Appendix
Mid Twentieth Century Structural Landscape
Introduction
Behavioralism rebelled against structures and institutions, leaving a vacuum in its wake, much to our present day loss. Policy-based studies shifted our attention from professions into discrete silo-like sets of programs that seem to always spout from the federal font. In this section structures (principally EDOs) and professions are examined to (1) integrate them with our Chapter One model, (2) while constructing a mid-twentieth century overview of what had transpired in our history. Onionization and Siloization, our conceptual refugees from Chapter One, return to our center stage. Onionization mostly concerns structures and Siloization (while also structural) assumes a strong professional, programmatic, expertise-driven motif. By mid-century, both are evident and on the verge of seriously important developments.
Siloization cuts vertically through our policy and professional landscape. It stresses functions, goals, programs and the skills and expertise necessary to make them work. But most of all Siloization stresses process and professional autonomy. Many times such autonomy takes the shape of a structure, an EDO, but it also is commonly found within an EDO in the confusing, usually ignored, welter of offices, divisions, and individual job descriptions as well as the mélange of occupations, skills/training/knowledge and career experiences that exist within an EDO. Onionization, on the other hand, cuts horizontally through time. Mostly it concerns structures, like EDOs, but contemporary judicial interpretations of old constitutional statutes can fit into the rubric as well, as can forms of government.
Jurisdictional policy system landscapes include a variety of structures, EDOs; some are central to the needs of the day—others on the outskirts “do their own thing”, almost unnoticed. Onionization includes the spectrum of EDOs that have survived to that point. Older, less prioritized, EDOs, are testimony to inertia and endurance, but mostly to the continuity of chronic tasks that never subside, and to the professions and constituencies that reside within them. In this section, I shall introduce what has become a foremost characteristic of economic development as a policy area and profession: spinning off of EDOs into a critically-related, but nevertheless separate policy area—and in so doing becoming figuratively and literally apart from economic development, yet remaining central to economic development purposes. These structures in other “policy areas” remain EDOs, forming an onion ring, one of many, in the horizontal landscape that is a slice of onion. Be patient; this will hopefully be clear.
Finally, EDOs are like buildings on a city block. Houses house family members, temporary visitors, and unwelcome guests; they coexist sometimes tenuously, sometimes comradely, and they sleep in different rooms (at least they should). These are the individual bureaucratic elements within an EDO. Typically, these family members, visitors and guests are like occupations and professions that come together to achieve the EDO’s purposes. They may work in different programs and offices to accomplish different strategies, or overlap program and strategies (legal, administrative, financial). But they are all in the household, and hopefully some measure of peace and purpose is forged by the Matriarchs and Patriarchs (leadership). This is how multifunctional EDOs can be “siloized”.
Specialized (single-purposed) EDOs are a concrete example of Siloization. They do their thing, usually enjoy funding external to the jurisdictional policy system, and develop intense programmatic expertise without which their programs would undoubtedly fail. To protect their professions, programs, and funding sources, as well as to expand and perfect their expertise, these specialized EDOs often establish professional associations at state and national levels. Over time these vertical networks harden into a formal or informal silo—to the detriment of the jurisdictional policy system.
So EDOs, the primary unit of our jurisdictional policy system, became onionized and siloized—this is evident by the 1950’s. By that time a variety of EDOs operating: chambers, of course, but also port authorities, downtown//CBD entities, neighborhood CDAs, state and local government “departments/offices”, housing/redevelopment authorities, federal specialized agencies, and a variety of “advisory” boards, independent commissions, and service districts, and metro planning/development agencies. The newly emerging avalanche of suburban jurisdictional policy systems added an informal private/public nexus with economic development implemented by other professions (planners and public works) to further complicate our jurisdictional landscapes. Professional associations have already sprung up—and will explode over the next several decades.
Late 50’s & 1960’s Structural Landscape
In 1957-1959 the Committee for Economic Development conducted “the first comprehensive survey undertaken of the wide variety of area development programs both public and private, operating in the United States”. Its formal report of that survey, “Developing the ‘Little’ Economies” does as it was hoped, “shed light on the economic problems of localities and regions” and attempts made at that level to “promote economic growth and redevelopment”.[1] The Committee obtained sub-state-inventory and “mailing lists” from many professional associations, state planning and development agencies, railroads, and electric companies, Port of New York Authority and American Association of Port Authorities. Considerable material and technical assistance was provided by the Office of Area Development of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
These lists suggested at “at least” 14,000 EDOs existed in 1957-1958. Sixteen EDO-types responded to their survey; they employed over 10,000. The EDOs that responded to an expenditure survey reported spending $220 million in 1957—a number that had nearly quadrupled since 1945. Sadly, there were a number of surveys conducted, and the report tends to collapse them into a rather tenuous whole, so it was not at all clear what the response rates were to individual surveys. On the other hand, the Committee validated the existence of the 14,000 EDOs—although, and this is important, the Report stressed programs, not legal structures, raising the likelihood that a “master EDO”, such as a chamber, could spin off subsidiaries underneath the chamber’s overall umbrella for specific programs. Corporations and business firms involved in economic development are included, some of which are less, rather than more, relevant to our history (trucking, telephone companies, water and air carriers). Banks, Utilities and Railroads are serious players in local economic development through 1960. Still, removing private firms from the overall total, a rather shocking 71% of the EDOs were private.
By today’s standards the Report’s methodology and level of detail limit one’s ability to answer important questions, leaving me to offer hopefully insightful guesses rather than firm observations as to what structurally was going on in the decades following the mid-twentieth century. On the whole, it must be admitted, the Report confirms rather than challenges, the course of our history and offers a revealing snapshot taken from the national level on the structural sub-state wake of our profession’s evolution to that point. To help in the interpretation (and confirmation) of “Little Economies” we are also fortunate to have two additional snapshots taken later.
The first, “Area Development Organizations by Conway, Jr. (1966) and the second, Reinshuttle’s “Economic Development: a Survey of State Activities” by the Council of State Governments (1983).[2] Conway’s inventory, based on different criteria, was shaped by his firm’s insight, experience, observation, and “opinion” as to what defined “economic development”. A practitioner (site selector, principally), Conway offers balance to “Little Economies” Policy World perspective. Conway offers additional insight as to how the Sixties may have shaped EDO formation. The Council of State Government Report is the first systematic detail of post-mid-century state-level economic development structures that I uncovered.
EDO-Types and Strategies
There is a wealth of information included in “Little Economies” and the interested reader should expand upon our general overview. Numerically, chambers (nearly 5,000) dominate private EDOs and “planning/zoning boards” saturate the public side (over 3,100). Interestingly, they report 212 “university bureaus of business research, etc” “that have worked in economic development”. Tourism Promotion Agencies (“area, state, and regional”) are reported as private EDOs; there are 227 cited, but it is likely the vast majority tourism programs operated directly from chambers. The fact that planning and zoning agencies are three out of four public EDOs might raise one’s eyebrow. Planning agencies and planning in these years certainly overlapped with economic development—but they are two different policy areas. A planning/zoning agency is not a pure EDO. Removing planning/zoning agencies reduces public EDOs to only 10% of the 10,000 plus entities in the Report. The Report’s first lesson is the American sub-state economic development policy system through 1960, at least was crushingly dominated by private actors.
“Promotion” was the chief strategy (23% of total expenditures), but “real estate acquisition and improvement”, “plant financing”, non-bankable loans to industry” totaled over 41% of reported expenditures. Tourism Promotion was 18%. The Report offers an interesting caveat to “promotion as the dominant activity” observing that “Part of the heavy outlays for space advertising are imposed on some development officials, particularly of publically-financed organizations, by their legislatures … who earmark for specific activities part of the total funds appropriated”.[3] Otherwise, planning/zoning entities accounted for 17% of all EDO expenditures.[4] “Industrial development”, loosely defined, was considered the primary objective of most EDOs (and 59% of total expenditures)—with attraction, as opposed to business retention, as the most important component. In regards to business retention, “assisting existing industry to expand”, they found “few groups gave evidence of comprehensive plans or programs to achieve this end”—an exception being the Chamber of Worcester MA “which had a team of four management consultants … to provide specialized management assistance in production, marketing, foreign trade, and transportation”.[5]
Little Economies reports 54 state-level “planning and development” agencies (there were forty-eight states at the time) and four “industrial financing authorities”, i.e. IDB-relevant EDOs. The CED supports our observation the prime factor that triggered state-level EDOs formation was the 1943 federal National Planning Board’s shutdown of its state agency network. Afterward, “Most states turned their emphasis from planning to development … industrial development rather than transportation or agricultural development … The new type of state agency usually had divisions for research, planning, and development”. CED claims to have played a role in forming several state EDOs (Wisconsin, Louisiana), and believes CED’s “early field efforts stimulated many states to create official agencies to concentrate on postwar planning and development”.[6] There were 54 private state manufacturing associations, 35 state chambers of commerce.
Apart from planning EDOs, public economic development grew, albeit slowly in the postwar era; most EDOs remained private in 1960. Little Economies found only 299 municipal and county “development” agencies, 141 port authorities, and 312 local redevelopment and renewal agencies—by 1958. On the other hand, aside from 5,000 chambers, Little Economies uncovered more than 3,500 “local industrial groups”, “area development associations”, “state and local development councils”, “regional development groups” and “community development corporations” (which have nothing to do with our “community development” approach), also 144 “planned industrial parks”—all of which were private EDOs[7]. These non-governmental/non-chamber, lightly-staffed and funded entities (no specific examples were provided) seemed to have defied the Little Economies classification scheme. The operative word, “development”, not planning, describes EDOs that tackled some form of “industrial development”, sharing the general tendency toward promotion and attraction. Others of these groups likely include some of CED’s local network of business executives. The “great majority” of area development associations “were located east of the Mississippi, the Southeast … being the largest”. Nearly 75% had been organized since 1950.[8] The 13 “Maine-New England models” Development Credit Corporations (DCC) were also considered private, not state EDOs—although legislatively created DCCs did function essentially as private EDOs.
Community Development Corporations
Perhaps the most interesting, in my view the most important of the private mélange uncovered by Little Economies was the “community development corporations”. Almost 2,000 in number, about 90% of which responded to CED surveys, these EDO appear to be meaningful, active EDO’s in sub-state economic development. They might be generically labeled nonprofits, but my research suggests that would be misleading. Conway labels these EDOs as “privately supported local industrial development corporations”—which corresponds closely to the description provided in Little Economies. Conway also lists about 2,000 in 1964—“with the majority in small cities and rural communities”. He asserts the majority were created “to complement local chambers of commerce or other local development units. Usually the same people are involved, and there is an interlocking directorate … The local IDC is established to provide a suitable mechanism for engaging in business activities which would be outside the scope of a charter of a chamber”.
He cites as a typical example the Greater Lawrence (MA) Business Development Corporation[9]. Little Economies offer the Pittsburgh Regional Industrial Development Corporation and the Concord, New Hampshire Regional Development Corporation. I would also volunteer the Columbus Mississippi EDO that launched BAWI would fit into this category, as would institutions found in “cotton mill towns”. So would the long-lived (1916) St Louis Industrial Foundation. In any case, Little Economies asserts “community development corporations are not new. They have been used in considerable number at the local level at least since the early 1900’s”. CED admits that the number of these entities is likely to be understated in its report and that new corporations are a constant feature of local economic development[10].
On the Threshold of a New Era
Whatever else these EDOs might be, they confirm the crushing dominance of business (and chambers) in the pre-Great Society jurisdictional economic development policy system. The “privately-supported industrial/community development EDO also hints at a major feature of American sub-state economic development—that small city/town/ rural county economic development was alive and well-developed. Sub-state economic development is not limited to Big Cities. If correct, it suggests that in terms of structures, small jurisdiction economic development mirrored Big Cities albeit in an informal manner necessitated by its smaller scale. The range of strategies and activities cited in Little Economies for these EDOs also corresponds closely to that found in the Big Cities. Local governments provided funding to these entities, and as such could serve, to a degree, as a hybrid private/public EDO. Their existence is vivid testimony to the strength of state constitutional gift and loan clauses—and to the private sectors’ willingness to provide the resources to fund and staff sub-state economic development.
That this essentially private sub-state economic development system lasted well into the 1960’s may come as a surprise to some. The rise of Big City public housing, slum clearance, and in the 1950’s CBD-urban renewal is the exception to the system that existed at the time Lyndon Johnson launched the Great Society. Public sub-state economic development, found in the first state-level EDOs and quasi-public redevelopment agencies, were, by 1960 likely to be less than a decade (or two for housing redevelopment agencies) old—and not especially numerous. Big Cities, and larger small cities with immigrant population inflows, had a more substantial public presence through these types of EDOs, but smaller cities and town, less impacted by past immigrant inflows, could maintain a predominately private policy system. For the most part, counties were just entering into economic development.
City governments lacked primary multi-function EDOs, preferring instead to scatter offices and individuals throughout their bureaucracies—planning and public works being the most used. The rise of the CBD-urban renewal agency, and urban renewal, would, I will shortly argue, a post-1960 phenomenon, prompt the development of “departments” within the mayoral/city manager-dominated bureaucracy. Economic development was on the threshold of change by the middle-sixties, but it would take the Great Society, and the events that followed, to light the fire under the old system and bring about the new one.
When the time came (usually in the form of initial legislation followed by periodic reorganizations spread over a number of years, starting in the 1950’s and continuing for the next twenty years), the public sector would either “tap into” or replace the existing network of Little Economies mélange of private “community development, industrial development corporations”. Motivated by path-breaking state legislation, local private industrial development corporations would either restructure to take advantage of the state legislation—or not. The new network that emerged, while now “quasi-public”, subject to public strictures, process, and transparency—and laced with public funds—remained hybrid with considerable private influence retained in governance. But alas, we get ahead of ourselves.
The American Industrial Development Association
The roots of the American Industrial Development Association (later AEDC) clearly reflected the decentralized, company-focused cost reduction, Main Street chamber-led approach to economic development. AIDC until 1955 had formally or informally restricted its membership to 125 and was deeply tied at the hip to chambers as their principal constituency. Indeed, in several ways the AIDC was a subsidiary of the U.S. Chamber. Upon its independence, AIDC quickly displayed a concern for the professional competence and program effectiveness of its members. Its activities were focused in networking, training and education/certification. To these ends the AEDC had formed a partnership with the University of Oklahoma (the Industrial Development Institute) to create the Industrial Development Institute (1962). This initiative first “began with the Southern Industrial Development Council’s program of exploring training courses for economic development practitioners” as early as the 1940’s.[11]
The relationship of the AIDC with the Southern Industrial Development Council (which today is the Southern Economic Development Council[12]) was very close. Geographically, AIDC’s appeal after the middle 1950’s was disproportionately small town, Third Tier, rural (i.e. the Hinterland), and in later years suburban. To make a very simple distinction, large urban centers tended to support Progressive-Business reformers and Third Tier and small cities (particularly those off the immigrant trail) tended toward small “p” progressive (Main Street and populist). There is little reason to wonder why this distinction existed; the two geographies were not confronting the same set of problems, and did not have identical demographics and political cultures as a consequence. This is particularly true of southern cities which were smaller, off the immigrant trail, desperately poor, and plagued with the obsession of maintaining a culture and way of life which was both obsolete and immoral.
AIDC training approaches were based upon programs, strategies, and tools long closely connected with our Anti-Federal business-oriented, decentralized, micro economic cost reduction approach[13]. Attraction and Recruitment was arguably (at that time) the core strategy. In 1966, the AIDC began publishing its AIDC Journal and its membership reached 1000.[14] This was an 800% increase from 1954. As mentioned earlier, all this is in rather stark contrast to NAHRO, which at this time served as the principal (APA secondary) association for the big city redevelopment agencies.
After 1954, one thing AEDC was not was big city based or focused. This is despite the obvious counter argument that AEDC in 1962 moved its HQ from Newark Delaware to Boston Massachusetts (and from there to Kansas City, and Chicago-Schiller Park). The AIDC was not associated with the early 20th century planning-economic development approach and urban renewal was never a major priority. Given its attraction/recruitment strategy focus, the big city planners and developers saw little in AIDC that attracted them. To this we should add that attraction and recruitment to the big city folk was more like poaching and systematic stealing. From the AIDC perspective, the larger cities might have had bulls eyes painted on their welcome signs, as that is precisely from where firms and companies were to be relocated.
AEDC during this period also was active–but in a substantially different fashion. In 1964, with headquarters in Boston, the first class of the Industrial Development Institute (detailed earlier) graduated nineteen economic developers. in 1966 the first issue of its journal, the AIDC was published and membership exceeded 1000. In 1967 the first accredited “Basic Industrial Development” course was held at Texas A&M and in 1968 three such courses (intended for American Indians) were held at Arizona State University. In that year, the first survey of member activities and salaries was released (The Industrial Development Practitioner; Profile and Study). AIDC’s crowning achievement in this period, however, was its 1971 establishment of the profession’s first certification program, its first certified developer exam from which 58 developers were certified. In 1973, the headquarters moved to Kansas City.[15]
By the early 1970’s therefore, economic development has developed two separate (efforts to link the two associations previous to CUED’s formation were unsuccessful) professional organizations. And AIDC and CUED were not only separate, they were quite different in their membership, their ongoing functions and priorities, and in their core mission as a professional association. AEDC continued its inward focus on networking and developing the skills of its members in the practice of their profession, its more open enrollment made it probably eight times larger than CUED. Its publication tied its membership to economic development and its development of a curriculum for a basic introductory course in economic development, followed by a professional certification program meant that it had developed a body of knowledge reflective of its approach to economic development–an approach we have consistently described as Privatist-decentralized, and anti-federalist.
So, in wrapping up we argue that during the early 1960’s the practice of economic development, which had never been unified or cohesive since its inception, was informally drifting, in an unplanned and somewhat unconscious manner, into two quite distinctive approaches, paths or wings. As we moved through the fifties and into the sixties, the needs of each set of geographies continued to diverge radically, and we suspect, but as usual cannot prove, the professional backgrounds, past experiences and quite probably desired goals and future community visions increasingly hardened into more conscious stark polar opposites. Each wing or stream of economic development, at least professionally, had less and less in common, were reacting to quite different sets of problems, had evolved distinctive goals, tools, and programs, and came from quite different professional (and personal-career) backgrounds. The streams were each linked to their own network of professional associations and the streams and their professional associations were based on an almost incompatible world-view drawn from quite radically different political cultures.
This chapter marks the end of the Part II, the Transition Years. And what a transition it has been. American ED is not what it was in 1929. Much water has passed over the proverbial dam. Looking at the landscape in 1961, the observer at the time had little sense of what lay ahead. By the end of that decade “things” had really changed—and few had a clue why. So what happened during the Transition Years?
The 800lb gorilla was the federal government had intruded into state and sub-state affairs—economic development was profoundly affected. The most impactful change was noticed at the time, but its long-term implications put to the side in order to acquire or preserve advantages derived from federal policy. Regional change, almost without question, had been set in motion by FDR’s Second Reconstruction and War Production and Industrial Decentralization created new jurisdictional economic bases almost from scratch. Those policies unleashed huge population shifts between and within regions.
Despite the end of a two/three generational long hyper-immigration, population migration was on steroids during the Transition Years. The shift of so many overwhelmed the mature and tired western city-building policy systems and installed a new younger vibrant growth-oriented policy system. The South for the first time was seriously fueling its own urbanization, and new modern jurisdictional economic bases. These changes sharpen the South’s divided mind”, creating an ever-growing schism that, in its good time, would be labeled ‘the New South”. The South was the most discombobulated region by the end of the Transition Years—and economic development was a central policy area in its evolution. And the Big City hegemony was still in change, worried, unsure of the shifting sands of its own evolution.
Part of its confusion lay on the shoulders of the federal government. The impact of war production, and the permanent war that followed WWII’s end, set in motion entirely new industries and sectors in different locations—suburbs and other regions. Population migration flowed into the Big Cities, but they lost middle class to the rapidly growing suburbs. The class structure of Bid City politics and policy-making was shifting in a direction away from chamber-style ED toward community development. During these years suburbs acquired the critical mass necessary to form autonomous and capable policy systems.
To counter this decentralization Big Cities embraced federal Depression-programs that created jobs, but also tore up obsolete housing and neighborhoods, now called slums with blight. Just in time for the new migrants from the South to pour in. Public housing, war production housing and slum removal continued tearing up of neighborhoods for over a decade. And then the condition of the CBD attracted new players, the local business and real estate community into the fray to rebuild the CBD and nearby neighborhoods. By the time these new players had accessed the federal trough, a new federal program—interstate highways—provided funds for a really serious dig through city neighborhoods in an effort to connect the CBD and the Big City to its sprawling, but hopefully manageable hinterland.
Lost in this shuffle, however, was the real threat behind future Big City decline? It had no name during the Transition Years, we will later call it deindustrialization, but the ticking clock of the Profit Life Cycle. Dominated by its aging and powerful industrial core, its jurisdictional economic bases were seeing evidence of closedowns, runaway plants—still production was robust and jobs seemed so very secure. When an entire industry, a New England agglomeration began its implosion after the War, it was not at all clear to policy actors what was afoot. An aggressive southern economic development attraction program, the Selling of the South captured their attention and blame. New England’s reaction to southern imperialism began a shadow war, over economic development and new tools and programs, using the federal government as their instrument. In 1961, a proponent of New England’s shadow war was elected President.
There was lots going on within our profession and policy area as well. Amid the turbulence of incipient regional change and federal policies, the juices of competitive urban hierarchies had been set in motion. Uncertainty triggered attraction programs, many of which were more “promotional” aimed at retaining existing firms, that attracting new ones. New tools such as the IDB, and a robust professionalization of attraction initiatives were hallmarks of the era. So was physical upgrading of tired and blighted neighborhoods, housing and CBDs. Big Cities were old and needed a new physical infrastructure to capture postwar economic opportunities, shifting economic trends and the latest and greatest logistics and process innovations—not to mention retain the economic loyalties of a newly-emerging intra-metropolitan competitive hierarchy.
The struggle between housing/neighborhood advocates and CBD/central city hegemonic advocates had created very serious tensions between community developers and traditional business-oriented chamber-style ED. The fight seemingly was in Washington where each had formed their own network of professional associations, but the real split could better be seen at the local level. Community developers lost ground in the last decade of these Transition Years. Symbolically, the fight was between housing authorities and redevelopment agencies—hybrid EDOs developed in these years to implement the respective programs of community developers and CBD business growth-oriented ED. Big Cities pursued different paths of modernization (the subject of this chapter) that further tempered effects of postwar urban physical modernization. Into this chasm one can see deindustrialization’s potential impact as industries and sectors declined dividing the two wings ever further apart—and making more necessary the “fig leaf” that outside southern aggression and suburbanization were the real culprits of change.
Professionally, there were other important changes that had emerged in these years. First, not noticed except in the South, was the “rise” of more active state EDOs. At war’s end state-level EDOs had been established in most every state. Mostly marketing agencies, a new “cluster” of state-EDOs formed around the IDB—and a fury of court decisions regarding how each state could “make loans to the private sector” set the stage for a fifty state cast of characters, each with a somewhat different set of priorities and customized programs that were congruent with politics and political culture, as arbitrated by its particular administrative/local government structure and judicial interpretation of state constitutions. It’s just beginning, but by the end of the Transition Years, seven different state models existed for the IDB—and some weren’t even IDBs, but more state guarantees. We won’t even mention the diversity of state systems for conducting slum clearance/public housing and urban renewal. The role of local government in this mélange was uncertain and varied by state. Programs and strategies called by the same “name”, served different goals and constituencies and were implemented using customized structures and processes. Many were authorized, but not really used. By the end of the Transition Years, a remarkable diversity of state/sub-state economic/community development was already apparent—though youthful.
Finally, the maturity and spectacular rise of port authorities in these years provided the first clear-cut picture of a process, a defining characteristic of our policy area, would explode during Part III years. Onionization (and siloization that would follow) pulled economic development’s most powerful EDO into a professional world of its own. With provision of key services and installation/modernization of infrastructure, port authorities, mostly transportation-focused, floated in a limbo-like cloud, involved and apart from sub-state economic development. Increasingly autonomous and professionally specialized, they would develop their own picket fence of financing, and professional organizations, and separate themselves from others, such as chambers—and mayors.
Moreover, the increased use of new innovations, the Lakewood Plan, and service districts pulled the infrastructure strategy into a new set of EDO-like entities that whatever else their benefit, were neither fish nor fowl to the ED policy area. Lurking in the wings was another major evolution, the rise of counties in sub-state economic development. More evident in the South and West, counties, often filling the gap left by suburban municipalities unable or unwilling to pursue ED/CD. Were counties a possible regional alternative to integrate the new hinterland sprawl of municipalities and mall, or were they a rival who threatened the hegemony of Big Cities—soon to be legacy cities.
There are more Transition Year changes that will be picked up in Part III, but it is evident the Transition period was critical to understanding the economic/community development that would follow. Part III is very much built on, and reacting to, change introduced in the Transition Years. For that reason this chapter will isolate on the implementation of urban renewal across the nation. Using brief “case studies” of a number of major city urban renewal initiatives we hope to allow the reader to taste the flavor of what is happening at the street level, at least the City Hall level in sub-state economic development.
Many of the themes and topics mentioned in this introduction ought to be evident. Also, a focus on the last stage of a three decade long set of programs designed to help the poor migrant and immigrant and to revitalize and preserve the primacy of the central city, will open the reader up to the diversity and dynamics of program implementation—hopefully shedding in the process some useful light on the Scarlet Letter of our Profession. Less recognized today is the role urban renewal played in regional change—and how it poured the foundation from which our contemporary economic and community development was built—and the policy systems that governed our major cities for decades to follow. The children birthed from our Scarlet Letter grew up to be players, programs, and strategies of our contemporary Practitioner and Policy Worlds.
[1] Donald R. Gilmore and Jervis J. Babb, Developing the Little Economies: a Survey of Area Development Programs in the United States, Committee for Economic Development, a Supplementary Paper of the Area Development Committee (1960). “Foreword”.
[2] H. McKinley Conway, Jr., Area Development Organizations (Conway Research Inc., Atlanta Georgia, 1966); Robert J. Reinshuttle, Economic Development: a Survey of State Activities (Lexington, KY, the Council of State Governments, 1983).
[3] Little Economies, op. cit., p. 20.
[4] Little Economies, op. cit., p. 18.
[5] Little Economies, op. cit., pp. 17-18
[6] Little Economies, op. cit., p. 31-33
[7] Little Economies, op. cit, p. 15ff
[8] Little Economies, op. cit., p. 158.
[9] Conway, Area Development Organizations, op. cit., pp. 64-66.
[10] Little Economies, op. cit., pp. 126-133.
[11] Bill R. Shelton, Frank R. Birkhead and Robert B. Seal (CEDs), “American Economic Development Council Milestones-1960-2000., p.28. The SIDC is today the Southern Economic Development Council, a seventeen state economic development professional and think tank organization.
[12] SEDC, a seventeen state professional economic development organization first began in 1946. Its current mission statement reads “SEDC will provide useful information and leadership to economic development practitioners throughout the American South”.
[13] See for example AIDC’s The Industrial Development Practitioner: Profile and Study (1968)
[14] IBID. p.28-29.
[15] Shelton, Birkhead, and Seal, “American Economic Development Milestones-1960-2000”, 2001, op. cit., pp. 29-29.
Ron W. Coan 