The Patchwork Profession Emerges
Suffice it to say, planners were integral to urban renewal in whatever form it took. Planning departments were deeply involved in the projects themselves in ways far beyond zoning. Personnel from planning departments developed deep experience and competence on physical and social prerequisites of a massive urban renewal/redevelopment project. As we shall discover a considerable number of today’s EDOs are still Planning Departments. This hip bone is connected to the joint bone relationship of planning and economic development is one thing, but what is also important is that planning is its own discipline with its core values, historiography and approach to what is important about successful economic development.
The Chamber started the postwar period probably at its zenith in terms of its policy and numerical dominance in economic development. But the period as a whole displayed a trend toward governmental EDOs—particularly the quasi-EDO-redevelopment agency. During this period one can see some evidence for a division of functions between private and governmental. The need for governmental powers which besides the obvious ability to abate taxes, taxable municipal bonds and exercise eminent domain had now expanded into tax exempt bond issuance and loans/guarantees to private firms. The private sector dominated chamber could never hope to directly control these governmental powers, but it could make the decision as to which firms benefit from these tools and could, in varying degrees dependent on the community, actually participate in governmental agency decision-making and, in many instances, serve as the governance, the de facto sovereign of the governmental EDO. This trend will continue for the following several decades.
Having said that the structural trend in economic development tended to the governmental, chambers did increase their primacy over one economic development strategy: attraction at the municipal level. Attraction, arguably an offspring from nineteenth century boosterism, became a mainstay of chamber economic development programs along with tourism. Both shared a fascination and respect for promotional activities-media campaigns and advertising. Chambers, consciously or not, however, professionalized their promotion and advertising activities during this period, perhaps seeking to match the example set by Forward Atlanta in the 1920’s which subtly served as a benchmark for cutting edge municipal attraction programs:
As no city had ever managed before, its (Forward Atlanta) efforts rested on a clear and consistent marketing strategy, to make the city into the industrial headquarters of the South. Although the campaign sent out national and international ripples, the regional influence was indeed huge, encouraging many other cities into pale imitation.[1]
NASDA in 1946
The Bastions of Economic Development in this time period are first the small towns, second the-chambers and third the Planning depts. By the time of the early 1960’s, we added a fourth, the QUASI EDO Redevelopment Agencies. People involved in these huge urban renewal projects came from a variety of backgrounds and professions. Ranging from law, finance, construction, real estate, planning, housing, even public works and the various support professions such as accounting, public relations, and even politics itself. Project-based economic development of necessity involved a smorgasbord of occupations and disciplines. The project was the center of a Benn Diagram of professions. Since project-based economic development would remain at the center of the economic development profession for the next two decades the impact on the profession was considerable.
At this point, we would suggest several consequences are important. First, the profession of economic development did not develop its own discipline of study. Rather, its structures, particularly the Quasi EDO but also the Public Agency assembly the package of professions, occupations, and disciplines necessary to complete projects. Management of a multi-professional project-oriented entity like the Quasi Redevelopment EDO needless to say became a challenge and CEOs needed to be very competent both within the Agency and as their external traffic cop. Eventually, as economic development became more mature and diversified the particular needs to these Redevelopment Agencies necessitate their own specialized professional association, quite distinct from economic developers associated with other economic development strategies. With the arrival and subsequent dominance of project-based real estate Quasi Redevelopment Agencies, the likelihood any one, big tent professional association could be formed to link the entire profession became infinitesimal small. Economic Development, as a profession, would include separate and independent national and state professional agencies.
On the Threshold of a Dream[1]: Wrapping up What We Have Learned Before the Page Turns
Does this belong at the end of the next chapter???
Using the cued histories it is apparent that formation of EDOs in central city areas was just beginning. Suburban EDOs were probably beginning to appear, but in fairly limited numbers and were also mostly chambers. The real change in this would be in the late sixties. The major exception to this was those states which adopted the Pennsylvania-Oklahoma plan and which had a network of sub-state Quasi EDOs empowered, through with limited programmatic offerings
Certainly a tale to be told is what has happened to the considerable number of EDOs that were created in this time period in the south Mississippi model. Most were Quasi EDOs. A number of state Quasi EDOs were created and for both the Mississippi and Scranton models, the municipal chambers were major players. Most of these Quasi EDOs are probably still in existence. They have evolved. What were the former, for a time primary vehicles of industrial development are not relegated to a closet; they are now “nested”, no longer fully independent, as a subsidiary EDO within a larger EDO; they are bloodless, people-less, virtual program-tool options only. They are preserved for their tools, the IDB or the property-owning, managing, mortgage holder. They were established to house and operate economic development tools and so long as those tools have perceived value, the Quasi will continue, stuffed into a closet and pulled out as needed. Indicates that structures are just vehicles for tools and tools can be used for many strategies.
The chambers are another tale.
See Cobb p. 50 and Louisville Industrial Foundation and use of lDF in the Mississippi model and discuss pre-RLF lending and industrial parks. Check on incubators as they arise in this period maybe. as important programs and tools–a southern real estate strategy which was to be picked up by the suburban northern jurisdictions.
This transformation of the second stream placed it in very stark contrast to the decentralized, individualist, more narrowly focused-manufacturing-educational, and shortly civil rights southern-based first stream of economic development. Contrast the evolution and the approach behind the Charlotte-based Research Triangle which in 1956-1958 was conducting its affairs and defining its objectives in a quite different environment than its equivalent in Boston.[2] The business-government partnership, however, exhibited many variations, and in some communities it did not really exist except symbolically. A prime reason for this variation was the differences that were thrust upon them by their states and the economies, geographies and demographics the states contained.
A second development followed five years after the Housing Act of 1954 as a flood of state legislatures approved path-breaking urban renewal legislation. To be sure, a few states had passed versions of urban renewal legislation in the forties, but depending on how one counts 44[3] states (and eventually 48 states) had by 1959 some version of an urban renewal authorizing legislation. For many, probably most states, urban renewal was the first specifically economic development legislation they had approved in years.
Let’s return to the world of detail, of analysis, with sophisticated models, large databases and complicated methodologies—to the world of truth and morality, where predictions are inevitable, and magic bullets slay imaginary dragons.
Private Sector Downtown Initiative and the Rise of Private EDOs
The Pre-1960 emergence
The Georgetown (C&O) Canal rehabilitation followed its conversion in 1938 to national park status. Early New Deal and some postwar rehabilitation restored some DC tourism-related activities (towpath tours) to the canal but in the fifties the Park Service proposed to transfer the bulk of the park to private use and highway authorities. A 184 mile hike led by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (of which only nine, including Douglas actually completed) convinced the Park Service to retain the areas and convert them into one of the nicest hiking and tourism destination in DC-Maryland.
It’s a Wonderful Life
In 1946 Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released. Known as a Christmas show, it, like Dickens’ Christmas Carol is in fact a movie whose central theme is our two ships: Privatism and Progressivism. Interestingly they both, in the Curmudgeon’s mind, arrive at essentially the same conclusion–the ending “wisdom” presented in the last chapter of “As Two Ships Passing in the Night”. Let’s dissect the economic development wisdom contained in Capra’s movie.
Community and individual empowerment through housing and finance–Bailey Park an affordable housing complex–he save’s his bank by appealing to people to not withdraw so that he can compete against Privatist Potter and keep him in check. Due to his warm, well-intentioned and loyal but bumbling bureaucracy plus his chronic inability to achieve a sustainable business model, the bank fails yet again—and is saved by an angel. Works for me!
The privatist alternative in Pottersville–robber baron heartless capitalism which corrodes the human spirit and degrades morals–what happens without Bailey keeping Potter in check is revealed by Angel Clarence who bails out Bailey (literally). But in every instance, Bailey is saved from himself either by the evils of Privatism directly or by those using the rewards of involvement in the Privatist world—philanthropy.
They need each other to survive–compete and complement a pair of dimes makes a paradigm
SEE Ken’s material
See to what extent we can develop evidence toward the formation of EDOs which pursued a micro economic approach to economic development–in place or in addition to urban renewal related activities– did for instance the CBD oriented EDOs also develop lending, technical assistance, retention and even attraction programs, or industrial parks, maybe visitation and bid-like business programs in their geographic areas.
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[1] Released by the Moody Blues 1969
[2] Again we cite Thomas O’Connor and for the Research Triangle the reader should consult
[3] See California Redevelopment Law, July 2001 pp995-996 Footnote 23
[1] Stephen V. Ward, Selling Places, op. cit. p. 159.
Ron W. Coan 