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This research incorporates preliminary findings from a survey and case studies of economic development organizations (EDOs) in Virginia as these entities initiate their economic recovery planning processes in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. The research seeks to understand the extent to which EDOs understand—and engage in conversations about—racial and economic inclusion in the context of economic recovery and to learn more about the strategies being deployed to promote inclusive recovery in the post-COVID era. Though some common characteristics were identified, the results demonstrate significant variation in both the extent to which inclusivity is prioritized and how it is conceived of in recovery planning efforts. The findings suggest that while many economic development organizations are signaling a commitment to inclusivity, albeit, in assorted ways, there remains a need for further dialogue about how inclusivity is defined and how it can best translate into actionable strategies.

In exurban areas, there are commonly issues and tensions associated with development and rural life. We assess how two counties located approximately one hour west of Washington, DC manage these tensions. Although both have enabled development, they have done so in different ways and neither has simply succumbed to exurban development as a given. Utilizing stakeholder interviews and document analysis, we note the different policy approaches that the two counties have taken and contrast them with the more common imagery of areas that fully acquiesce to suburban style development. Our findings suggest that tensions between the pressures of development and the persistent appeal of the rural identity occupy much time and attention in these two counties. Both counties have adopted observable policy changes driven by development pressures in recent years, underscoring a policy landscape that is in flux and the modern tension between the commercial economy of modernity, and the rural identity that is retained from the past. We observe that rural governance is largely about land, while urban governance is largely about people. As these two cases suggest, exurban governance has to be about both issues and this tension may lead to governance that is inherently unstable.

Workforce shortages and market shifts have left many small and medium manufacturers (SMMs) struggling to maintain their operations. Still some SMMs tend not to utilize the workforce development and technical assistance resources available to them. This is particularly true of those in more rural regions where manufacturing is even more essential to the sustained vitality of these economies. This study explores the factors preventing these firms from pursuing and accessing these services. The authors used surveys and interviews to engage manufacturers with fewer than 500 employees in rural Southwestern Virginia and identify factors limiting their participation in these services. Findings indicate constant and consistent outreach to SMMs, regular engagement in social and economic networks, and a diverse array of services tailored to rural SMMs’ needs to play key roles in developing productive partnerships between SMMs and resource providers.

Purpose This paper aims to explore the dynamics of entrepreneurial ecosystems with both rural and urban features, as well as the varied system requirements of differing types of entrepreneurs within such an ecosystem. Design/methodology/approach Using a mixed-methods case study approach, the study examined the Roanoke–Blacksburg region in western Virginia. Researchers conducted quantitative analysis of entrepreneurial metrics and network relationships, as well as qualitative analysis of data collected through entrepreneur surveys and stakeholder interviews. Findings Findings suggest entrepreneurs of different types faced disparate challenges and uneven access to resources and networks. Innovation-driven “gazelle” enterprises (IDEs) had numerous growth-related resource needs, including angel, venture and scale-up funding; prototyping equipment and facilities; and translational research by local universities. Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) required more entrepreneurial education programming, subsidized main street office space and clearer pathways through the government regulatory system. A key finding was also concerned with the different ways by which IDEs and SMEs accessed key resources within the ecosystem, illustrated through social network analysis, and supported through qualitative feedback. Research limitations/implications Study findings were limited by a relatively low survey response rate from some entrepreneur demographic segments, particularly minorities. Originality/value The study represents an in-depth, multi-methods approach that offers insight into two under-researched areas in the ecosystem literature: the dynamics of urban – rural ecosystems and the varied system requirements of different entrepreneur types. The paper includes three overarching recommendations for policy and practice: improved collection and sharing of regional metrics; differentiated approaches to entrepreneurial support based on entrepreneur type; and enhanced efforts to advance inclusive entrepreneurship.

This chapter focuses on the burgeoning interest in the resilience concept in economic development policy and planning discourse. It explores the extent to which regional planning organisations in the United States have adopted the term resilience in their economic development plans and consider how resilience is defined and used within these policy documents. The chapter finds that whilst resilience is increasingly referred to and upheld as an important objective, it is poorly defined and articulated in plans. This raises questions regarding the connections between regional economic theorising and analysis and policy discourse and practice.

The Great Recession was a moment of challenge for many regions and required that leaders reflect on their economic development strategies. Given the propensity of regions to adopt ideas and strategy “fads” that then inform policy debate, we seek to understand how two very different regions with different histories framed their responses to the recession. How did they conceptualize the economic challenge in their region? What did they envision as appropriate responses to this challenge? How did these visions relate to mimetic behavior of the past, in which largely uniform visions are adopted across diverse locations? Our findings show that economic development leaders in the Buffalo and Orlando regions advocated similar high-tech/biomedical strategies as a way to diversify their economies and make them more resilient or less vulnerable to future shocks. By conceptualizing economic diversification in such similar ways, despite substantial regional differences, this pursuit of resilience or decrease...

(2015). Reshoring and Manufacturing… Myth or Movement? Regions Magazine: Vol. 297, No. 1, pp. 12-14.

While psychologists and ecologists have identified many factors that increase the odds of resilience in a person or an ecosystem, economic development officials and planning scholars do not yet have a firm grasp on how economic development planning relates to regional resilience. This study explores how two regions – Buffalo, New York and Cleveland, Ohio – have adapted and responded to deindustrialization using economic development. Interviews were conducted with past and present planning and economic development leaders and historical and current economic development plans were analyzed in order to increase our understanding of how regions respond to challenges, how economic development planning shapes these responses, and how both economic development planning and the larger response relate to adaptive resilience in distressed regions.

A gap in the literature that remains largely unfilled is a discussion of how polycentrism relates to broader tensions between strategies of specialised industrial agglomeration economies and diverse regional portfolios. Relatively little is known about how strategies of polycentrism relate to the industrial composition and economic complementarity both at the regional scale and for individual cities within the region. In this paper, correspondence analysis is used to quantify complementarity in the economic profiles of cities in three polycentric regions. The findings suggest that the degree of complementarity varies greatly but has decreased in all three of the case study regions over time. Subsequent analysis of institutional structures in these three regions suggests that regions with weaker regional governments, stronger regional identities and intentional polycentric development strategies might experience higher levels of complementarity. A series of hypotheses that relate institutions to complementarity are proposed as possible directions for future research.

Author(s): Rolf Pendall; Kathryn A. Foster; Margaret Cowell | Abstract: In this paper, we review literature that explains and extends the meaning of resilience across several fields: ecology, psychology, economics, disaster studies, geography, political science and archeology. For metropolitan regions, the review suggests that we must proceed with caution and precision if we choose to make resilience a guiding metaphor for planning and policy, as well as for understanding regional dynamics.Across these fields, there are several common themes that may or may not apply to all aspects of metropolitan economic, social, political, and environmental dynamics. The next part of the paper ties together these themes across the literatures; at the end of the paper, we return to pose some of the implications of the resilience metaphor for metropolitan regions. First, most analysis that employs the resilience metaphor presumes that the phenomenon of interest exhibits at least one equilibrium; the majority of the research begins, in fact, from the possibility of multiple equilibria, and explains how and why those equilibria become unstable. When we say that a person, society, ecosystem, or city is resilient, we generally mean that in the face of shock or stress, it either “returns to normal” (i.e., equilibrium) rapidly afterward or at the least does not easily get pushed into a “new normal” (i.e., an alternative equilibrium). Recent studies, however, have begun to move past the equilibrium view, shifting their focus from resting points to processes of adaptation.Second, and related to the first point, analysis using the resilience metaphor generally takes a systems perspective. Some factors internal to the system, and some external to it, tend to strengthen it; others—again, both internal and external—can place it under stress. Some literatures (e.g., psychology, disaster studies) tend to focus more on internal resources that strengthen the system under study and exogenous stresses that threaten it. A key idea arising from ecological studies, “panarchy,” helps overcome some of the determinism of such systems perspectives as functionalism in sociology; whereas other systems views tend to portray individual actions and interactions as pre-determined outcomes of larger structural forces, the panarchy view leads observers to expect interaction between structure and agents.Third, most, but not all, of the literatures tend to adopt at least partially the view that observed equilibria are path-dependent, that is, they are a consequence of cumulative decisions, often over a long time period, that shift a system from having a very open future to having increasingly predictable (or “locked in”) paths. The interest in path dependency is particularly high in fields that attempt to understand multiple equilibria and the persistence of sub-optimal ones; in any multi-equilibrium world, any of a number of sometimes apparently random events or actions can lead a system toward a particular equilibrium.Finally, work that uses resilience as a metaphor tends to take a long view, whether of individuals (e.g., personality in the transition from a stressed childhood to functional or dysfunctional adulthood) or of cities (e.g., long-term recovery after a disaster). This long perspective tends to reinforce the first three points. Over the long run, an observer will often observe or impute one or more periods of stability amidst change at some level of function for the phenomenon of interest, reinforcing the belief in equilibrium. This is even truer if the analyst’s attention is shaped by the resilience metaphor in ways that encourage her to look for equilibria. As a practical matter, furthermore, the analyst must bound the phenomenon of study (city, ecosystem, person) in ways that encourage her to view that phenomenon as having a persistent internal logic; that is, the phenomenon isn’t just a social or political process or a series of unconnected events but is, rather, a system.

We examine some of the challenges facing New York's agriculture industry and outline some innovative responses. We distinguish between two types of agriculture: commodities and value-added consumer foods. We show that commodities are a small fraction of the agriculture industry in New York State and are not a growing market segment, while value-added goods are the primary products of New York farms and represent a market segment that is growing significantly. We then briefly discuss important strategies that agricultural producers are using to remain competitive, including the adoption of technology, an increased emphasis on exporting, the use of formal price contracts, and the vertical integration of business processes. These strategies and the expected continued growth in value-added sales support a positive outlook for many of New York's farms.