Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook - Flipbook - Page 14
solutions that benefit the entire community. Recent research discussed in the whitepaper The economic gains from equity5 found
that the U.S. economy would grow by $22 trillion over the next 30 years if opportunities were more equitably distributed by race
and ethnicity.
Elected oficials, businesses, government, and the community at large have varied perspectives, and all play a role in creating
the vision.
It is also important to note that economic development is not community development, but the two activities do work
together to create an environment where people and businesses can thrive. Community development is a process for making a
community a better place to live and work, such as investing in parks and public facilities. Economic development is the creation
of wealth in which community benefits are realized. We make this distinction as the terms are sometimes used interchangeably,
but they are not the same thing.
Jurisdictions engage in three approaches to enhance local economic development eforts:
1. Business Retention and Expansion — enhancing existing businesses;
2. Business Attraction and Recruitment — attracting new business; and
3. Business Creation — encouraging the start and growth of new businesses.
While this seems simple, complex strategies, programs, and activities are needed to successfully deliver positive economic
development outcomes that create benefits for the entire community.
Implementing Economic Development: Key Components
The beauty of economic development is that regardless of your community’s economic situation, you can seize the opportunity
to discuss the future and chart a path to get there with a thoughtful economic development strategy. This is done through a
deliberate, inclusive visioning process with residents, community leaders, and businesses that leads to consensus on what they
want for their community in the future. With a clearly articulated vision, local government leaders move on to creating a strategy
with tangible goals and metrics that define success and an implementation plan that delineates a timeline with milestones and
identifies who is responsible for the work. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, record wildfire seasons, and a host of potential other
disasters or disruptions, your strategic goals need to include economic resiliency. Chapter 2 discusses defining your economic
goals before and afer disaster and explains the primary steps of the strategic planning process.
Regardless of your community’s economic situation, you can seize the opportunity to discuss
the future and chart a path to get there with a thoughtful economic development strategy.
To better understand your community’s competitive advantages and disadvantages, several areas must be considered.
Chapters 3–7 in the Playbook present more details on accurately assessing your community and key sector(s) impacting
the economy. The U.S. Department of Commerce provides another excellent resource on strategic planning in its Economic
Development Administration’s process for developing a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS).6 It ofers
helpful information on planning for resiliency, which includes the following:
Measuring the economic resilience of a community or region, including the actions taken to foster resilience, will vary
depending on the assets and vulnerabilities of each region. Two common measures are the degree of regional income
equality (i.e., how evenly income is distributed across a regional population) and the degree of regional economic
diversification (i.e., degree to which economic activity is spread across sectors). Regardless of the specific types of data
collected and measures used, it may be helpful to benchmark data collected against national averages to help identify
trends and better inform the development of key strategies.
5
Buckman, Shelby R., Laura Y. Choi, Mary C. Daly¸ and Lily M. Seitelman. 2021. “The economic gains from equity.” BPEA Conference Draf,
https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/the-economic-gains-from-equity/ Fall 2021.
6
https://eda.gov/ceds/content/economic-resilience.htm
6
CALED | Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook
