Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook - Flipbook - Page 31
Infrastructure Systems
and Improvements for
Resilient Communities
Ch.3
To plan and strategize for your community, it is important to understand your
community’s infrastructure needs. This chapter examines the connection
between economic development and infrastructure, ongoing potential
deficiencies, and needed improvements.
The Connection Between Infrastructure and
Economic Development
Economic development as practiced by cities and counties involves hiring
and assigning staf to engage in business attraction, expansion and retention
activities, and entrepreneurship support. To plan and implement various
economic development initiatives, local governments also fund regional
agencies or hire private consultants. Some jurisdictions are focused on
helping their business community secure loans and ease local regulations that
may inhibit business activity; others focus on branding, tourism, and creating
attractive destinations. A few are actively engaged in recruiting new business
and developer investment, and these eforts ofen focus on commercial and
industrial uses that generate valuable tax revenue, as well as other economic
impacts through their multipliers.
The various economic development approaches used by communities for
decades primarily focused on collaborating with the business sector to
expand the job base and local government fiscal resources. Expanding the
job base also requires the delivery of goods via various transportation modes,
an adequate water supply, wastewater treatment, electrical power, and other
business infrastructure services.
In some cases, a community’s efort to expand its business base can
become disconnected from the important social infrastructure needed by
area residents. This social infrastructure is a core foundation for economic
development and includes the need to:
• Accompany infrastructure investments with changes in land use
regulations to ensure that mixed-use development with abundant
housing can be developed in close proximity to transportation
facilities;
• Pursue federal and state funding to expand transportation service
access for all residents, which will improve mobility of and access to
labor markets;
• Develop new housing or mixed-use facilities on vacant and
underutilized commercial sites or on built sites where land can be
assembled and redeveloped. Adding new housing units improves the
societal infrastructure and reduces the number of people who may
move away due to a lack of housing access;
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