In Future Ready communities, economic development is an everyone task
This article is a selection from a chapter I wrote for the new Guide to Planning in Ohio. It was a nice opportunity to explain how economic development works most effectively to citizen planners (the book is used by professionals, and also by planning commission members and board of zoning appeals members and the like), and I think it does a good job of bridging that common gap. You can get the Guide at ohioplanning.org .
This article also ran at my Future Ready Here newsletter, which focuses on understanding how our communities, our organizations and our own mindsets can best change to capitalize on the whirlwind of new opportunities in front of us. You can get that newsletter for 25% off -- and a free trial week -- right here:
Many professional planners and citizen planners find themselves sticking a toe (or a leg) in economic development at some point in their lives. And for some, economic development can become a primary component of their work, as when economic development responsibilities are folded into a community development or planning and zoning department, or vice-versa. Planners often struggle with economic development, however, because the purpose of economic development can unintentionally run at cross-purposes to conventional planning responsibilities. To navigate these two sets of important and sometimes conflicting responsibilities, every planner should understand the basics of economic development, if only to understand where the economic developers are coming from.
Who are economic developers?
An economic developer is typically responsible for attracting and keeping businesses in your community. Economic developers can work for the local government, or for a local or regional nonprofit or “public-private”organization, or for a multi-county regional agency (that may or may not be specifically tied to local governments), or the State of Ohio.
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In Ohio at this time, state-level economic developers (JobsOhio) typically work more or less closely with regional economic development agencies, such as REDI Cincinnati in southwestern Ohio, TeamNEO in the Greater Cleveland area, and One Columbus in Central Ohio. The state and regional partners mostly collaborate on big business attraction projects (more on this in the next section). There are also regional agencies in many rural areas, plus county economic developers, chamber of commerce economic developers and economic developers who work for local governments. Depending on your role, you might deal with many of these levels, or none of them.
In the first paragraph I said that economic developers are typically responsible for attracting new businesses and for keeping existing businesses in a community. At the state and regional level, that typically means a lot of data analysis, technical incentive packaging and networking/sales. At the local level, it usually involves administering local incentives, giving businesses advice on navigating permitting and grant application processes, and general networking with the business community.
It’s important for planners to notice something here. Economic developers are responsible for getting and keeping businesses, and many will interpret that as being responsible for getting as many businesses to come and stay as they can. Economic developers often get evaluated in terms of the number of new jobs attracted or retained, the number of new businesses attracted or retained, the number of contacts they have with businesses, the amount of grants or incentives they help make happen, etc. This is the case for both public sector economic developers and others.
As a result, the economic developer’s success is measured based on whether or not they land or keep the business, not necessarily on whether the business itself meets the city’s planning and zoning objectives. As a result, your planning and zoning police power responsibilities, and their responsibility to facilitate economic growth, can lead to conflict. It’s important to keep this in mind when dealing with economic development staff — they’re not necessarily trying to be problematic, but their most fundamental purpose is in many ways the opposite of what conventional planning and zoning professionals are expected to do. That’s a blanket statement, of course, and doesn’t fit every situation. But being aware of that can make it easier understand what’s going on when economic developers do not see eye to eye with planners.
Planners and the future of economic development
As noted at the beginning of this section, economic developers and planners have different responsibilities and different motivations when it comes to their role in supporting their communities. Economic developers are typically responsible for enabling an economic activity to happen, while a planner’s responsibility is often to protect the community from undesirable side effects of an economic activity. This means that the economic developer and the planner can find themselves in conflict, even if they work for the same department. Being transparent about differing motivations and responsibilities is essential to maintaining functional working relationships.
The economic development profession is also changing rapidly, which provides some interesting opportunities for planners to bridge that gap. Economic developers in the 1950s and 1960s worked almost exclusively on business attraction, but today’s economic developers may be as likely, on the whole, to work with a small local business or a college as with a site selector (a company that represents a business shopping for a new location). While some economic developers may subscribe to a “shoot what flies and claim what falls” mentality, most today are relatively conscious about protecting the well-being of the community — many give preference to higher paying jobs, employing disadvantaged residents, addressing environmental needs and other factors that reflect priorities other than increasing the number of jobs and growing the tax base. This trend may be in part due to the fact that an increasing number of trained planners have moved into economic development positions, bringing a more holistic perspective to the role of economy in a community.