We need a new way of socialising and greening economic development
9 Feb 2010
Newstart, February 2010
Now is the time for a new wave of local economic activism that seeks to nurture and protect the environment and create greater social and economic equity.
To do this, we need to challenge the assumptions that underpin current approaches, including growth and a belief that economic success will inevitably result in positive social return. At the core of this reconfigured economic development must be a greater appreciation of creating ‘resilient places’.
While historically used in the context of natural disasters, resilience and its application to economic planning offers a way forward for local economic development. Like a boxer who can take a punch, a resilient place can ride economic and environmental punches.
Let’s be brutally honest. The practice of local economic development has created some outcomes which have proven brittle and short-lived. Renaissance has been patchy, post-industrial recovery in some locations was only partly achieved, trickle-down of wealth did not reach some people or places, inequality widened and we were working beyond the limits of the environment. This needs to change.
Economic assessments, strategy, policy and delivery have tended to work in isolation from their social and environmental context. Resilience allows us to think about the broader palette of aspects that make a place sturdy. In turn that enables us to assess a local economy’s brittleness, its vulnerability and weak points. This leads us to better policy and action which fully considers a locality’s powers of recovery and understands what can drive it.
Our work on resilience is well under way and is rooted in practice. Following international research work in six locations, we have embarked on an ambitious pilot process in six areas in England, including more than ten local authorities. We also have an ongoing pilot in Melbourne, Australia.
Our research disrupts the key assumption that economic development is mainly about the commercial economy (wealth generators). This is not resilient on its own. Practitioners need to develop ways to harvest commercial success better, and consider how the public economy (taxation spend) and social economy (social enterprise as well as human and social capital) can be equal players in the local economy.
These three elements need to be wedded effectively to each other and reflected in policy. This should be the basis for all local economic assessments and strategies.
Our work also disrupts the orthodoxy that assumes growth is synonymous with economic development. The pursuit of growth has been clunky and unsubtle and in some instances has been environmentally damaging, detached from labour market needs, social context and local identity.
Our resilience work opens the door to an alternative view of economic prosperity that is not at the expense of the environment or community. We need differentiated, smart and bespoke strategies and policy that actively plan for a transition to green, balanced growth, and are capable of managing decline and developing the social economy.
This is work in progress, but we and our pilot areas are at the forefront of socialising and greening economic development and creating resilient places for the future.
Neil McInroy is chief executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies.
Resources:
Toward a new wave of local economic activism: http://snurl.com/u4t27
Delivering economic success – an international perspective on local government as stewards of local economic resilience: http://snurl.com/u4t2b
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