-paying green jobs in renewable energy technology, construction, manufacturing, recycling, and other fields will solve two problems at once, sparking economic growth while at the same time dramatically improving quality of life.

Join your APA colleagues and hear from an expert on connecting economic growth to environmental sustainability and offer your perspective to the conversation. This event is $50.00 and includes a three course dinner (drinks not included). You can sign up for this event at the APA conference registration page. CM credit (1) has been requested for this event. Though sponsored by the Economic Development and the Environment, Natural Resources, and Energy Divisions, this event is open to all APA members. For more information about the dinner please contact Adam Ploetz at adam@495partnership.org.

Governor Brown’s Budget Proposal – Issues for Economic Development

2011-01-17T13:20:00.000-08:00

Today's post was authored by Bill Anderson, City of San Diego Director of City Planning and Community Investment, and Immediate Past Chair of the APA Economic Development Division.

California Governor Jerry Brown unveiled his budget proposal. It is a combination of budget cuts, restructuring, and a proposal to the voters to extend for another five years existing taxes that are due to expire. His proposal would close a projected $25.4 billion budget gap ($8.2 billion this fiscal year and $17.2 billion next fiscal year), with budget cuts covering almost half ($12.5 billion), and tax extensions ($12 billion) and other measures ($1.9 billion) covering the other half. He also would shift several responsibilities from the State to local jurisdictions, purportedly including some revenue to go with the new responsibilities. Many of these proposals, especially continuation of existing temporary taxes, would have to be approved by the voters in a special election, perhaps this June.

The Governor’s budget includes three actions important for planners and economic developers:

Eliminate Redevelopment Agencies
Eliminate State Enterprise Zones
Add a provision that would allow voters in local jurisdictions to approve funding for economic development activities with a 55 percent majority vote.

If passed, it would dramatically affect how community revitalization and redevelopment is done in California. The Administration’s rationale also presents opinions that have been debated by economic developers, planners, academics, and the public for decades.

Eliminate Redevelopment
Redevelopment and its tax increment is one of the primary economic development tools in California for funding affordable housing, infrastructure, and planning in designated areas to ameliorate blight. In California, tax increment is collected from a redevelopment project area, formed in accordance with Redevelopment Law. At least 20 percent of the tax increment must be spent on affordable housing. Since 1993, almost 100,000 low and moderate income housing units have been built. A portion of the tax increment is distributed with other taxing jurisdictions, such as counties and school districts, while most is spent by the Redevelopment Agency on allowed redevelopment activities, such as land assembly and infrastructure, but also economic development, rehabilitation programs, façade improvement programs, and planning within the redevelopment project area.

The Governor proposes the elimination of Redevelopment agencies by July 1st, 2011. He proposes to replace them with a shell structure so that existing debt and contractual obligations would be honored, but new obligations would be prohibited. Surplus Affordable Housing Set-Aside funds would be transferred to local housing agencies. Unencumbered tax increment funds would be distributed to other taxing agencies.

The Governor argues that tax increment is money that would otherwise go to cities, counties, school districts, and other agencies. These agencies generally have accepted redevelopment activities, and have agreed to forfeit a share of property tax increment with the expectation that revenues will be greater in the long run once redevelopment project areas have completed their purpose and expire.

However, now is a time when most agencies have significant budget deficits and are cutting basic services. Since the adoption of Proposition 13 in 1978 (when Jerry Brown was last Governor), the State has backfilled school district budgets, which creates a strain on the State budget. The Administration estimates that elimination of Redevelopment agencies would save the State budget approximately $1.9 billion.

The premise is that most jurisdictions cannot afford to relinquish revenue to redevelopment agencies, no matter how important the redevelopment activity, and that much of the tax increment generated is from economic activity that would have occurred in the region anyway, if not within the redevelopment project area. Redevelopment advocates, on the other hand, argue that most of the tax increment revenue, and other derived local taxes such as sales and transient-occupancy taxes from redevelopment project areas, would not have occurred if it were not for redevelopment and its investments. The California Redevelopment Association estimates that in a typical year, statewide redevelopment project areas contribute $40 billion in economic activity, and $2 billion in state and local taxes, and over 300,000 private and public sector jobs, annually. Of this annual amount, $19 billion in output and 171,000 jobs are associated with new construction of buildings and infrastructure.

The Governor counters that because tax increment is generated from an area rather than an individual project, much of the tax increment is from general property inflation or appreciation, rather than from direct redevelopment activities. Advocates for redevelopment say that redevelopment investments lift value of surrounding properties as well and, therefore, it is appropriate to capture some of the tax increment derived, even if it is from appreciation.

There are almost 400 redevelopment project areas in California, with major success stories, including our own Downtown San Diego where $1.5 billion in public investment has leveraged $12.8 billion in private investment, an 8.4:1 ratio. This proposal will be complex to implement, even if it is supported, and if adopted, it will face legal challenges. There are questions as to whether the Legislature can disband Redevelopment Agencies (which are technically state agencies), or if it requires a constitutional amendment and voter approval. California voters approved Proposition 22 just last November which prohibited the State from taking local funds, including funds from redevelopment agencies. However, if the State eliminates the agencies all together, is this prohibition even relevant?

Enterprise Zones
Enterprise Zones give certain tax benefits to businesses located within a zone. It’s an economic development tool to encourage businesses to locate and expand within certain geographic areas covered by the zone. The new administration argues that while this is a benefit to these areas, there is limited evidence that they generate new economic activity statewide – that they are simply a transfer of economic activity which the state subsidizes, and often is economic activity that would have occurred within the state anyway. I remember hearing this argument from some of my professors in graduate school almost 30 years ago. The Administration estimates that elimination of Enterprise Zones would make over $900 million available to local governments.

Voter-Approved Economic Activity
This part of the proposal has not received as much attention yet, but it could be significant in the future. Currently, special activity bonds and taxes require a two-thirds vote of the public within the local jurisdiction. The Governor’s proposal would allow voters in a local jurisdiction to direct some of their fiscal revenue to economic activities they choose, such as community development and redevelopment in another form. It’s not definitive if this could be a dedication of current fiscal revenue, tax increment, sales taxes, new property tax overages, special taxes, or other voter approved mechanisms. The reduction of voter approval thresholds from two-thirds to 55 percent is significant. Many initiatives to fund special activities have received more than 55 percent voter approval, but failed because of the difficult challenge of convincing two-thirds of the voting public to approve funding. There is almost always one-third of the public opposed to any public expenditure. Tailored economic development strategies pitched to the voters for funding may become more common.

Summary
The Governor has made a bold proposal. He admits hard choices and painful cuts of programs that he supports, but the budget proposal is specific and allows the public to debate and come to grips with their priorities. Clearly, the Governor’s priority is K-12 Education, which was largely spared. In isolation, these proposals might not survive. Any reluctance to extend taxes that are due to expire will put pressure to cut even more than what the Governor proposes. Since elimination of these important economic development programs are part of the Governor’s comprehensive budget package, there is the risk that they will be supported, especially given the State Budget’s dire circumstances. Many Californians are generally supportive of the Governor’s desire to direct more decision-making and revenue to the local level, closest to the people, but the elimination of Redevelopment agencies, which are formed locally and governed locally, subject to State laws, seems to be a contradiction. The argument by the Governor tends to place a lower priority on geographically-targeted economic development programs that, as he asserts, transfers economic activity within the State and a region, rather than create new economic activity for California.

This, of course, depends on the type of activity. Investments in infrastructure that support tourism and industry do indeed create export-oriented economic activity for the State of California. But even if it didn’t, even if it was just a transfer, isn’t the revitalization of blighted areas of California, and investment that supports innovative developments (such as transit-oriented development) and affordable housing good public policy and a long term benefit? If so, are Redevelopment and Enterprise Zones necessary tools? Some states, such as Arizona and Washington, prohibit tax increment financing and still do economic development, but Redevelopment is so ingrained in the way California funds its place-based economic development activities, if the Governor’s proposal becomes law, the economic development tool box will need new tools.

GET RECOGNIZED! EDD's Annual Awards/Scholarship

2010-12-22T11:35:00.000-08:00

DONALD E. HUNTER EXCELLENCE IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PLANNING AWARD

Deadline: Friday, February 11, 2011

The annual Donald E. Hunter Excellence in Economic Development Planning Award from the APA Economic Development Division is awarded to a community that shows innovation and success with an economic development plan or project. Award winners receive a plaque and a monetary award of $1,000 as well as recognition at the annual Division business meeting at the APA National Planning Conference and a featured article in the Division's newsletter, News & Views.

Eligibility
Any economic development plan implemented in the United States or Canada within the last 10 years is eligible. Any member of the American Planning Association may make a nomination (except for the members of the Economic Development Division Executive Committee and Awards Committee, APA Board Members, and AICP Commissioners).

Submission Information
Please submit to the Chair of the Award Committee:
Julie Herlands
TischlerBise
4701 Sangamore Road, Suite S240
Bethesda, MD 20816
Email: julie@tischlerbise.com
Phone: (301) 320-6900, ext. 15

Applications can be submitted by email or hard copy:

Email to: julie@tischlerbise.com. Please indicate in the subject line: "[Your Jurisdiction] EDD Award Application."
Mail hard copies to the above address: Please send three copies of everything for distribution to the committee.

For more information:

http://www.planning.org/divisions/economic/awards/

-------------------------------

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIVISION GRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Deadline: Friday, February 11, 2011

Master's level students from PAB-accredited planning departments across the U.S. may apply. The $1,000 scholarship is awarded on the basis of a letter of recommendation from a full-time faculty member and an original paper or work having to do with a substantive and relevant topic related to economic development and planning. We prefer an article length or shorter paper submitted (not a thesis, although a shorter paper developed from the thesis is acceptable) of 2,000 to 2,500 words. The scholarship will be presented at the APA Conference in Boston, MA in April 2011 and the paper will be published in EDD's News & Views publication.

Submission Information
Please submit the application to:
John Provo, Ph.D., Associate Director
Office of Economic Development (0373)
Outreach and International Affairs
Virginia Tech
702 University City Blvd.
Blacksburg, VA 24061
jprovo@vt.edu

For more information:

http://www.planning.org/divisions/economic/scholarships

Connecting Livability and Economic Development in Dubuque, Iowa

2010-09-11T15:11:00.001-07:00

Welcome back to the APA Economic Development Division (EDD) Blog! EDD took a bit of a break from our blog in August, since many of our contributors were on vacation or just extra-busy with work. Please be assured that EDD is now back with many great posts planned for this Fall. We've recently had two new bloggers join our team, Della Rucker of Jacobs and Joy McGee. You'll be hearing from both of them over the next several weeks, and I'll let them both introduce themselves in their next posts. As always, please feel free to contact us if you're interested in contributing to the blog!

Our first Fall blog post also features the first video that we've posted to the EDD blog. Earlier this year the ongoing PBS series on American infrastructure, Blueprint America, featured Dubuque, Iowa. The former factory town has bet its economic future on sustainable development and smart growth. The city's sustainable development plan is a national model. Dubuque is pursuing all of the hallmarks of smart growth, including complete streets and sustainable transportation, energy efficiency and a riverfront revitalization strategy. The redevelopment of a historic warehouse district is intended to attract young professionals and create affordable, workforce housing to reinvigorate the downtown. Dubuque was named a National Resources Defense Council's 2010 Smarter City for Energy. Late last year IBM announced that Dubuque would serve as the model for its Smarter Cities initiative and that the firm would relocate 1,300 employees to a technology support center in the city by the end of 2010. However, Dubuque's reputation as a green city wasn't the only thing that attracted IBM, but $50 million in state and local incentives also played a role.

However, as you'll see in the video some in Dubuque question whether the IBM move and the investments in creating a livable community alone can generate long term economic growth. Are sustainability and livablity linked with economic growth in the 21st century, or are they just planning fads? Can downtown redevelopment aid in the retention of educated young people even in a mid-sized Midwestern city like Dubuque? Will the IBM move to Dubuque generate long-term growth? Was the $50 million incentive package given to IBM worth the $100 million IBM investment and 1,300 jobs? The blog team looks forward to reading your thoughts in the comments!

The Role of Economic Developers in Creating Quality Jobs (New IEDC Report)

2010-07-26T12:35:00.001-07:00

This week's guest post was authored by Louise Anderson, Senior Associate at the International Economic Development Council.

Job creation remains a key measure of success for economic development efforts. But the era in which nearly any job was a “good job,” to a certain extent, is over. Growth in the economy is becoming increasingly bifurcated, with high-tech, high-wage jobs on one hand and low-wage, largely service-sector jobs on the other. Economic developers find it increasingly challenging to create jobs that deliver the kinds of wages and benefits that were standard in the industrial era.

A recent report from the International Economic Development Council, Creating Quality Jobs – Transforming the Economic Development Landscape, shows how economic development is transforming in response to a changing economy. Creating quality jobs and rebuild the middle class in a global, knowledge-driven economy requires new strategies, new partners, new goals and new metrics of success.

Creating Quality Jobs – Transforming the Economic Development Landscape, is based on in-depth case studies of seven communities: Ponca City, Okla.; San Jose; Newton, Iowa; Albuquerque, N.M.; Tupelo, Miss.; Pittsburgh and Akron. The cases reveal an emerging framework for economic development, one aimed at creating broad-based prosperity through the transformation of both the regional economy and the institutions that support it. The framework has seven components:

Alignment in a Regional Context
Engaged Local Leadership
Incorporating Inclusion
Building Capacity
Building on Existing Assets
Basing Plans on Solid Research
Innovation and Entrepreneurship

While each case represents a different variant of this new framework, their common goal is a more systemic approach to job creation, with the objective of creating sustainable, quality jobs in a more resilient, more diverse economy. You can access a PDF of the Creating Quality Jobs – Transforming the Economic Development Landscape on IEDC’s website: http://www.iedconline.org/Downloads/IEDC_Quality_Jobs.pdf

Economic Inclusion in City Awarded Contracts

2010-07-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

This post was authored by D. Joy McGee, EDD's newest division volunteer blogger!

Small business enterprises (SBE) are critical to our economy, they create employment opportunities, and help the United States compete in today’s global market. Government at all levels is heavily invested in making sure SBEs succeed. Yet, even in the current recession there are prime government contracting opportunities for which minority- and women-owned businesses often are not utilized. Acknowledging the disparity of city contracts awarded to minority- and women-owned businesses, some cities have created task forces, city departments and programs to foster minority economic inclusion. To create this economy of inclusion, a procurement plan must include goals to expand the number of small- minority- and women-business enterprises (SBE/ MBE/WBE) to do business with the city by removing obstacles.

Why is minority inclusion a challenge? Some of the challenges that SBEs, MBEs and WBEs face include, but are not limited to, marketplace discrimination, obtaining certifications, bonding and insurance, technical expertise and capacity, and believing that opportunities are tangible. What can be done to close the gap and to make sure that significant disparities don’t continue to persist? Best practices include but are not limited to:

executive buy-in;
streamlining the process of certifications;
technology used to promote outreach and diversity;
training and promoting staff;
building partnerships among the public and private sector and outreach;
strategic use of under threshold contracts, and;
preparing minority and women-owned businesses to bid for large contracts.

Should cities adopt a race based or a race neutral program or a combination of both? In 2009, Cincinnati, OH and San Antonio, TX made commitments to improve their current procurement policies and SBE programs.

The City of Cincinnati has a race neutral SBE program. The task force, Open Cincinnati Action Team, was commissioned by Mayor Mark Mallory to make recommendations aimed at accelerating minority firms doing business with the City. If economic inclusion has not improved within 18 months of implementing the 27 task force recommendations, the Action Team recommends that the City commission a disparity study to examine if a race based program with goals and/or set asides will work in its jurisdiction.

The City of San Antonio commissioned a study in 2006 to determine what, if any, evidence of disparities exist in procurement practices related to the ethnicity, race, or gender of the business owner. As a result of MGT of America, Inc. findings and recommendations, City Council determined that a combination of race- and gender-neutral and race- and gender-conscious remedies and programs will aid in the effort to remedy past marketplace discrimination. City government’s economic power can be employed to create an economic inclusion program that is committed to breaking down barriers. A disparity study can be conducted to analyze procurement practices and to determine which economic inclusion program should be utilized.

City government’s economic power can be employed to create an economic inclusion program that is committed to breaking down barriers. A disparity study can be conducted to analyze procurement practices and to determine which economic inclusion program should be utilized.

Economic Development in a Transforming Energy Economy - New IEDC Report Available to the Public

2010-07-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

Today's guest blog is authored by Elizabeth Thorstensen, Senior Associate at the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), and a primary author of the IEDC publication Getting Prepared: Economic Development in a Transforming Energy Economy.

While the specifics of the transition to a low-carbon economy are still being debated, it appears likely that some type of cap and trade or carbon pricing will emerge. Any effort to price carbon will hold significant implications for U.S. industries, regions and the nation. The International Economic Development Counicl (IEDC) recently published a report, Getting Prepared: Economic Development in a Transforming Energy Economy, designed to aid economic developers and others in related fields in positioning their economies to benefit from the transition. While IEDC does not specifically promote a cap and trade policy, we recognize that this is an important emerging issue that those in the economic development and allied professions need to be aware of and to understand.

To understand how states are preparing for this changing policy paradigm, IEDC convened a group of state economic development leaders in the fall of 2009. The meeting was intended to explore the opportunities and challenges presented by a regional or economy-wide move toward carbon pricing. The states represented diverse geographies and economic circumstances.

Following this meeting, IEDC selected nine states to profile in the Getting Prepared report to better understand how states are already transitioning to the low-carbon economy and working to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Across the majority of states examined for this report, we found a significant amount of GHG mitigation activity, much of which is linked to economic development or is in the process of developing such linkages. Policies such as renewable energy standards, state and local energy efficiency strategies, new building codes, as well as clean tech development and deployment have tremendous implications for economic development.

If national and local economies are to maintain and increase their competitiveness, reduction of GHGs must be understood as beneficial to the future health of the economy, not just the environment. Almost all states are now taking steps toward changing their energy profiles and incorporating sustainability into their economies. The challenge of transitioning to a clean energy economy will be to employ and connect all of these pieces in a synergistic way. Given that cap and trade, or carbon pricing may relatively soon become a reality of the American economy, changes and preparation are needed if it’s going to be a smooth transition. How economic developers build systems that will aid the transition and tap into its potential is of critical importance.

Despite the diversity of their assets all of the states featured in Getting Prepared indicated some movement toward greater preparedness in light of a shifting energy economy. That preparedness emerged in four areas detailed in the report:

Policy drivers;
Investments in innovation;
Transition assistance, and;
New partnership development.

While some policies stand alone, others are part of a set of complementary policies that are capable of transitioning economies over the long term. The integration of the business community, government, workforce intermediaries, utilities, and entrepreneurs will all be vital for the transition to grow organically rather than reactively or behind the curve.

Unlike the biotech sector, in which only a few regions were favored by sustained federal R&D funding, all communities can stand to benefit from the transition to a lower-carbon economy. Therefore, the real story is that preparedness is an economic driver in and of itself. The more you invest, the more prepared you are, but you’re also starting to drive your economy into more dynamic areas of growth. The key will lie in balancing acceptable climate change policies with economic assets in a way that advances GHG mitigation while driving growth.

To find out more and to read the full report, please go to: http://www.iedconline.org/?p=Getting_Prepared

NADO Webinar: Recovering from the BP Gulf Oil Disaster - Lessons Learned from Exxon Valdez

2010-06-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

The National Association of Development Organizations (NADO) asked us to pass along this upcoming webinar information.

Title:
Recovering from the BP Gulf Oil Disaster - Lessons Learned from Exxon Valdez

Date:
Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Time:
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM EDT

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/734086826

The BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico has already surpassed Exxon Valdez as the worst oil-related disaster in U.S. history.   As concerns continue to grow about the long-term impact on the businesses and livelihoods in the Gulf Coast region, people are searching for ideas on how to be proactive in the recovery process. What is the role of local government? Should businesses expect to relocate? How do we best manage public and mental health issues? How can we diversify our workforce?   Drawing on their experience in the Exxon Valdez recovery process, NADO is honored to have two presenters share their thoughts on the obstacles to oil spill recovery:

  - Molly McCammon, Executive Director of the Alaska Ocean Observing System and former Executive Director of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council   
- Dave Cobb, Business Manager of the Valdez Fisheries, former Mayor of Valdez, AK, former member of Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council   The purpose of this broadcast is gather insight from one historically significant disaster to assist in the recovery process of another.

Communities become entrepreneurs

2010-06-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

This week's post is by guest contributor Joshua Bloom, Principal of Arlington, VA-based Community Land Use and Economics Group, LLC.

Cooperatives have been around almost forever. But the movement has seen new growth and creativity, especially now, when retail revitalization requires new approaches to traditional business recruitment. As an alternative to recruiting businesses, many communities are actually becoming entrepreneurs and developing businesses themselves. In Clare, MI, for example, a 100-year-old downtown bakery was about to close. But the Clare police department put a stop to it: rather than letting the store become vacant, the entire police department organized themselves (as private citizens) to become an investor group and buy the bakery. They renamed it "Cops & Doughnuts". They now have 18 employees and the bakery has already doubled its retail space in the first twelve months of operation.

The March/April issue of Main Street Now, a publication of the National Trust Main Street Center, explores the wide range of community-owned businesses -- including Cops & Doughnuts.

Community-owned retail businesses typically use one of four models:

Cooperative. A communally owned and managed business, open to anyone, and operated for the benefit of its members. In a cooperative, each member owns an equal share.

Community-owned corporation. A traditional for-profit corporation that integrates social enterprise principles. Investors may make different equity investments and own differing numbers of shares.

Small ownership group. A small, ad hoc investor group that capitalizes and/or operates a business as a partnership or a closely-held corporation.

Investment fund. A community-based fund that invests debt or equity in local business ventures. Typically, the community investment fund finances a local entrepreneur as the owner/operator of the business.

For resources and examples, see communitybusinesses.blogspot.com. To read the original article, visit www.preservationnation.org/main-street (membership required).

Joshua Bloom, principal
Community Land Use and Economics Group, LLC
www.cluegroup.com | 202.427.4722
www.communitybusinesses.blogspot.com

3 Questions With Peter Lowitt: Advice for Job Seekers

2010-05-28T18:09:00.000-07:00

It's graduation season, and many urban planning students have recently completed their graduate work and are looking for jobs. Recently I got the opportunity to ask some advice from the APA's former EDD chair, Peter Lowitt about advice for those looking for their first economic development position. Here Peter Lowitt shares insight into how the field fares in times of economic hardship and strategies for job hunters.

Alison: Do you find that economic development planning is any more or less recession proof than other areas of planning?

Peter: Economic developers tend to be hired in periods of recession because communities seem interested in attracting jobs-but the position is very political. Economic developers can be seen as the scapegoats if a particular project goes wrong. There’s a saying for economic developers that ‘if it moves shoot it, and if it falls, claim a victory.’

Alison: What should students be looking for if they want to find a job in their area?

Peter: Look at regional planning agencies. Communities are always going to be preparing plans. Look into Chambers of Commerce. A good idea is to look into the International Economic Development Council, which has regional components. For instance, the Northeastern Economic Developers Association, or the Maryland Economic Developers Association.

Alison: What is one thing that you wish all people entering the field knew on day one of their new job?

Peter: Any background that you have in business will help. That is the language that many people you will be working with are used to, and so being able to speak their language is very important.

Peter Lowitt is a Director at Devens Enterprise Commission in the Greater Boston Area, and is the Chair of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities.

Economic Properity Elements - Resource List

2010-05-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

Late last year, the blog reviewed Economic Prosperity Elements, and how they differ from typical economic elements of general or comprehensive plans, and invited EDD members to submit links to their Economic Prosperity Elements to EDD. This post provides a listing of Economic Prosperity Elements that were submitted, with some context provided by William Anderson, FAICP, EDD Immediate Past Chair and Director, City Planning & Community Investment Department at the City of San Diego.

Many cities and counties are adding Economic Prosperity or similar elements to their General Plans. These elements help strengthen the link between a jurisdiction’s comprehensive plan and economic development. While most factors that influence economic development are beyond a local area’s control – macro-economic trends, international competition, interest rates, financial markets, etc. – local jurisdictions do have control of factors that can make them more or less competitive in the region, nation, or world. Some of these local factors are traditionally addressed in General Plans, such as land use capacity for industries and targeted sectors, infrastructure efficiency and cost, quality-of-life, housing affordability for the workforce, and environmental quality. Other local factors are not as directly related to land use policies, such as workforce training, education, and access to capital, factors which may be the purview of other organizations and agencies, but are also critical. An Economic Prosperity Element, especially one tied to a regional economic development strategy, can bridge and coordinate these factors and take the General Plan beyond the role of just land use policy. It can also serve as the element that connects a region’s economic development strategy focused on the needs of export-oriented base sectors, to the opportunities for community-level economic development.

This blog provides examples of Economic Prosperity or Economic Development elements from general plans around the country, from small towns to large cities. We hope you can find something useful for your own needs.

EDD is interested in expanding the list provided below, please feel free to submit a link to any Economic Prosperity or Economic Development element that you know of in the comments section of this post.

Thank you,
William Anderson, FAICP
Director, City Planning & Community Investment Department
City of San Diego

Economic Development/Economic Prosperity Elements/Plans Submitted to-date

City of Entiat, WA Comprehensive Plan, Economic Element

Monroe County, Michigan Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy

City of San Diego, CA Economic Prosperity Element

Arlington, VA Economic Development Strategic Plan

Upcoming Course: Cultural Community Development

2010-05-10T13:40:00.000-07:00

Former EDD Chair Rhonda Phillips is teaching a Rutgers PDI course, Cultural Community Development, beginning late this month that offers 14 AICP credits! The class will be working with Bisbee, AZ as our project for the studio, have some neat speakers from LISC and other organizations. Find out more on the Rutgers PDI website:

https://rutgers.catalog.cerkit.rutgers.edu/course/display/10195

Determining the Fiscal Need for Public Intervention in Redevelopment

2010-05-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

This week's post is authored by the Bob Lewis, AICP, CEcD, Principal at Development Strategies and the new Economic Development Division Chair. The premise of this post is drawn from a panel session on Spatial Economics at the 2009 national conference of the American Planning Association. Panelists were Steven Shwiff, who heads the Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance at Texas A&M University; Robin McCaffrey, who is a principal with Mesa Design Group in Dallas; and Carissa Cox, an associate with Mesa Design Group. Interpretations of the panel’s presentation in this essay are entirely the author’s, however.

Communities are often barraged with requests for “development incentives” when proposed projects just do not seem to earn a sufficient rate of return. How do public officials figure out which projects deserve incentives?

Any site can be placed on a continuum that indicates the relative balance between the value of the land (i.e., ignoring improvements on the land) and the value of the improvements (i.e., ignoring the land). Almost all property taxing jurisdictions distinguish between the two—land is valued separately from what’s on the land. It’s possible to use the ratio of land-to-improvements value in evaluating incentive requests.

Ideally, the relationship between land value and improvements value will be balanced in a fully thriving community. As the economy is manipulated by the invisible hand toward equilibrium, so says the theory, all real estate values will achieve an appropriate balance. This doesn’t mean that land value is equal to building value, but that there is an appropriate balance that is effectively expressed in the “rents” that the property generates—sufficient income to pay all operating and maintenance expenses, debt service, and a competitive rate of return to the owners.

We all know, however, that a perfect balance for all properties all the time never happens.

To one side of the equilibrium continuum, therefore, would be sites where the ratio of improvement value to land value is too high. To the other side would be sites where the ratio of improvement value to land value is too low.

Properties that have perfect balance do not need public intervention because the economy is operating as it should. Likewise, properties on the “stimulative” side of the continuum do not need public intervention because the underlying value of the land is a strong enough incentive for property owners to develop or redevelop in order to “capture” that value through higher economic rents. That is, if the land value is so strong, then high paying tenants will want to occupy the location, so the property owner needs no economic incentives to, say, build a bigger or better building and attract such tenants.

Where intervention might be necessary is on the “blight” side of the continuum. This is where the value of the improvements is high, but the location value is relatively low. For example, there might be a very expensive building on the site, but the site is too poorly located to attract tenants willing to pay rents that reflect the value of the building. So the building remains underutilized, probably with poor maintenance, and can become a blight in the community.

All cities have experienced varying degrees of these conditions. The corner of “Main and Main” in a vibrant downtown, for example, represents a site either in balance or in a stimulative condition. But a formerly successful shopping center on a major arterial road might no longer be well located because major retailing has moved to the interstate highway interchange. Demographic and household income shifts also change the location value of shopping centers.

‘Blighted” might be too strong a word in some cases, but there are properties that are clearly blighted while others we tend to call “marginal” because they show early signs of imbalance favoring the value of the improvements. For whatever reasons, the value of the land is diminishing relative to the operating costs and value of the building. In such cases, there is technically no economic incentive for the property owner to improve the property to a higher value. Stronger rents cannot be achieved at that location. Thus, the building is effectively allowed to deteriorate to a value more in balance with the value of the land—and rents will inevitably decline.

Ridding that blight requires improving the value of the land and/or reducing operating costs. A city government might work harder to reduce crime, increase the quality of the utilities, or re-pave the street to increase the site’s location value. Indeed, these are useful intervention techniques for properties just beginning to go out of balance on the blight side of the continuum.

More drastic measures, however, are required for more advanced stages of blight. Thus, cities often offer to buy the land and turn it over to a developer at no cost, thus reducing the new property owner’s exposure to the rate-of-return imbalance. Or substantial public infrastructure investments might be made to increase the location value. Tax increment financing is often an appropriate tool in this case because higher values, triggered by the “new” infrastructure, should generate “new” taxes, some of which can be siphoned off to pay for the needed improvements. Tax abatements, tax credits, direct payments, etc., may also reduce the property owner’s exposure to the improvement/land imbalance and/or to increase the location value of the site.

What defines “balance,” however? In most communities, a simple indicator could be the aggregate value of all land divided by the aggregate value of all improvements (or vice versa). This is, in effect, the average for the entire community. Individual property ratios that significantly deviate from this ratio can be identified as opportunities for higher value development (stimulative) or opportunities for public intervention (blighted). Multi-year measures of this aggregate balance can be utilized to minimize statistical variations year-to-year.

Perhaps even better is to determine the equilibrium ratio using a much larger geographic area, say a county-wide or metropolitan-wide measure. A central city might have its own balance, but that ratio might not be the same as, say, the adjacent suburban county. Thus, a metro average might be a more appropriate “goal” though it could mean that a disproportionately high number of central city properties fall into the blighted end of the continuum while the suburban properties are more weighted in the other direction.

In any event, this equilibrium concept can be an effective indicator of properties needing public incentives and those that shouldn’t need such incentives. Public officials need to marshal resources as carefully as the private sector, so the use of such statistics can guide better decision-making.

Economic Development Division Activities in New Orleans

2010-04-09T11:29:00.000-07:00

We look forward to seeing members of the APA Economic Development Division at our Division-related activities and sessions in New Orleans! Events include:

ANNUAL MEETING AND RECEPTION Economic Development Division Annual Meeting & Reception (X018) http://www.planning.org/conference/program/search/activity.htm?ActivityID=138439 Monday, 6:30-8:00 pm (Scheduled location is Hilton Hotel, Marlborough A)

• Enjoy free drinks and hors d’oeuvres
• Network with fellow division members
• Discuss the upcoming year’s work plan

EDUCATION SESSIONS
Earn CM credits and sharpen skills at the following sessions:

“Measuring Economic Impacts of Scenic Byways” (S411) http://www.planning.org/conference/progr am/search/activity.htm?ActivityID=137913 Sunday, 7:30-8:30 am CM 1.00

Test drive a user-friendly tool that helps local groups measure and communicate the economic impacts generated by their byways. Developed by America’s Byways Resource Center, which supports the 125 National Scenic Byways, this tool is a valuable resource for those fighting to maintain federal, state and local funding support of byways.

“Planning for the Bottom Line” (S414) http://www.planning.org/conference/progr am/search/activity.htm?ActivityID=137943 Sunday, 5:30-6:45 pm CM 1.00

In an economic downturn, improving the financial management of local government is every department’s responsibility. Learn to improve the financial management of the planning department and gain an understanding of how land-use decisions impact a community's overall fiscal condition. Take a leadership role in your community's financial management.

“Riding Out the Recession” (S543)* http://www.planning.org/conference/progr am/search/activity.htm?ActivityID=138117 Monday, 4:00-5:15 pm*EDD-Sponsored SessionCM 1.25

Stagnant housing market. Declining tax base. Shrinking municipal budgets. Rising unemployment. It’s scary. But cities, even those experiencing structural upheaval, have weathered past recessions. And it’s normal for municipal revenues to lag behind. Hear from veteran planners who’ve suffered through this before and learn what to expect in the public and private sectors.

“Social Media in Planning” (S809) http://www.planning.org/conference/progr am/search/activity.htm?ActivityID=137799 Monday, 5:30-6:45 pmCM 1.25

If your agency or firm doesn’t Twitter, blog, or have a Facebook page, it may be missing the boat. Learn to use Internet technologies for public outreach and education. Discuss ways APA members can use these tools for professional networking and education.

“Looking Past Market Cycle Pressures” (S594)

http://www.planning.org/conference/program/search/activity.htm?ActivityID=137906 Tuesday, 10:30-11:45 amCM 1.25

Market cycles create short-term pressures that need to be reconciled with long-term planning needs. Discuss strategies for looking past market cycles to pragmatically achieve planning goals and a long-range vision. Lessons from San Diego and Aurora, Colorado, illustrate how keeping a planning project steady can push it toward successful completion.

We look forward to seeing you in New Orleans!

What Do You Wish Your Elected Officials Knew About Economic Development?

2010-04-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

This week's post is a guest blog from Christy McFarland, Program Director, Finance & Economic Development, Research & Innovation at the National League of Cities. She can be reached at mcfarland@nlc.org.

We at the National League of Cities are producing a guide for local elected officials based on a list of the “10 Things Local Elected Officials Should Know about Economic Development…and if you don’t you should ask.” This list is sort of call to arms about having informed local elected officials who can support and promote thoughtful economic development policies. To be sure, we are not trying to turn local elected officials into professional economic developers, but to give them the tools and knowledge to be effective leaders and to build mutually-supportive relationships with their economic development staff. We started this conversation with economic development officials at IEDC’s recent conferences and would welcome your input as well. Have additions, subtractions, or comments about our list? Let us know! The “10 Things Local Elected Officials Should Know about Economic Development…and if you don’t you should ask”:

Informed and Strategic Leader

1. Your local economic strengths and weaknesses, including:

What are the major sources of jobs in my town?
What available sources of worker training are available in my city, like community colleges, and are they connected to the needs to my local business community?
What is the high school graduation rate? Drop-out rate?
Local unemployment?
Am I up to speed on changing economic conditions?

2. Your community’s economic development goals and vision, including:

Are goals and vision based on a “fad” or the realities of my community?
Is the economic development vision in sync with longer-term community values?

3. Your community’s strategy to attain these goals, including:

What are the tangible outcomes of our vision?
How can I be part of a “continuum” of leadership for economic development? (i.e. balancing longer-term nature of economic development with short-term political concerns)

4. How your community fit into the broader regional economy, including:

What does/could my community offer to enhance the region’s overall economic strength and environment?
What regional organizations or partnerships exist? Are we involved?

Policy Maker Who Can “Connect the Dots”

5. Other city activities that support or impede economic development, including:

How do transportation, housing, land use and other policies impact economic development? How do these all work together?

6. Your regulatory environment and budget, including:

Are we establishing the right conditions to create jobs?
How long does the permitting process take?
Does the budget support the expectations I have of my economic development team?
Do we offer tax incentives, and under what circumstances?

7. Who needs to be at the table to get the job done, including:

Who are the key city staff from various departments and outside organizations who work on these issues?
Do I talk to them?
What do/can they bring to the table to help achieve our economic development goals?
Are there communications barriers between stakeholders and what can I do to break them down?

Effective Communicator

8. The needs of your local business community, including:

How does my business community perceive local government?
How does my city monitor and respond to the needs of our local business community?
How do we celebrate and highlight the achievements of local businesses?

9. How to support your economic development staff and they can support you, including:

Am I in regular communication with my economic development staff?
Do I trust my staff and do they trust me?
Do I empower my staff to make decisions?
What type of leader do they need me to be in order to be most effective?
What information do I need from them in order to communicate to residents how we are addressing their needs?

10. A consistent message and brand about who we are, including:

How do I articulate our economic vision to my citizens?
Are all city staff and officials on the same page with the goals and are we delivering a consistent message/brand?

A few GREAT Economic Development Blogs

2010-03-22T20:24:00.000-07:00

EDD blog is still new and developing – so this week I wanted to highlight a small group of economic development related blogs that I’ve found inspiring and insightful. What economic development blogs would you recommend?

The EDPro Weblog by Ed Morrison (@edmorrison)
Maybe the first blog developed specifically for Economic Development practitioners – EDPro Weblog is a rich repository of resources and analysis on local economic and workforce development issues. The blog describes itself as aiding “economic and workforce development professionals—EDPros—keep up with the changes sweeping our professions. Strap on your goggles. It's a whole new game. There are no experts any more. The only place to learn about economic development is from other EDPros who are doing it.” EDPro Weblog is the project of Purdue Center for Regional Development Economic Policy Advisor and consultant Ed Morrison.

http://edpro-weblog.net/

Extraordinary Observations by Rob Pitingolo (@robpitingolo)
Authored by John Carroll University Senior economics major Rob Pitingolo, Extraordinary Observations covers topics related to economics, urbanism, transportation, and more. Rob is currently an intern at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and he is in pre-graduation job search mode -- don't miss his Video Resume!

http://www.robpitingolo.org/

Richard's Real Estate and Urban Economics Blog by Prof. Richard Green (@keynesianr) of the School of Policy, Planning and Development and the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
“This blog will feature commentary on the current state of housing, commercial real estate, mortgage finance, and urban development around the world. It may also at times have ruminations about graduate business education.”

http://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/

Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space by Richard Layman, Washington, DC based urban/commercial district revitalization and transportation/mobility advocate and consultant.
“A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic. This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.”

http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/

The Bellows by Ryan Avent (@ryanavent)
The Bellows author Ryan Avent’s day job is writing for The Economist. Anyone interested in the intersections of urbanism, economics, planning and transportation should be a regular reader of The Bellows.

http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/

EMSI Resource Library, by Economic Modeling Specialists, Inc.
“The EMSI Resource Library is a source of news, articles, and links for professionals in workforce development, economic development, and workforce education.”

http://www.economicmodeling.com/resources/

Transportation’s Economic Impact, a more complete picture

2010-03-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

This is a cross-post with the Young Professionals in Transportation Blog.

When the economic impact of transportation investment is discussed, the typical focus is on job creation. It is obvious that when roads are repaired or new transit systems built that many jobs are directly created. There are also jobs that are indirectly created through transportation investments. Each new transit agency employee or highway construction worker will generate new spending not only on essentials such as food and housing, but also on non-essentials such as entertainment, and these expenditures will support other jobs in the private sector.

Over the past year we’ve witnessed the power of transportation and infrastructure investments to generate quality jobs that cannot be outsourced for hundreds of thousands of Americans through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). An American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials study reported that in its first year ARRA directly supported 280,000 transit and highway jobs, and that including indirect and induced jobs it supported 890,000 jobs. An October 2009 report evaluating the economic impact of public transportation investment prepared by the consulting firm Economic Development Research Group for the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) found that on average for every $1 billion of spending on public transportation operations in the United States, 41,140 jobs are created, and for every $1 billion spent on transit capital expenditures, 23,788 jobs are created. When transit operations and capital expenditures are combined, an estimated average of 36,000 jobs are supported for each $1 billion invested in public transportation.

While the number of jobs supported by investments in transportation infrastructure is a critical indicator of transportation’s economic impact, this indicator alone does not provide a complete picture of how transportation and economic development are linked. Accessibility, the measure of the number of activity sites (school, work, places of worship, retail stores) that an individual can reach within a certain travel time, is and will remain an important determinant of economic opportunity for Americans in every type of occupation.

Despite repeated predictions, exemplified in the 2001 book Death of Distance by Francis Craincross, that geographic distance would cease to be an inhibiting factor in economic collaboration and trade, the region remains the center of economic activity and collaboration in the United States and around the world. The world economy is essentially a collection of regional economies. The Internet Era has not hastened the demise of geographical proximity as a requisite for individual or firm economic success. While I cannot do justice in this short blog to the all of the literature in geographical economics and economic geography that explore the many reasons for the pre-eminence of regional economies, I would like to touch on a few aspects found in academic research that underscore the importance of place and accessibility for individual, firm and regional economic success.

First, trust is an importation foundation of human economic interaction, and trust is built primarily through repeated face-to-face (F2F) interactions. When you trust someone, you are more willing to exchange information with them, and collaborate on individual projects. While competition and firm rivalry are often cited as an important factor in regional economic dynamism, the reality is that in many sectors of today’s economy a more common paradigm is to find firms that partner on some projects, and compete on others. Trust and F2F interactions also allow for a key type of information exchange, tacit knowledge transfer. Tacit knowledge is knowledge that cannot be codified or exchanged without co-presence, and the exchange of tacit knowledge is often considered to be dependent upon a shared social and cultural space. (For a more in-depth consideration of the importance of these three factors on regional economic success, please see pgs. 30-33 in my paper, Tucson’s Clustered Connections).

F2F, trust and knowledge exchange, tacit and codified, form the foundation of regional networks that support regional economies. For knowledge workers having access to a number of actors within their industry’s regional network and a robust personal network is an important determinant of how successful they may be personally. For firms, the ability to access industry knowledge and talent is critical. If transportation investments increase accessibility and subsequently the ability of knowledge workers to interact, there will be a positive impact on the economy. It is important to note that not all types of transportation investments really do this, some may only increase mobility, or the ability to move between activity sites. (While there is an inherent urban bias to accessibility, it can’t be said that an intensely developed place is required for economic dynamism, Silicon Valley and its suburban office parks are an important example).

Accessibility is also an issue that acutely affects low-income workers. In the second half of the 20th century, entry-level jobs in service industries were increasingly located in the suburbs while many low-skilled workers remained in central cities, creating a spatial mistmatch of jobs opportunities and low-income workers. Accessing job opportunities in the suburbs often requires the use of a private automobile, a mode of transportation too expensive for many low-income workers. As a result many government and non-profit agency programs have sought to provide reliable transportation to low-income workers seeking to travel jobs that are not accessible via public transportation. For some individuals the ability to access these types of programs can mean the difference between being employed and unemployed.

In the first decade of the 21st century the issues presented by the spatial mismatch and access to reliable, low-cost transportation for low-income individuals has been exacerbated by the growth in suburban poverty. The Brookings Institution recently released a report on the suburbanization of poverty that found that between 2000 and 2008, “suburbs in the country’s largest metro areas saw their poor population grow by 25 percent—almost five times faster than primary cities and well ahead of the growth seen in smaller metro areas and non-metropolitan communities.” In the coming years, transportation and economic development professionals will be challenged to work together to create dynamic, accessible and equitable communities that will provide the foundation for continued national economic success.

The Economic Development Studio @ Virginia Tech: A Student Experience

2010-02-23T13:44:00.001-08:00

Ms. Jones and Dr. John Provo, Virginia Tech Office of Economic Development Associate Director, will lead a FREE webinar on sustainable development, presenting their work commissioned by SustainFloyd as a case study on Friday, March 25th. You can register for the webinar online here.

Top right: In a meeting room at the Virginia Tech Office of Economic Development, the Economic Development Studio @ VT meets weekly to work on their project. From left of table; Thomas Moore, Sherman Taylor, Daniel Ling, Courtney Kimmel, Brian McElraft, Ashley DeBiase, Will Drake and Mel Jones work on client presentation.

Top left: Dr. John Provo, instructor of the Economic Development Studio @ VT, and Thomas Moore, Urban Affairs and Planning Student, at presentation to client, SustainFloyd, at the Country Store in Floyd, VA.

Bottom left: Jack Wall, SustainFloyd board member and client contact for the Economic Development Studio @ VT.

Bottom right: Ashley DeBiase presents the opportunity for a micro dairy in Floyd County, VA to SustainFloyd at the Country Store in Floyd, VA.

The Economic Development Studio @ Virginia Tech is an opportunity for students to experience a development project from its commission to completion. The studio experience is complicated and no doubt different for every student involved, depending on his or her role, ambitions, and background. Despite the variety of experiences to be had, I expect that exercise in applying economic development theory, project planning and implementation, group dynamics, consensus building, and time management were felt in everyone’s intellectual muscles.

This year’s project was commissioned by SustainFloyd, a local non-profit devoted to sustainable development in Floyd County, Virginia. SustainFloyd connected with the studio’s instructor, Dr. John Provo, and requested that the class identify sustainable business opportunities in Floyd County. Accepting the request, Dr. Provo assigned the studio project as a preliminary feasibility study to identify a number of sustainable business opportunities. He introduced readings to direct the class to applicable theories and set out deadlines for the project’s progression.

From the beginning, the class unanimously chose to apply the concept of community economic development, likely due to our exposure to academic trends in economic development and our generation’s affinity for community engagement. Adding “asset-based” to community economic development was almost accidental (it seemed to me; perhaps Dr. Provo had it up his sleeve the whole time). Obviously, we had to know what is in Floyd to work with, so we began interviewing members of the community who were already involved in sustainable businesses or already promoting sustainable practices and made a plan to collect data on Floyd’s labor, natural, and infrastructure resource availability. The interviews quickly revealed that Floyd had a wealth of intangible assets rooted in the cultural and social dynamics of the county. Through data collection and analysis we identified Floyd’s general labor advantages and a number of important infrastructure and resource constraints.

Our evaluation of Floyd’s advantages and constraints along with our interpretation SustainFloyd’s sustainability mission led us to sectors in which Floyd County could most effectively contribute to sustainable development. In those sectors (training and education, biomass energy, interior furnishings and food processing) we detected sustainable business opportunities which would both use and bolster Floyd’s assets while contributing to the overall sustainable development of Floyd County. Without ever specifically intending, we were applying concepts of asset based development. Our enterprise recommendations are therefore product of asset-based, sustainable, community economic development ideas. A taste of our results is below, but check out the whole report at on the Virginia Tech Office of Economic Development Website!

Climate change and alternative energy is one of SustainFloyd’s top priorities, so wood pellet production is a particularly relevant sustainable business opportunity. Wood pellets can be produced and consumed on a local level, aligning with SustainFloyd’s desire to localize the area’s economy. A micro dairy would allow the county’s existing agricultural and dairy base to enter a thriving, value-added niche market. Manufacturing flooring and countertop materials would leverage the county’s existing manufacturing skill base, creating opportunities for the area’s artisans and craftsmen, while expanding sustainable living options for consumers. A “sustainable living” training and education center could retrain displaced manufacturing workers, empower prospective farmers to enter the agriculture business, and provide additional income streams for professionals in the area.

HUD Issues Notice for New Sustainability Planning Grants

2010-02-11T15:15:00.001-08:00

When Congress approved FY 2010 funding, $150 million was provided to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for a new sustainable communities program. $100 million of that funding was set aside for regional planning grants and $40 million for “challenge grants” designed to provide capital funds to implement regional plans. On February 5, HUD issued an Advance Notice with a description and framework for a new Sustainable Communities Planning Grant Program. The Advance Notice process is for the agency to garner feedback from the public, prior to a Notice of Fund Availability (NOFA) release.

HUD is requesting comments on the program and the proposed funding structure. Because the program is for multi-jurisdictional regional planning efforts, HUD is particularly seeking input from local governments, regional bodies, community development entities, and other stakeholders about how best to structure the program in order to have the most meaningful impact in creating “economically competitive, healthy, opportunity-rich communities.”

Three funding categories are being considered. First, support for the preparation of Regional Plans for Sustainable Development that integrate housing, economic development, transportation, and environmental quality where such plans do not currently exist. Second, funds may support the preparation of more detailed execution plans and programs to implement existing regional sustainable development plans. Lastly, implementation funds to support regions that have regional sustainable development plans and implementation strategies in place and need support for a catalytic project or program that demonstrates commitment to and implementation of the broader plan.

The comment period on the Advance Notice is open until March 12, 2010. HUD expects to release the final NOFA on the planning grants by April 12, 2010. Regions would likely have until the end of June to apply, and grant announcements would be made in early August.

APA will be submitting formal comments to HUD. We want your input. If you would like to submit comments or ideas, please contact APA at govtaffairs@planning.org.

The Obama Administration is also asking Congress to approve an additional $150 million for the program in the FY 2011 budget. Additionally, Congress is considering legislation to provide a multiyear authorization for the program. That legislation, the Livable Communities Act (S. 1619) may come before the Senate Banking Committee later this month. A House companion is expected as soon as next week. APA has endorsed the legislation.

More information, including a link to provide comments, can be found on HUD’s sustainability office website.

Jason Jordan
APA, Director of Policy & Government Affairs
jjordan@planning.org

The Celtic Tiger Crash: A Visit to Dublin After the Bust

2010-02-08T18:33:00.000-08:00

On a trip to Ireland last month I was amazed to see all of the scaffolding hanging from half completed projects, and the plethora of brutalist architecture. I was visiting Dublin to do mini-internship with the Urban Institute; a research organization at University College Dublin, aimed in part at grappling with the newly sprawling pattern of the city, and aiming to inform policy to create a more sustainable Ireland. While there, I spent a lot of time in awe of the devastating crash of the Irish economy.

Dublin is a small city-walkable from the north end to the south end in about ten minutes, which is perhaps why the rampant modernist buildings were all the more noticeable and troubling. During the recent hay day of the Celtic Tiger boom, far too many Georgian buildings were leveled to make way for structures resembling Albany’s Empire State Plaza, or Boston’s City Hall. The economic boom ushered in an era of wasteful spending and dubious banking practices. During the boom, Ireland sent representatives around the globe to teach struggling nations how they too could prosper. Lithuania, Latvia, Uruguay, and Trinidad all become convinced that the Irish Model could work for them. What exactly constituted the ‘Irish Model’ is nebulous, but included low regulation, a ‘business friendly’ attitude, and creative banking-all ingredients with which Americans have recently grown familiar. Also, as noted by Fintan O’Toole in ‘Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger,’ “Ireland became far more dependent on foreign investment for its manufacturing base than almost any other society. By 1999, half the manufacturing jobs were in foreign-based companies compared to 20 percent for the EU as a whole. But it seemed to work. At the end of the 1990s, Ireland had become the largest exporter of computer software in the work. The overall value of exports more than doubled between 1995 and 2000” (p.13). Housing prices escalated, and many bought homes that they could not afford. Development was in full swing and the old style architecture and way of life was being demolished to make way for a new, modern era, replete with a sprawling development pattern. Other factors of course contributed to the fast increase in wealth, a case is often made that Ireland was merely catching up to the rest of Europe. Since 1922, growth in Ireland lagged significantly behind Europe. Another factor was the successful global economy at the time of the boom. In the late 1990’s, nations the world over were enjoying financial success, and thus investing more heavily abroad.

Ireland is now faced with recovering their image, their economy, and their built environment from the devastation of a hard fall commensurate with a sharp rise. And as Dublin does have much to offer in the way of inviting European streetscapes, the city will likely be frozen in this place for a while-scaffolding and half finished projects sitting side by side brick Georgian buildings as a symbol for what became of this nation for a brief time. While it is enticing to be caught up in the good times of economic success, hopefully we all, Irish and American alike will insist upon economic development strategies rooted in sustainability and endurance going forward.

EDD Scholarship New Deadline: Feb 18th

2010-02-02T08:46:00.000-08:00

NEW DEADLINE: FEB. 18th 2010!

The application deadline for the EDD Scholarship has been extended to Feb. 18th, 2010.

Master's level students from PAB-accredited planning departments across the U.S. may apply. The $1,000 scholarship is awarded on the basis of a letter of recommendation from a full-time faculty member and an original paper or work having to do with a substantive and relevant topic related to economic development and planning. We prefer an article length or shorter paper submitted (not a thesis, although a shorter paper developed from the thesis is acceptable) of 2,000 to 2,500 words.

The application should be addressed to:

John Provo, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Office of Economic Development (0373)
Outreach and International Affairs
Virginia Tech
702 University City Blvd.
Blacksburg, VA 24061
jprovo@vt.edu

The scholarship will be presented at the APA National Planning Conference in New Orleans in April 2010, and the paper will be published in EDD’s News & Views.

Understanding the Unserviced Workforce

2010-01-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

Today's post is a guest post from Stuart Mease, of Connecting People. Stuart will be leading a FREE webinar for the Economic Development Division on Understanding the Unserviced Workforce on June 25th. Visit https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/209130811 to register for the webinar.

With the start to any new year, resolutions are made and are either kept or broken. Many will make resolutions to find a new job or become employed again. As one starts their job search process, ask yourself which one of the three segments of the workforce fits you – white collar, blue collar, or are you like me, a member of the unserviced workforce? Let’s define each segment.

White collar professional workers are being serviced by private third-party groups (headhunters). Typically their skill sets are in high demand and companies are paying a premium for their services. Professions such as health care, engineering, information technology, accounting, architecture are all in high demand, regardless of region. These workers are coveted because they will most likely drive the regional economy forward.

The blue collar skilled workers are being serviced by public third-party agencies (community colleges, workforce investment boards, employment commissions, etc.). Typically their skill sets are in high demand and companies try to create a pool of candidates to become trained to perform these jobs. Professions such as manufacturing, trades, technicians are all in high demand. These workers are coveted because they can stall the regional economy from moving forward.

The unserviced workforce is caught in the middle. Neither the public nor private sector is serving this group. This segment of the workforce can be characterized as: younger with potential or upside; has some form of higher education; has good skill sets, but not billable skill sets, which are in demand; and are looking for a “professional” job paying a salary between $30-$60k. This is the critical mass of knowledge workers who are underemployed, overeducated and are job hunting.

Members of the unserviced workforce will be forced to do one of these seven things:
1. Acquire new skills through formal education and move up in the workforce ladder
2. Humble themselves and take a job or jobs lower in the workforce ladder
3. Start a business
4. Continue to stay in the unserviced workforce by looking and finding lateral jobs
5. Remain unemployed for an extended amount of time
6. Leave the region for opportunities in others areas
7. Retire, if able

Those who complete their job resolutions in 2010 will pick options 1, 2 or 3. Those who come short will pick options 4 thru 7. Our region and economy need these job seekers to successfully achieve their resolutions. Get out of the unserviced workforce in 2010. For more help getting out of the unserviced workforce, go to http://www.unservicedworkforce.com.

Member Profie: Dr. Terry Holzheimer, FAICP

2010-01-15T13:32:00.000-08:00

Our inaugural member profile features, Dr. Terry Holzehimer, FAICP, Director of Arlington Economic Development and former Chair of EDD and current chair of the American Planning Association's Division's Council. Dr. Holzheimer also serves as an adjunct faculty member at Virginia Tech's graduate program in Urban Affairs and Planning where he teaches Urban Economy and Public Policy and Economic Analysis Methods.

To visit the website of Arlington Economic Development click here. To read Dr. Holzheimer's Virginia Tech biography click here.

What attracted you to the field of economic development planning?
I worked my way through college as a draftsman in the Highway Design Section of a public works department while majoring in economics. I was destined to put economics and city building together as a career. I don’t see how the two can be separated.

What do you do in your job? What aspects of your job are the most meaningful and exciting? What aspects of your job do you enjoy the least?
I head an economic development program with a very broad mandate. We do the traditional recruitment/retention/small business activities, but also run the tourism program and we operate as a quasi-redevelopment authority. I love it all! Nothing gets the blood flowing like competition for a major employer; it may be old fashioned, but elephant hunting is alive and well in economic development. Building cities is a passion of our staff, and turning obsolete sites into exciting projects is incredibly rewarding. We are also heavily involved in the planning process where development economics is a fundamental part of our plans. So, there is the instantaneous gratification of winning a deal; the three to five year effort of developing a great project; and the 30 year horizon of good planning – what’s not to like? I am a planner but not a regulator and I tend to see rules and regulations as obstacles. My favorite book is First Break All the Rules. No one will ever think of me as planning director material, I have found my calling.

You are currently Chair of APA’s Division’s Council. What other APA leadership roles have you held in the past, and how have you seen APA grow over the years?
I really became active in APA about 15 years ago, presenting at conferences and doing various tasks for the Economic Development Division. I ran for Chair-elect and lost and then was nominated again two years later and was elected. The leadership track does keep you involved for awhile: two years as Chair-Elect, two years as Chair, and then two years on the Executive Committee as Past Chair. I then served as Vice Chair of the Divisions Council and now Chair. I believe that the Divisions are a great way to build both knowledge and a network in a specialty like economic development. We have worked hard to create opportunities for greater member participation in a way that is relevant and adds value to the membership. This blog is a great example.

In your role as an adjunct faculty member of Virginia Tech’s graduate program in Urban and Regional Planning you play a role in educating future planners. Is there anything you wish was incorporated in planning education that currently is not?
Putting my bias to the fore, I do not think that planners have enough grounding in development economics. I am not sure that planning students also get enough training in basic land use and plans review. There is a tendency to promote topics that are engaging at the expense of the basics. After all, graduates need to be able to get jobs as planners when they leave school. The current recession has had a severe impact on the capacity of state and local governments.

How do you see the economic development planners aiding jurisdictions in riding out the recession? Are there any other current or future challenges that should be of particular importance to economic development planners?
Planners can play an essential role in providing for the economic sustainability of their communities. Good plans beget great communities. Short term actions guided by a long term plan and strategy are the best bet for building a city.

Do you have any after hours hobbies that you want to share?
After my job in economic development, my teaching, and my work with APA, I try to find time for an occasional dinner with my wife and an even more occasional hockey game with my daughter. Go CAPS.

Donald Hunter Economic Development Planning Award

2010-01-05T07:58:00.000-08:00

Economic Development Planning pioneer, EDD volunteer and founder of Hunter Interests, Don E. Hunter, died peacefully December 30, 2009, in Annapolis, Md., after losing a valiant battle with a rare form of leukemia. Don was president of Hunter Interests Inc., an award-winning real estate development and consulting firm based in Annapolis, whose clients included local governments, public development organizations and large and small developers. Formerly co-owner of Zuchelli, Hunter & Associates Inc., Don founded Hunter Interests in 1986 and conducted independent consulting assignments nationwide for over 38 years. His firm' s combined experience as developer and economic consultant was unique in business and commanded respect from development companies and financial institutions throughout the country. Active for two decades in several national professional organizations. You can read his full obituary here.  

The Economic Development Division has named our Economic Development Planning Award after Don Hunter to honor him for his long career in economic development planning. Don served as our Chair and was a great friend and colleague to many of us over many years. He will be fondly remembered.

The deadline for award nomination submissions is February 12, 2010. For more information the award visit the Division's website.

One Example of Creative BID Programming

2009-12-26T17:50:00.000-08:00

Its no surprise that New York City is home to the largest collection of BIDs in the nation. Nearly $100 million dollars worth of services are generated by the city’s 64 BIDs. While many of these BIDs offer typical services such as trash collection, lighting infrastructure, security and beautification projects, one NYC BID is working hard to go beyond the traditional call of duty. The Alliance for Downtown New York offers creative and cooperative programing aimed to serve local businesses, the local underprivelaged population, and even the New York City police force.

The Alliance, founded in the mid 1990’s, is located in lower Manhattan’s financial center. Situated in Manhattan’s Central Business District, The Alliance takes care to provide amenities fitting to members of the bustling business community. Current initiatives funded by BID assessments include the creation of an internet wireless network, as well as the establishment of commercial hotspots such as Winter Garden and 60 Wall Street. The Alliance boasts: “we have also been working with different levels of government to create a Wireless Redundancy communications network throughout all of Lower Manhattan – a system that will make Lower Manhattan the place to be for business continuity”. The BID also helps businesses aspiring to locate in this commercial epicenter to find appropriate property and to network with property owners. The BID puts potential downtown businesses in touch with local potential funders and with local organizations providing technical business assistance. The Alliance has taken an approach that would behoove all BIDs nationwide; to adapt the projects of the BID, and the spending of the assessment on projects and initiatives in-line with the character of the area. It is important for BIDs to understand the intrinsic character of the area, and thus understand what elements of the area should be built upon. A one-size-fits-all approach to BIDs will not work as well as a tailored, area-specific and creative allocation of assessment funds.

One such creative program of the Alliance is its Private Security Scholarship Program formed in conjunction with City University of New York's Borough of Manhattan Community College. Initiated in 2000, the aim of this scholarship is to allow those serving on the BIDs security team to pursue training, and eventually to become a New York Police Department officer. "'Our Private Security Scholarship Program is a win-win proposition,' says Eric Deutsch,President of the Alliance for Downtown New York". In addition to providing education to those who might not otherwise be able to afford college, this program helps the Downtown Alliance recruit and develop a more skilled and committed workforce and improve the quality of security services it provides throughout Lower Manhattan". BIDs are no strangers to claims of gentrification and of neglecting local low income residents, but this scholarship program speaks to the ability of BIDs to both serve businesses and local residents. The BID is also able to recruit top-notch, dedicated security officers who are looking to take advantage of the program. While this particular BID may have access to financial resources not easily accessible to other areas of the nation, this strategic partnership with the NYPD and local college shows just how innovative BIDs can be, and that creative thinking, as much as dollars can bring about real change.

Calling all Economic Prosperity Elements!

2009-12-15T13:37:00.000-08:00

EDD is currently collecting Economic Prosperity Elements from Comprehensive Plans across the nation. EDD would like to form a repository of these plans as a reference for our members. If you would like to submit an Economic Prosperity Element url for EDD please e-mail me at shanaedd (at) gmail (dot) com or provide the url in the comments section following this post.

Economic Prosperity Elements differ from redevelopment or typical economic elements of comprehensive plans. The elements aim to align a jurisdiction's quality of life, growth and economic justice goals with their overall economic conditions and potential.

An excerpt from the City of San Diego's draft economic prosperity element explains the concept's usefulness, in that it "incorporates the relevant values, policy recommendations, and action items from the General Plan Strategic Framework Element and will replace the existing General Plan Industrial, Commercial and Redevelopment Elements. In the past, plans, policies, and municipal operations have separated land use planning and economic development disciplines. Often, the conflicting policies of each have resulted in inefficient efforts to achieve quality of life goals...the Economic Prosperity Element seeks to combine the efforts of each discipline to provide a more comprehensive approach to increasing the standard of living for San Diego residents."

The final City of San Diego General Plan Economic Prosperity Element provides a set of policies for industrial and commercial land uses, regional centers and sub-employment areas, education and workforce development, employment, business development, military installations, tourism, international trade and maritime trade, border relations, redevelopment, economic information monitoring/metrics and strategic planning, that are all based on this integrated vision of the economy with land use planning and a community's overall well-being.

City of San Diego City Planning and Community Investment Staff, recipients of the A PA Daniel Burnham Award for a Comprehensive Plan for their work on the General Plan, which includes the Economic Prosperity Element.

Does your jurisdiction have an Economic Prosperity Element? Has your jurisdiction otherwise acted to integrate economic fundamentals with other areas of your comprehensive plans?

Recession Across the Country: Arlington, VA

2009-12-07T12:11:00.001-08:00

This is the first in a series of blog posts about the impact of the recession in communities across the country. The current economic recession has had a severe impact on the nation as a whole, and every place has been impacted in some way. However, as economic development planners know, there isn't a single national economy, but rather the national economy that is comprised of a variety of regional economies, that drive the country. The nation's regions have been impacted by the recession to differing degrees, and in different ways. If you would like to spotlight your community in this series of blog posts please contact us.

Arlington, Virginia, located just outside the nation's capital, is a small urban county approximately 26 square miles. It is one of the most densely populated counties in the nation, with a population density of 8,140 persons per square. The county's current population, 210,000, represents a 10 percent increase over its 2000 population. Arlington is known nationally for its young, highly educated workforce, in 2007 approximately 68% of Arlington adults age 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or higher and 38% had a graduate or professional degree. Arlington is also considered the premier national model for the successful Transit Oriented Development implementation. Given these strengths, it shouldn't be that surprising that Arlington has fared comparatively well during the current recession and past recessions. The following graphs were provided by Arlington Economic Development Regional Economist Isabelle Xu:

Arlington, VA Past Three Recessions

View more presentations from shanaj82.

In October 2009, Business Week magazine named Arlington as the best place in America to ride out a recession.

Arlington's knowledge-based workforce combined with its integrated urban development are what has given the county its competitive edge during economic downturns, according to an internet post by Arlington Economic Development director Terry Holzheimer:

"A strong federal government presence, a more recent diversification of the economic base, and location near the nation’s capital have been invaluable, however, they account for only part of the reason. The primary factor in our success has been to create an urban environment that is attractive to employers, residents and visitors alike. Placemaking in its broadest context is the key to our success. In our case, placemaking has meant incorporating into our planning processes attention to detail relative to a number of factors: density, product diversification, land use mix, transportation options, and a retail strategy. Each of these has supported our vision of high density, mixed use, transit-oriented urban villages."

What is your take? Is placemaking an integral part of economic resiliency? Or has Arlington's position at the center of a dynamic major metro what has primarily given the county its advantages? As reported in the Washington Post, Arlington is actually second in nation, behind nearby exurban Loudoun County, in the presence of individuals 25-34 with incomes over $100,000.

For more information on Arlington visit:

Arlington Economic Development
Arlington Planning Research and Analysis

Excellence in Economic Development Planning Award

2009-11-24T10:53:00.000-08:00

Deadline: February 12, 2010

We invite you to submit an application for the annual Excellence in Economic Development Planning award from the APA Economic Development Division (EDD). This is a $1,000 award to a community that shows innovation and success with an economic development plan or project.

The formal presentation will be at the annual APA conference in New Orleans, late afternoon Monday, April 12th at the EDD Business Meeting. The Division will also help with preparing a press release for the winning community and for Planning magazine, and will announce the winner in the News & Views Division newsletter that is sent out to some 1,000 organizations throughout North America. If submitting hard copies, please send three copies of everything for distribution to the committee.

Applications can be submitted by e-mail to the Chair of the Award Committee:

Robert M. Lewis, AICP
Development Strategies, Inc.
10 South Broadway, Suite 1500
St. Louis, MO 63102
314-421-2800 ext 18
blewis@development-strategies.com

There is no formal application form. Please, however, follow these guidelines.

Narrative Description of the Plan or Project

Description (up to 250 words) of the plan or project showing that the project fits the following definitions:

Economic Development: The creation of new employment and wealth-generating activities through the mobilization of human, financial, physical, and natural resources.
Economic Development Planning: A series of deliberate activities leading to initiatives that enhance a locality's, state's, or region's economic opportunities and quality of life.

Attachment I: Nominee's Fulfillment of Award Criteria

For each of the following criteria, provide up to a 50 to 100-word description of the project. The entire attachment (all six criteria) should be no more than two pages (500 words).

Originality: Unique concept or appreciable refinement of existing techniques or procedures.
Transferability: Potential application to other areas or projects.
Quality: Excellence of thought, analysis, writing, graphics, and professional character of the presentation.
Implementation & Results: Effectiveness of work proposals that have been carried out or show the promise of being carried out.
Comprehensiveness: Submittal demonstrates a thorough and in-depth approach.
Contribution to Community: Demonstrates application to community needs and desires.

Attachment II (Optional): Supporting Materials

Applicants may provide news clippings, brochures, slides, videos, etc. If items need to be returned, please clearly mark them as such.

For information on past award winners: http://www.planning.org/divisions/economic/awards/

Dr. Homer Hoyt: Planning's Unsung Hero

2009-11-16T07:18:00.000-08:00

Jane Jacobs. Daniel Burnham. Lewis Mumford. James Rouse. While not all planners, these names are among those select few readily recalled by most planners when asked to identify our profession's most important progenitors. Dr. Homer Hoyt is one often overlooked individual whose name should be added to this list.

In celebration of National Community Planning Month in October, Dr. Terry Holzheimer, Director of Arlington Economic Development in Arlington, VA, and former Economic Development Division Chair, made a community presentation about the life and work of Dr. Homer Hoyt. I had the pleasure of attending the lecture, which was also attended by Dr. Hoyt's son, Michael. While Dr. Hoyt was a University of Chicago trained economist, life-long real estate investor and not a planner, he pioneered many important theories and tools that in common use by planners today.

Dr. Terry Holzheimer presenting The Life and Work of Homer Hoyt.

Dr. Hoyt, born in 1895 to a college-educated single mother, grew up in less than secure circumstances in rural and poor areas in the present-day Kansas City region. Although he experienced difficult circumstances in childhood, his mother instilled in him the independence, a strong work ethic and an understanding of the value of education. Dr. Hoyt earned a BA and MA from the University of Kansas at age 18, and four years later completed a law degree at the University of Chicago. In his twenties he worked at for short periods at several firms, and taught law. During the 1920s Dr. Hoyt moved to Chicago to invest in real estate to take advantage of the city's booming real estate market, from this point forward Dr. Hoyt remained an active investor in real estate for the rest of his life.

Dr. Hoyt's personal experience with real estate losses following the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression, raised his interest in how real estate values related to economic cycles. He became a doctoral student in land economics at the University of Chicago, and in his dissertation focused on examining Chicago's real estate values through its past five economic boom and bust cycles. (His dissertation was published in 1933 as One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago). Dr. Hoyt's dissertation research at the University of Chicago served as the catalyst for a lifetime of critical discoveries in planning and real estate economics. From 1934-1940 Dr. Hoyt worked for the Federal Housing Administration, where he developed a methodology to asses which areas of cities were the best for investment by mapping a city's housing stock using various socio-economic indicators (housing age/value, race of tenants, owner occupancy, overcrowding etc.). These exercises led to his development of Sector Theory, sometimes called the Hoyt model, which postulates that urban growth occurs along transportation arteries, and that zones are not rigid in form and can penetrate one another.

All planners are also familiar with another Dr. Hoyt innovation, Economic Base Theory. Once Dr. Hoyt developed a better understanding of how cities grew, he wanted to understand why they grew. He theorized that regional economic growth was dependent upon the regional population's ability to produce more than then can consume, that is the health of a region's export-based industries. Hoyt realized that demand for land (and thus land values), was dependent upon the economic strength and sustainability of a regional economy.

While Dr. Hoyt's early career was spent examining cities in the pre-World War II era, he proved very perceptive about the changes in land values that would occur due to the mass suburbanization that occurred after the War. In the late 1940s Dr. Hoyt became turned his attention to suburbanization and suburban shopping centers, developing a hierarchy of shopping centers that is still used today. He successfully invested in once regionally peripheral lands that became our nation's first suburbs in the post War era. He founded a consulting firm, Homer Hoyt Associates, in 1951 to provide professional research services to real estate investors, at a time when such services were really first emerging. In his suburban shopping center and other post War work, he developed modern real estate market analysis by applying measures of supply and demand to individual sites or markets.

Dr. Hoyt's contributions to planning knowledge form an important basis for much of our economic development planning work today. He had an amazing career that incorporated both work as a real estate consultant and investor and academia. One aspect of his life's work that I find particularly amazing is simply how much legwork he had to put into his getting his data and how he translated his data into practical and important theoretical insights. I certainly take for granted the ease of accessing quantitative, current and historical socio-economic data, the readily available GIS tools planners use to understand our environment. At the time when Dr. Hoyt began his career good quantitative data wasn't just a click away, and he actually pioneered the idea of representing data geographically, with maps! While working on his Ph.D. dissertation he spent hours in the Cook County Assessor's Office pulling data together from records the likes of which we can only imagine. (There was an additional reward for these efforts however, as according to his son Michael, Dr. Hoyt met his wife at the Cook County's Assessor's Office).

Reflecting on Dr. Hoyt's work, my thoughts turn to today's planning innovations, and how planning practitioners are currently contributing to our broader understanding of our field. In recent months I've begun learning about emerging technologies that have the potential to transform planning practice. Perhaps some these tools will help us achieve a new understanding of the 21st century city and its economic base.

How do you see the relationship between emerging technologies, planning practice and planning theory today?

Source: Holzheimer, T. (2009). The Work and Life of Homer Hoyt. Presentation available on the web at: http://www.arlingtonvirginiausa.com/docs/Hoytpresentation.ppt

Further Reading:

Beauregard, R. (2007). More Than Sector Theory: Homer Hoyt's Contributions to Planning Knowledge. Journal of Planning History, 6(3), 248-271.

Homer Hoyt Institute

Strategic Thinking with Maury Seldin, Homer Hoyt Institute blog.

Wikipedia article (We can improve upon this!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Hoyt

Rethinking New York's Empire Zones

2009-11-14T12:57:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, all economic development initiatives are not run like New York State’s Empire Zones program. A 2004 report of The Office of the New York State Comptroller titled The Effectiveness of Empire Zones found that none of the zones investigated conducted an accurate cost-benefit analysis. The comptroller did estimate that in 2004 the Empire Zones program would cost the state $291 million dollars in lost revenue.

Proponents of the program could argue that an annual price tag of $291 million is adequate given the benefits yielded by the program. But the program has failed to deliver on its promise of economic vitality in distressed areas.

The Comptrollers report claims that:

• Less than one third of businesses met or exceeded their projected job creation goals.
• Thirty-two businesses admitted receiving benefits that exceeded the benefits bestowed upon the community by the existence of the business. The surplus is estimated at $112,500 per business.
• Businesses are only required to provide projected job creation numbers, and there is not an effective way in which to collect actual data of created jobs.
• The creation of Empire Zones is an incredibly political process, and thus zones are often created in non-blighted areas as political favors.

Recently there have been changes to the program. In April 2008 the state mandated that businesses receiving benefits must re-register to ensure that all those with a reduced tax burden deserve the lightened load. At a time when New York is facing massive budget cuts, it is important to investigate the effectiveness of the Empire Zones program. It is imperative to assess the costs and the benefits, and to assess how much of a firms locational decision is based upon such tax incentives. After all, if many states around the nation are offering similar economic benefits, which they are, then this undercuts the benefits offered by New York, and may merely amount to millions of dollars in lost tax revenue. Promises of ‘job creation’ and ‘localized economic vitality’ must be critically examined with sound data in order to better gauge the effects of this expensive economic development strategy.

Economic Development Division Graduate Scholarship

2009-11-11T06:32:00.000-08:00

Its that time again!

Economic Development Division Graduate Scholarship
*Deadline:* February 12, 2010

Master's level students from PAB-accredited planning departments<http://www.planningaccreditationboard.org/index.php?id=30>across the U.S. may apply. The $1,000 scholarship is awarded on the basis of a letter of recommendation from a full-time faculty member and an original paper or work having to do with a substantive and relevant topic related to economic development and planning. We prefer an article length or shorter paper submitted (not a thesis, although a shorter paper developed from the thesis is acceptable) of 2,000 to 2,500 words.

The application should be addressed to:

John Provo, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Office of Economic Development (0373)
Outreach and International Affairs
Virginia Tech
702 University City Blvd.
Blacksburg, VA 24061
jprovo@vt.edu

The scholarship will be presented at the APA Conference in New Orleans in April, 2010 and the paper will be published in EDD’s *News & Views*.

The 2009 EDD Scholarship award of $1,000 went to *Lingwen Zheng* for her paper entitled "Trapped in the Race to the Bottom: Who is Using Business Incentives Now?"
This paper appears in the spring 2009 edition of *News & Views*.

Honorable mentions went to Ann Thompson for "Alexandria's Associations: Spontaneous Grouping or Economic Cluster? and Jessica Sheldon for "Going Uptown in Downtown Oakland: Market Rate Housing as an Economic Development Tool."

Previous award winners:
http://www.planning.org/divisions/economic/scholarships/previous.htm

APA EDD Chair Bill Anderson, others on Planning's Past and Future

2009-11-09T08:51:00.000-08:00

Streetsblog San Francisco covered a panel discussion held by the San Francisco Planning Department and the San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association on the political challenges facing planners. EDD's Chair and San Diego Director of City Planning and Community Investment Bill Anderson participated in the discussion, which highlighted the impact of planning's past mistakes on today's planners. Bill was quoted in Streetsblog SF:

"I'd have to say, especially in California, unfortunately, the field has evolved into focusing on preventing bad things from happening instead of making good things happen," said Bill Anderson, San Diego's planning head.

Read the entire article at: Streetsblog SF

California’s Watershed Water Use Initiative

2009-10-28T11:51:00.001-07:00

This week’s blog post topic, exploring the implications of California’s latest land use and resource conservation legislation on development and redevelopment in the state, was submitted by California-based EDD member Jerry A. King. EDD’s newest blogger, Alison Bates, a graduate student at the State University of New York-Albany, provides her take on the issue.

California is not going to wait until it is in the midst of a significant drought to begin drafting policies to address the dwindling supply of water in the American west. California has been diligently working on measures to combat sprawl and incentivize redevelopment through land use initiatives such as SB 375, and more recently, the state has crafted Assembly Bill No. 49, which would require Californians to decrease their water consumption by 20% by 2020. “In just over a decade, it proposes to reduce California's urban water use — residential, commercial and industrial — from an average 192 gallons per person per day to 154 gallons. That would be an annual savings of about 1.7 million acre-feet, equivalent to more than a two-year supply for Los Angeles. (The national urban per-capita use is 101 gallons per day, reflecting the higher average rainfall in many states.)". AB 49 calls for the establishment of an incentivizing pricing structure for agricultural suppliers to ensure that those meeting the newly defined conservation demands are financially rewarded. Addition mandates include a standardized reporting structure, and regular data collection on water use. Also, AB 49 mandates planning of water resources. Chapter 3, Article 1. 10820 (b) states that “every supplier that becomes an agricultural water supplier after December 1, 2012, shall prepare and adopt an agricultural water management plan within one year after the date it has become an agricultural water supplier”. This initiative, which calls for collective public and private participation to mitigate water usage, is the first such legislation in the nation. Decreasing access to water is a reality that many U.S states face, and the debate over whether residents in one region are entitled to the water of another region is likely to become an increasingly contentious issue. States that sit poised to face this challenge in the coming years are well advised to look to California’s forward thinking legislation that mandates water use reporting, and planning. Additional measures to promote smart water use could incentivize water suppliers to supply redevelopment projects rather than to supply sprawling new development. By making sprawl more expensive, we conserve our limited resources, which we must collectively now realize, includes water.

Alison Bates

Fall 2009 News and Views

2009-10-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

The Fall 2009 issue of the EDD newsletter, News and Views, will soon be published. Here's a preview of two fascinating articles EDD members can look forward to reading!

The Legacy of Place and Economic Development

By Christopher Steele and Adam Ploetz, AICP

Once the economic engine of the nation, the Great Lakes region in America’s Midwest has been grappling with successive shifts in the global economy for the past fifty years. Recently, the global recession, particularly the collapse of the US automobile industry, has exposed the naked weaknesses of the Great Lakes’ economy and its relative inability to adapt to the global marketplace. No American region has been as affected by the challenges of globalization; and – perhaps – no region stands to gain as much from structural economic changes. Past economic inertia in the region has been due to continued adherence to the previous era’s economic models, growth patterns and industrial base.

These older legacies of place must be re-cast to support the region’s resurgence. With these new realities in mind, local governments in the region will need to move beyond their past triumphs and find new ways of engaging with and excelling in the new global economy; this article will examine the critical role local governments must play in reinventing the Great Lakes as an economically vibrant location for business and entrepreneurism. We will view the region through the site selection process to help illustrate how communities can proactively attract new activity.

Yikes, There's a Tourist in Town: Guidance for Local Planners

By Michael E. Kelly, MCIP, AICP

Unless directly engaged in making tourism plans or working in a destination community, local planners tend to give little thought to tourism or to tourists in their day-to-day work. However, many communities across the country attract some share of visitors, and planners should be aware of the possible implications and opportunities that may result.

It can be easy to become swept up in the boosterism that surrounds what is often taken for tourism planning, but really is just tourism marketing and promotion. Local governments have a key role to play in tourism planning and development, but it is not attracting tourists to a community. Marketing and promoting tourism are activities best left to political and business leaders.

The true role of local government in tourism planning, as in all development planning work, is to first capture the community vision as it is informed by a comprehensive situational analysis, then attract the investments that will fulfill that vision, and facilitate and control development so that it conforms to the vision and mitigates external costs. In this article, I will look at the relationship of tourism to local government, the roles that community and economic development planners play in this relationship, and some tools used by local governments in implementing tourism development.

EDD members can read these articles in their entirety when the News and Views is published online at:
http://www.planning.org/divisions/economic/newsletter/index.htm

EDD membership is only APA regular members: $25 per division for APA regular members, $10 for APA Student and New Professional members. Non-members of the American Planning Association can purchase an annual economic development division only membership for just $40.

Boston: A Study into the City’s Economic Drivers

2009-10-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

Boston mayor Tom Menino said of the Boston economy: “We’re not a world class city, we’re in a class by ourselves. We have 4 economies that drive Boston. Most cities don’t have four economies, they have one. We have health care, we have academia, financial services, tourism. What other city has 4 different economies that drive it? No other city is like Boston“ . The Mayor makes an accurate point; one is hard-pressed to cite another American city that is a leader in four such lucrative industries.

To better understand the Boston economy, here we will use Using County Business Patterns data to calculate the location quotients (LQ) of the Boston MSA as compared to the nation, using the 3-digit North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) codes. An ‘LQ’ is the measure of relative ‘success’ of an industry, and so an LQ of 1.0 or greater suggests that people from outside of the area are spending dollars in this industry, in Boston. An LQ less than 1.0 suggests that dollars in this industry are leaking out of the Boston area. Our investigation will focus on 5 industries (NAICS codes 523, 611, 622, 541, and 722) that are instrumental to Boston. This analysis will illuminate the unique economic situation of the city of Boston.

523: Securities, commodity contracts, and investments

While this industry lost 16,504 employees, or 20% of its workforce between 2002 and 2007 at the MSA level, this industry is still one of the regions most prominent. In 2007, this industry employed 62,307 people . Wage compensation for this industry had an LQ of 1.66 in 2002, and 1.53 in 2007, meaning that these are very high paying jobs, and thus an attribute to the area. The majority of employees in this industry work in ‘securities brokerage,’ which employs 83.5% of the total employees for industry 523.

Investment banking and securities dealing (NAICS code 523110) accounts for 13% of the industry, and commodity contracts dealing accounts for the remaining 4%. Boston Capital Securities, Kimball and Cross Investment Management, and UBS Financial Services are examples of prominent brokerage firms located within Boston. A 1998 report of the Boston Redevelopment Authority optimistically states that “the securities and brokerage sector of the financial services industry has shown strong and consistent growth over the last three decades, largely due to the growing popularity of mutual funds.

The mutual fund was born in Boston, and today the concentration of securities jobs in Boston is nearly 13 times the national average. Nearly one out of every twelve jobs in the securities industry nationwide is located here”. It is true that the first mutual fund in the United States was issued by the Massachusetts Investment Trust on March, 1924. What is not necessarily accurate however is that this is an enduring industry as it is currently structured. The economic downturn, has greatly affected this industry in Boston, as well as nationally. It will be interesting to track how Boston recovers in this sector as new data becomes available.

611: Education

“Education is a thriving segment of Boston's economy; within the city limits are 10 colleges and universities, 6 technical schools, 4 art and music schools, and 6 junior colleges”. And here we’re not talking about just any universities. The Greater Boston area is home to two Ivy League institutions; Harvard and MIT, as well as the Boston College, Boston University (the largest of these schools), the innovative Northeastern University, Smith, and Tufts. The educational services sector had a 2002 LQ of 2.19 and a 2007 LQ of 1.45. Wages are commensurate with each LQ at 2.13 and 1.43 respectively. Looking at the raw numbers, we see that 337,710 jobs were added within 611 between 2002 and 2007.

High employment in education has benefits beyond providing stable jobs for the local labor force. The Boston MSA, through its many institutions of education, produces a proportionately highly educated population. “Massachusetts has one of the most educated populations in the nation, with about 37% of residents 25 and older holding a Bachelor’s degree or higher”. Just as in industrial areas in our nations recent past, young children grew up with an impression that after the pomp and circumstance quiets that they will go off to work in the factories, in Boston, the expected and encouraged next step is college. However, the focus on private institutions of higher education cause public universities and colleges to suffer. “In part because of an over reliance on the region’s private universities as a source of skilled talent, funding for Massachusetts public higher education system is among the lowest in the nation”.

The concentration of world class educational institutions has been instrumental to Boston becoming a national center for biotechnology, as we will soon see.

622: Hospitals

People will always need healthcare, making hospitals (NAICS code 622), as well as nursing and residential care facilities (NAICS code 623) and ambulatory health care services (NAICS code 621) a reliable asset to the Boston regional economy. “According to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, the combined health care and life sciences industry is one of the metropolitan area’s five leading industries and the only one in which employment levels increased each year from 2001 to 2004”. In 2002, the LQ for hospitals was 1.15, with a wage LQ of .98 and in 2007 the employment LQ was .82 with a wage LQ of .73.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2008, Suffolk County has 111,445 employees within NAICS code 62; health care and social assistance. At the three-digit level, we see that hospitals in Suffolk County employ 75,209 people with 83% of these employees working in general medical and surgical hospitals (6221).
Boston’s health sector is commonly thought of as consisting of three components: “the health care delivery system; the public infrastructure, and the broader life sciences industry”. Accounted for in public infrastructure are the city’s 14 teaching hospitals, which include such leading hospitals as Massachusetts General, Beth Israel, Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s “as well as medical schools and public health departments at Harvard, Tufts, and Boston Universities”. These teaching hospitals add substantially to the local economy. “According to the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals, these teaching hospitals and affiliated medical schools generate $24.3 billion in economic activity and employ more than 110,000 people”.

It is estimated that “one in six jobs in Boston is related to the health sector”. The hospitals in Boston have become an incredible draw for medical R&D and biotechnology firms. Boston’s competitive healthcare advantage, in tandem with its educational concentration, has given rise to an industry that is often cited as the next leading industry in the region; biotechnology.

541: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Biotechnology is slated to become the next economic driver of Boston. As a city that has re-invented itself countless times it is no wonder that Boston is now looking to biotech. The biotech industry can only exist so long as the financial services, educational, and health care industries precede it. These ‘base’ industries, all agglomerating together in space allow for the characteristically innovative field of biotechnology to emerge.

There is no simple 3-digit NAICS code for biotechnology, and so uncovering numbers for this emerging industry requires some sleuthing. Industry 541; professional, scientific, and technical services is close, but this industry involves such things as payroll services, accounting, and advertising services . Further ‘unpacking’ of 541 reveals 541710; Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences, and 541711; research and development in biotechnology. BLS data for 2008 shows that 284,464 people in Massachusetts are employed in 541.

Route 128 in Boston, dubbed ‘the golden semi-circle’ is the hub of biotech location, and thus has been often compared to Silicon Valley for its sprawling dispersion of R&D firms. Although there do exist similarities, as urban economic analyst Anna Lee Saxenian articulates, there exist many differences. The simple reality that Route 128 stretches through many different municipalities makes data collection and thus comparison to the Silicon Valley difficult. Additionally, Route 128 did not arise in the same fashion, as did the Silicon Valley. Route 128 has a long history as an area of trade and production, and so it seems natural that in a changing world this route would adapt accordingly. Silicon Valley seems to have arisen to prominence in the recent past without a preceding function or connection to its immediate surroundings.

Drawing upon Saxenian's explanation of the unique features of Route 128, which surrounds Boston, we turn our focus to the location of Biotechnology firms within the Boston MSA. Within 541, 43% of all employees are in Middlesex County. Suffolk County is home to 20% of total employees. Before investigating further, a likely explanation is that many biotech firms locate in the areas just outside of Boston, including Watertown, and Cambridge (where Cambridge and MIT both reside). Firms are locating around rather than inside Boston due to the high cost of rent within the Boston city limits. Initially, most firms were locating in Cambridge, but many are now moving out of Cambridge into the surrounding suburbs in search of more space at a lower cost . Rents outside of Cambridge average $57 per square foot, while rents outside of Cambridge command $27 per square foot . Also, the lack of available lab space is an issue in Cambridge. “Vacancy rates average 20 percent in the suburbs, compared with 7 percent in Cambridge and 2 percent in Boston”. The 2008 LQ for Middlesex County for 5417 is 3.24, 2.43 for Essex County, and is 1.37 for Suffolk County. For NAICS code 521711, the LQ for Middlesex County is 8.19, is 8.33 for Essex County, and is 4.68 for Suffolk County. These very large LQ’s speak to Boston’s competitive advantage in this industry.

It seems that the biotechnology industry has staying power in the Boston region. This industry is the direct result of the educational and healthcare regional advantages, and it seems highly unlikely that these two parent industries will abandon this new up and coming economic driver. In my recent interview with MIT Business professor Dr. Howard Anderson, I asked him if he thought that the biotech locational advantage of Boston would eventually be undercut by other places in the nation duplicating the research done in Boston. Anderson replied that “unless Harvard, MIT, several of our hospitals, and the Tufts Medical Center pick up and leave, we will always have biotechnology here”. One of the only ways that a high tech industry like biotechnology can succeed is if highly educated people are willing to relocate to biotech centers for employment. Skilled engineers and world class scientists commanding large salaries are not likely to want to live in places themselves, or move their families to places that do not offer a plethora of rich recreational activities. Luckily, Boston is rich in such amenities, which turns our attention to the booming tourism industry of Bean Town.

722: Accommodation

With Boston’s rich history, a thriving tourism economy seems inevitable. People are drawn from all over the nation and the world to walk the Freedom Trail, to bike the Emerald Necklace, to dine in the Italian North End, to shop at Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. “Boston is one of the country's top 10 tourist attractions, focusing on the city's 62 historic sites, its nearly 2,000 restaurants, and its hundreds of hotels. Tourism is a year-round industry in Boston, which hosted 16.3 million visitors in 2004, spending $7.9 billion” There is no shortage in Boston of unique attractions that represent our collective American history. In 2007, we see that the LQ for NIACS 721 is 1.09.

Almost half of the jobs in this industry are located in Suffolk County. This is not surprising as most tourists are going to visit Boston and not the outlying areas with as much attention. Visitors may be interested in visiting Harvard Square in Cambridge (Middlesex County), or the historic cities of Lexington and Concord, but the lion’s share of these jobs related to tourism exist within Suffolk County. There has however been a recent decrease in employment. This is not a surprising finding. Tourism based industries suffer greater when economic times are tough, and also when people are fearful of travel. The effects of September 11th in general, coupled with the fact that the hijacked planes departed from Boston’s airport may have made many travelers weary of flying into Boston. As traveler confidence grows, and the economy continues to recover, we will likely see an increase in the numbers of employees within 712.

NAICS code 711; performance arts and spectator sports was a larger employer in 2008 than 712. Spectator sports is partially explained by the existence of Boston sports teams including the Red Sox, Bruins, the New England Patriots, and the Celtics. The Performing Arts companies in Boston is partially explained by the existence of the Boston Opera House, the Wang Theatre, and Shubert Theatre which are all owned by Citibank.

New hotels are opening in the city , but current projections that account for the recent economic downturn presage a slow recovery for the areas hotel economy. “Boston-area hotels are not expected to have an increase in quarterly Revenue Per Available Room of “RevPAR” until the first quarter of 2010” . Looking only at data from years past may not give as accurate a picture as possible due to the effects of the recent economic downturn. Thus it is important to look to news articles and additional news sources to learn more about where the hotel industry in Boston is now, and is likely going in the future. ““While this may sound like bad news, it is actually far sooner than the national hotel market overall, which is not expected to achieve quarterly RevPAR gains until 2011,” according to the press release from Boston-based PKF” (PKF is a Hospitality Research firm). Further findings show that “In 2009, hotel performance for Boston hotels is expected to finish the year at a 14 percent decline in RevPAR, the second worst all-time since 2001 when the market saw a 19.4 percent dip in RevPAR, according to PKF”. While the hotel industry seems to be in something of a slump now due to the recession, Boston remains a destination for vacationers, business travelers, visiting parents of the areas 260,000 annual college students, and so it seems likely that this industry will increase in employment and prosper.

The Boston economy is in no sense perfect, but overall Boston seems to be doing very well economically. With several flourishing industries, Boston has a regional and indeed national advantage in many key areas. As cities the nation over are looking to ‘eds’ and ‘meds’ to revitalize their economies, Boston already is a world leader in such institutions. The existence of these advantages give rise to a biotech concentration that many are looking to bolster the local economy. Access to capital is prevalent in the city, and so expensive start-ups can find a plethora of potential funding sources. People travel to Boston from all over, and we will likely see the tourism industry in Boston rebound in sounder economic times. The city is supported by its deep history and landmarks, its world-renowned institutions of health and education, and by its seat of state government. None of which is likely to leave in the future. The city will likely change in evolve in time as it always has, and it seems that whatever the tide may bring, the city of Boston sits ready to grow and to change, not only to survive, but to prosper.

Defining Economic Development

2009-09-09T09:36:00.001-07:00

EDD member Pam Mundo of Mundo and Associates, Inc, has asked that our blog pose two timely questions for this week’s post:

What is Economic Development?
What incentives (other than money, refunds or abatements) should economic developers provide to encourage new investment in a community?

Jurisdictions across the country have tried a myriad of different economic development strategies in recent decades, with varying degrees of success. Traditional local economic development strategies, including industrial recruitment, have remained important tools for many states and municipalities. Lingwen Zheng, (Master’s of Regional Planning ’09, Cornell University) authored this year’s winning paper for the Economic Development Division’s scholarship award - “Trapped in the Race to the Bottom: Who is Using Business Incentives Now?” In the paper Zheng argued “these development strategies [business incentives] have become so persuasive that local governments find themselves in competition with each other to offer business incentives for self-defense, which essentially catalyzes an unhealthy ‘race to the bottom' in economic development policy. This can lead to a process of destructive inter-local competition, with one result that quality of life concerns of residents are often overlooked.” Zheng’s paper found that while staff time devoted to business incentive strategies at local governments decreased between 1994-2004, that those local governments still heavily dependent on business incentive strategies “perceive more intense inter-local competition and face a declining local economy and lower tax base.” (APA Economic Development Division members can read the full paper and its many fascinating insights in the Spring 2009 issue of the News and Views, on our division website).

It is my personal view economic development practice has a tendency to be captivated by short-term trends, many of which perhaps do not yield long-term benefits for local economies. I studied the outcomes Arizona’s well-known 1990s cluster policy, in Tucson, Arizona, which I found were much more limited and somewhat different than what had been initially anticipated. In this decade Richard Florida’s creative class theory captured the attention of many policy makers, but it is yet to been seen how the application of his ideas to local policy lead to positive economic development outcomes. One program I’ve been impressed with recently is South Carolina’s Centers of Economic Excellence, which leverages private investment with state matching funds (coming from lottery proceeds) to make targeted investments in facilities and positions for Centers of Economic Excellence at three state universities. These investments are in academic disciplines that are highly focused, have a potential direct impact on state economy through the generation of spinoffs or other methods, and in which the state has the potential to develop a comparative advantage.

Of course, all of these theories and strategies (and many others that I’ve failed to mention here) involve the use of government funds, as incentives, matching funds for various investments, or other government investments to catalyze local economic development.

So what is your experience with economic development? What do you think constitutes “real” economic development? Are business incentives true economic development if they are essentially used to poach businesses from one location in the country to another? How have some of the major economic development trends in recent years been applied in your locality? What incentives outside the use of government funds can encourage local economic development? Please feel free to discuss not only the economic development practices that I’ve mentioned, but any relevant ones with which you are familiar.

The Clarendon Hotel Challenge

2009-08-31T15:11:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a periodic series of blog posts that asks EDD members and our regular blog readers to give their input on a real-world economic development issue.

This week’s economic development challenge involves a small city in Ohio that purchased a historic hotel, the Clarendon Hotel, in its downtown with the hope of finding a private developer to renovate the property as a hotel and restaurant. The city has not been able to find anyone willing to make the upfront investment, and is now considering redeveloping and operating the property itself, until a private buyer can be found, which they believe will take about three years. The city plans to redevelop and operate the Clarendon Hotel through a Community Improvement Corporation (CIC) and a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC).

Do you know of any examples where something like this has been done – where a municipality, through vehicles like CICs and LLCs, has developed and operated a business for a number of years?
Are there any alternative approaches the City could take to redevelop this property that you would recommend?
What organizations and resources might aid the City in fulfilling their desire to redevelop the Clarendon Hotel?

We particularly look forward to hearing from those of you that have experience redeveloping historic properties in small cities across the country!

Announcing the Eco-Industrial Development Guidebook

2009-08-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

The Eco-Industrial Development Guidebook and Case Studies aims to provide an orientation for government officials and managers planning or running industrial parks who are thinking of adapting eco-industrial development strategies to their property and region. It is a guide to the process of EIP development, outlining the elements and resources needed to start a successful modification towards sustainable industrial development. The link provides the full Guidebook and over a dozen case studies from the United States and Canada.

The Guidebook is produced by Peter Lowitt, AICP, of the Devens Enterprise Commission and Andreas Koenig, of Eco-Industry.org with assistance of the Economic Development (ED) and Environment, Natural Resources and Energy (ENRE) Divisions of the American Planning Association. We are pleased to provide this valuable resource and trust this will become an indispensable tool in eco-industrial park development and management.

Access the guidebook (APA or ENRE membership required) at:
http://www.planning.org/divisions/economic/guidebook/

APA & EDA Reauthorization

2009-08-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

As Bill Anderson pointed out in his posting on the future of the U.S. Economic Development Administration, APA has been working with Capitol Hill on the agency's pending reauthorization and is interested in your input. In July, President Obama nominated and the U.S. Senate confirmed a new director for EDA. John Fernandez is the new Assistant Secretary of Commerce. He has a background in local government as the former mayor of Bloomington, Indiana. With the appointment process complete, Congress is poised to begin serious consideration of the EDA reauthorization following the August recess. After meetings with House and Senate staff, we expect to see committee action in September or October and a final bill by the end of the year.

APA has been working with a coalition of organization interested in EDA issues on the reauthorization. Partners include the National Association of Development Organizations and the National Association of Regional Councils. The coalition has discussed a number of ideas for EDA reauthorization with congressional staff, including:

Flexibility in local matching requirements
Linkage to other Obama Administration sustainability initiatives
Increased support for planning
New incentives or "extra credit" for innovative or coordinated planning
Disaster recovery and mitigation activities
Local and regional data issues
Flexibility on data requirements
Changes to state revolving funds
Expediting project approvals
New standards and measurement for 'distressed' communities

The comments on Bill's post have been helpful. I wanted to give everyone a more specific sense of some of the issues under discussion and invite you to give APA your ideas and insights. Feel free to email me directly on this issue (or other policy matters) at jjordan@planning.org but post your comments to keep the discussion going.

We'll be discussing this and other new federal initiatives at the upcoming APA Federal Policy and Program Briefing in Washington October 4 - 6. You can get more information and register online.

Thanks for inviting me to join the discussion!

Jason Jordan

Director of Policy & Government Affairs

American Planning Association

Planners and the Green Economy

2009-08-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

Green economic development is center-stage this afternoon on a White House blog post. The post is promoting the coalition organization, Green the Block, which aims "to educate and mobilize low-income, traditionally under-served communities to ensure they have the resources and platforms needed to access the benefits and opportunities of the growing clean-energy economy." It also mentions that "through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we've already invested more than $60 billion toward the green jobs of tomorrow."

An article in the Winter 2009 EDD News and Views, "Economic Development and the Green Economy" by Isabelle Xu and Shana Johnson noted that while the "green economy" has become a buzz word, an explicit definition of the nature and potential of green industries is only now developing. APA's Green Communities Research Center currently offers links to two articles on planning for green jobs, but clearly our knowledge on planning for green jobs is still in its infancy. A February 2009 Planning magazine article, "Blue Collar, Green Collar" argued that planners should think ahead and preserve some industrial space threatened by redevelopment for future green industries. (EDD membership is required to view the News and Views article, APA membership is required to view the Planning magazine article).

Today, the division wants to hear your thoughts on the future of green jobs and industries.

How should economic development planners prepare our communities for the green economy?

Has your community been impacted by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's funds for green jobs training, home weatherization or other renewable energy projects? Are green jobs in demand in where you live? Would you consider targeting green industries or jobs in your economic development plan?

What New Roles for the Economic Development Agency?

2009-07-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

Hello members of APA’s Economic Development Division (EDD), including the new members of the Resort and Tourism Division who just joined EDD as a Section. This is the first of what we hope is a continual line of discussion, debate, and exchange of ideas for our Division. We realize that our quarterly newsletter, News & Views, while informative, is not an interactive medium for communication. Our members have questions, solutions, and want to talk with each other across the country. As members of EDD, presumably we value the importance of City and Regional Planning’s role in economic development, and vice-versa. This new blog provides a vehicle through which we can learn from one another. Thank you to Shana Johnson for setting this up.

So, let’s start a discussion. APA has asked us a timely question for our inaugural blog. The Economic Development Agency (EDA) is approaching their re-appropriation this coming session. National APA is already meeting with EDA and is an active participant in thinking about EDA’s future role. The questions APA and we have for our members is the following:

What do you think EDA should do in the future as it relates to economic development and planning?
What should APA persuade Congress and the Administration to consider regarding EDA’s function and appropriation? What programs should they continue? What should they modify? What should they introduce and fund?

One thing is clear. Economic development and planning issues around the country have some common themes, but many of the specific problems and opportunities are regional. We look forward to providing APA with our diverse input. Just add your comments and respond to others. We will pass them along to APA.

Finally, APA is already planning for the annual conference next year in New Orleans. Our Division has at least two or three “by-right” sessions, including the new Resort and Tourism section. We will send out a notice soon for session proposals, most likely due later this summer. Please start thinking of good session ideas.

Thank you,

Bill Anderson, FAICP

Chair, EDD

Director, City Planning & Community Investment Department, City of San Diego

Welcome!

2009-06-01T19:41:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the American Planning Association's Economic Development Division (EDD) Blog!

The Economic Development Division provides an opportunity for American Planning Association members to join others who share an interest in and responsibility for matters related to economic development.

Our Mission is to advance the practice and state of the art of economic development by:

Increasing the understanding of economic development as a key element of public policy formulation at all levels of government;
Promoting economic development as a critical element of neighborhood community, regional, and national planning processes;
Disseminating materials and information about current economic development practice and theory to members of the division;
Assisting APA in positively influencing economic development policy; and
Promoting professional communication among members of the division through a variety of member services, including, but not limited to newsletters, web page, conference sessions, workshops, and other publications.

The division aims to accomplish the following goals by establishing a greater online presence through this blog:

Raise the profile of the division
Provide a forum for peer-based dissemination of best practices/knowledge
Facilitate member-to-member interaction

We hope that this blog will contribute to your economic development planning knowledge, and we look forward to hearing from many blog readers, EDD members and non-members alike, in the coming months. EDD officers and invited guests will post updates to this blog at least once a week, so be sure to check back often!

Awards Committee Chair Redevelopment Manager
Economic Development Division City of Hampton
American Planning Association Economic Development Dept.
c/o TischlerBise One Franklin Street, Suite 600
4701 Sangamore Road, Suite S240 Hampton, Virginia 23669
Bethesda, Maryland 20816 800.555.3930
301.320.6900 x15 www.hamptonva.biz
www.tischlerbise.com ajordan@hampton.gov
www.planning.org/divisions/economic
julie@tischlerbise.com