Written by authors with years of academic, regional, and city planning experience, the classic Planning Local Economic Development has laid the foundation for practitioners and academics working in planning and policy development for generations. With deeper coverage of sustainability and resiliency, the new Sixth Edition explores the theories of local economic development while addressing the issues and opportunities faced by cities, towns, and local entities in crafting their economic destinies within the global economy. Nancey Green Leigh and Edward J. Blakely provide a thoroughly up-to-date exploration of planning processes, analytical techniques and data, and locality, business, and human resource development, as well as advanced technology and sustainable economic development strategies.

Regional economic development has attracted the interest of economists, geographers, planners and regional scientists for a long time. And, of course, it is a field that has developed a large practitioner cohort in government and business agencies from the national down to the state and local levels. In planning for cities and regions, both large and small, economic development issues now tend to be integrated into strategic planning processes. For at least the last 50 years, scholars from various disciplines have theorised about the nature of regional economic development, developing a range of models seeking to explain the process of regional economic development, and why it is that regions vary so much in their economic structure and performance and how these aspects of a region can change dramatically over time. Regional scientists in particular have developed a comprehensive tool-kit of methodologies to measure and monitor regional economic characteristics such as industry sectors, employment, income, value of production, investment, and the like, using both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, and focusing on both static and dynamic analysis. The 'father of regional science', Walter lsard, was the first to put together a comprehensive volume on techniques of regional analysis (Isard 1960), and since then a huge literature has emerged, including the many titles in the series published by Springer in which this book is published.

Exploring the theories of local economic development that are relevant to dilemmas facing communities today, this third edition expands on issues such as the planning process, analytical techniques and high-technology strategies.

This textbook looks at economic development at the local, community or regional scale. It provides students with a comprehensive introduction to contemporary thinking about locally-based economic development, how growth can be planned and how that development can be realized. Globalization, Planning and Local Economic Development: • Provides students with a thorough understanding of current debates around local and regional development and how that body of work can assist them in helping communities grow; • Equips students with a ‘toolkit’ of strategies that enable them to both plan for development and deliver that development through their professional lives; • Offers a roadmap for economic development that helps students make sense of place-based development by providing a ‘meta narrative’ of how regions grow and how those processes can be enhanced. This integrating perspective will be organized around the concept of competitiveness and how that concept can be understood and operationalized in various ways; • Introduces students to a range of techniques essential to success in economic development planning. In addition to a wealth of case studies and pedagogical features in the book, this text is also complemented by online resources. In offering a full toolkit of economic development knowledge, techniques and strategies, this text will thoroughly prepare students for a career in urban planning, transport planning, human geography, applied economic analysis, geographic information systems, or work as an economic development practitioner.

This book offers insights into the process and the practice of local economic development. Bridging the gap between theory and practice it demonstrates the relevance of theory to inform local strategic planning in the context of widespread disparities in regional economic performance. The book summarizes the core theories of economic development, applies each of these to professional practice, and provides detailed commentary on them. This updated second edition includes more recent contributions - regional innovation, agglomeration and dynamic theories – and presents the major ideas that inform economic development strategic planning, particularly in the United States and Canada. The text offers theoretical insights that help explain why some regions thrive while others languish and why metropolitan economies often rise and fall over time. Without theory, economic developers can only do what is politically feasible. This text, however, provides them with a logical tool for thinking about development and establishing an independent basis from which to build the local consensus needed for evidence-based action undertaken in the public interest. Offering valuable perspectives on both the process and the practice of local and regional economic development, this book will be useful for both current and future economic developers to think more profoundly and confidently about their local economy.

Comprehensive treatment of local economic development. Covers theory (classic and modern); tools (financing, tax policy, nonfinancial assistance); business attraction and retention; business creation (tools and current issues); the influence of high technology and education; and how to understand and evaluate the development readiness of each local environment. Detailed case studies highlight successful programs and also describe in detail the specific problems, challenges, and local realities that every development professional faces. Presents business-friendly innovations such as infrastructure improvements, site development, and training assistance. What is the role of government? What are the best targets for development? What is the importance of innovation? This book clarifies why each jurisdiction adopted the strategies it did and it presents the consequences of those strategies. Glossary and select bibliography.

Democratic Economic Planning presents a concrete proposal for how to organize, carry out, and integrate comprehensive annual economic planning, investment planning, and long-run development planning so as to maximize popular participation, distribute the burdens and benefits of economic activity fairly, achieve environmental sustainability, and use scarce productive resources efficiently. The participatory planning procedures proposed provide workers in self-managed councils and consumers in neighbourhood councils with autonomy over their own activities while ensuring that they use scarce productive resources in socially responsible ways without subjecting them to competitive market forces. Certain mathematical and economic skills are required to fully understand and evaluate the planning procedures discussed and evaluated in technical sections in a number of chapters. These sections are necessary to advance the theory of democratic planning, and should be of primary interest to readers who have those skills. However, the book is written so that the main argument can be followed without fully digesting the more technical sections. Democratic Economic Planning is written for dreamers who are disenamored with the economics of competition and greed want to know how a system of equitable cooperation can be organized; and also for sceptics who demand "hard proof" that an economy without markets and private enterprise is possible.