Reimagining Collaboration: The Case of Local and Community Economic Development in the United States

摘要

The globalization of capital and labor presents both challenges and opportunities for public officials and practitioners in the field of local and community economic development. Globalization and suburban sprawl are making place-based development strategies, such as corporate attraction through tax incentives, ineffective in maintaining economies that generate well-paying jobs and tax revenue. We maintain that local policymakers and practitioners are using the effects of globalization and sprawl as opportunities to develop new strategies for administering social services and encouraging local and community economic development. This paper examines the extent to which regional approaches to collaboration are happening in the local and community economic development framework and how networks are being used to that end. As part of this effort we distributed a nationwide survey to over 1,000 economic development professionals in government and the private sector (mainly nonprofits) to measure the breadth and variation in scope and method of regional collaboration. This paper represents an effort to create a foundation for assessing the potential and promises of regional economic development strategies by examining existing academic literature on collaborative public management, public management network theory, and emerging economic development paradigm.