Originally entitled “Great Forces at Work” this chapter’s topics are critical elements of our 21st Century Contemporary ED/CD System. They appear prominently in this time period and continue into the future. We introduce five elements and make the case why they are fundamental: (1) change in the jurisdictional economic base caused by deindustrialization; (2) evolution of competitive urban hierarchies (a) polycentric, post-suburban metropolitan landscape, (b) non-hegemonic regional/state hierarchy and (c) comparative advantage/free trade global hierarchy; (3) new programs and strategies to address issues and problems generated by the dynamic forces and our three drivers of ED; (4) entry of State Government into sub-state ED; and, (5) population migration driven by generational cohorts who geographically sorted themselves out and redefined economic growth in the process. Infused into each of these topics are our Two ED Ships, Progressivism and Privatism.
Our history lectures sternly that economic developers should take population mobility seriously. No one is arguing one should ignore the other two drivers, or that other forces not formally included in our model can affect ED, but population migration has been fundamental and a constant in our history. There have been periods when it seems economic developers have done little else than cope with the effects of population movement. Growth is consistently defined in terms of population increase and vice versa. One could make a strong case non-economic developers’ chief measure ED success or failure is population change. In ED the Census Bureau is far more important than the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
When most think of population mobility they think of the West—deservedly so. One has to be from another planet not to recognize the impact of settling a mostly unsettled land. But western population growth had to come from somewhere. Population mobility established the Hegemony as a monopolistic nineteenth century immigration froze the South into a region impervious to time and change. The Southern Diaspora/Great Migration was a driving factor in northern suburbanization and decline of the monocentric metropolitan landscape. The Great Migration changed the nature and political culture of Big Cities—and fueled the rise of new CD wings. Population mobility played a large role in the Seventies implosion of Big Cities. And the depopulation of the South too had its effects on southern economic development—and after WWII repopulation as well.
As we lay the foundations for our 21st Century Contemporary Economic Development, it stands to reason that population mobility can exert its impact of economic development as did deindustrialization and reindustrialization. We will argue here that not only immigration, but a culture-infused generational cohort change has fundamentally reshaped our sub-state jurisdictional (and metropolitan) political cultures and policy systems in ways that contributed to the politicization of economic development, but has paralyzed many jurisdictional policy systems from coming to grips with the reality of economic decline. After 1970 generational cohort change substantially challenged the old definitions of “good” growth and offered an alternative definition of “good” ED.
“Good ED growth” is more complicated than the old “Bad Growth” and that complication has fundamentally redefined economic development. There is one small problem with this redefined growth—not everybody, certainly not every State, has jumped on board. To redefine or not to redefine growth has been a major wedge within 21st Century economic development. Blue States have their Silicon Valley and Red States have Houston. It not only creates a Red and Blue State dichotomy, but it reaches into the metro politics of most of our metropolitan areas. What became evident by the end of the (20th) century was geographical ED variation resulted from not only the flow (volume) of people moving, but where they moved, and the consequences that followed. We “sorted” ourselves out, clustering in communities perceived as similar to ourselves, and reinforcing policy systems and cementing into place ED/CD policy, goals, processes and strategies.
In this chapter, we discuss major forms of post-1970 population mobility (excluding “frictional” mobility within metropolitan areas) such as the Big Sort, immigration, southern regional change–the Second New South, and generational cohort change expressed in cultural and geographic change. We shall briefly discuss each. The net effect is to recast the different regions and states political culture, policy systems, ED agendas and policy-making. A major effect will be to question the desirability/need for unrestricted economic growth and contrasting definitions of what economic growth entails. This injects change in ED, its strategies and priorities, its placement on the policy agenda, and reprioritized the importance of CD relative to MED. Lacking an unconfirmed commitment to the primacy of economic growth, ED confronts an existential challenge to its past, and a polarized view of its future.
Ron W. Coan 