Debates in local economic development policy and practice

Youth unemployment is a petrifying reality on a large scale in the township areas and exacerbated by limited economic opportunities, which warrants responsive youth development strategies. Often entrepreneurial skills are overlooked and instead the focus is based on transferring generic skills in order for the youth to find employment. The Cape Flats suburb in the Western Cape is subject to economic strife and therefore it is imperative to include a platform to develop entrepreneurial thinking through the pursuance of dreams/goal setting when attempting to address youth development. The transfer of entrepreneurial skills in a township context is imperative to support local economic development strategies and policy making. The research design adopted a quantitative methodology approach employing a purposive sampling technique for data collection of individuals residing in the Cape Flats area. The piloting of the research instrument was statistically tested to ensure validity and reliability prior to commencement of the main study. The study involved a cross sectional design and a sample of 650 participants. The study utilized SPSS for the quantitative analysis and involved descriptive statistical analyses, correlation and regression statistical application. With the current economic outlook plagued by the high unemployment rates, particularly amongst the youth, there is economic policy uncertainty and growing disillusionment. The lack of economic opportunities that the youth are subjected to prompts them to access scarce resources out of desperation, which are often actions which are not consistent with the legal framework of South Africa. Socio-economic factors such as gang affiliation, substance abuse, prostitution and teenage pregnancy is often a knock-on effect when acting out of desperation to access scarce economic opportunities. This study presents a normative stage conceptual model of youth development using entrepreneurship as a means of increasing access to economic opportunities. The model focuses on pursuing dreams/goal setting as a start to aim at entrepreneurial outcomes. Developing the youth in this way increases their entrepreneurial skills and makes them more marketable in obtaining opportunities. Stepwise regression was used to determine the influence of the independent variables – role models, limited economic opportunities, entrepreneurial skills and youth development on the dependent variable – pursuance of dreams/goal setting. Role models, entrepreneurial skills and limited economic opportunities collectively explained 8% of the variance in the dependent variable (r = .08, p < .00), pursuance of dreams/goal setting. The study provides a normative stage conceptual model that suggests the inclusion of entrepreneurship into policy making and local economic development strategies in township development on the Cape Flats. The study has practical implications for contemporary skills development and training of the youth. The findings of this study have a direct influence on policy development and implementation of local economic development with a specific focus on job creation and greater economic participation. Local economic development strategies must take into account the influence of entrepreneurship and in particular, interventions focused on entrepreneurial thinking. Policy makers must not merely focus on generic skills transformation but must include private sector partners for more holistic skills transformation. Greater emphasis in this regard must be given to public private partnerships. Local economic development policy must take into account current and future skills that will be required in diverse industries in order to equip individuals sufficiently.

Neoliberalism refers to a set of market-based ideas and policies ranging from government budget cuts and privatization of state enterprises to liberalization of currency controls, higher interest rates and deregulation of local finance, removal of import barriers (trade tariffs and quotas), and an emphasis on promotion of exports. While the effects of these policies have been quite consistent, they have sparked sharp criticism from the left. Critics pointed out the elites’ consistent failure in areas such as development aid, international financial regulation, Bretton Woods reform, the World Trade Organization’s Doha Agenda, and United Nations Security Council democratization. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the G20 held a summit in 2009 to discuss policy issues pertaining to the promotion of international financial stability. G20 leaders vowed to, among other promises, strengthen the longer term relevance, effectiveness and legitimacy of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and to seek agreement on a post–2012 climate change regime. However, many intellectual critics of neoliberalism insisted that the G20 represented nothing new. Instead, they emphasize several urgent political priorities, such as: immediately recall and reorganize campaigning associated with defense against financial degradation; reconsider national state powers including exchange controls, defaults on unrepayble debts, financial nationalization and environmental reregulation, and the deglobalization/decommodification strategy for basic needs goods; and address the climate crisis by rejecting neoliberal strategies in favor of both consumption shifts and supply-side solutions.

While the provision of infrastructure has been a traditional role for local (state and city) government, it is shown that the commitment to such infrastructure provision has waned as a result, in part, of recent political and economic events. Given the current political economy, infrastructure investments may have to be justified on the basis of their ability to stimulate local economic development and create jobs–even though many direct economic development policies have been implemented based on their plausibility rather than on their proven efficacy. To establish the relationship between infrastructure and economic growth during the 1962-to-1982 time period, a policy evaluation model is specified and tested for a sample of cities. The results suggest that infrastructure does, in fact, stimulate job growth. Thus, a more comprehensive analysis of the economic development process is called for so that infrastructure and more-direct job-creation policies can be compared. It would seem that the recent dimin...

If a local government receives unconditional funding to design and implement a local development policy, what does it do? This quasi-experimental situation occurred in 2018 when the Swedish government started to allocate 70 million SEK per year to 39 municipalities in the most sparsely populated rural north of the country. The funds' purpose was to support local development initiatives, but they were unconditional and came without specific requirements. Against this backdrop, we analyse how local governments define and address problems related to local economic development, the solutions they develop to address these problems, and the analytical and normative frameworks that guide their decisions. We contrast the identified frameworks with the contemporary literature on place-based policy and planning to determine whether, and to what extent, local economic development policy in rural Sweden reflects the idea that policy and planning should take place-based conditions into account.

This article addresses several issues related to values and the evaluation of local economic development policies. First, it focuses on the issue of goals in relation to the evaluation of local policies: What is one trying to achieve with local economic development policies? Second, it addresses connections between how goals are defined, what analysts choose to evaluate, and the results of evaluations. Finally, the article suggests an alternative approach to evaluating local development policies, incorporating an explicit identification of values and a broader notion of what is meant by local economic development.

Local economic development (LED) research and policy grapple with the informal economy and township transformation. While most current thinking centres on firms, this paper argues that non-firm worlds of work and their spatiality are not adequately understood. Representations of the places where poor people work remain abstract and incomplete. The paper reports on a survey of 320 low-income Sowetan residents and in-depth interviews with 20 workers about their work roles in the urban space economy. The findings, which show poor workers engaging with diverse sectors and locations in complex ways, challenge the dominant spatial narratives about isolated poor residential areas. Poor workers deliberately create their own social capital in work realms. This being the case, a more finely tuned conceptualisation of these workers and their roles in urban space is essential to sharpen LED discussions so that policies can be based more on real rather than imagined spatiality.

This paper describes the characteristics of two important development theories: The Dependencia theory and the Washington consensus as a policy guideline for promoting development, and analyzes the role that inequality plays on their postulates according to the results from the previous analysis. This theoretical exercise is intended to illustrate the relevance of issues related to inequality on any set of policies that intend to generate development and discusses the fact that inequality does matter for growth due to the fact that distributional issues are embedded in the basic principles of economic systems. Any growth promoting policy should incorporate distributional arguments as an element that generates optimal conditions for economic growth by hampering the negative effects on the economy of high income inequality levels.

Electricity market reform in Argentina: assessing the impact for the poor in Buenos Aires

Originally published in 1987, Cost-Benefit Analysis in Urban and Regional Planning, outlines the theory and practice of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in the context of urban and regional planning. The theory of CBA is developed with examples to illustrate the principles, it also deals with details of the applications and covers issues such as local health and social services provision, local economic development and regional policy evaluation, and planning in less developed countries – as well as the conventional land-use issues of physical planning.

Local Economic Development (LED) policies and programmes are becoming a well established part of national and local government. The evaluation of programmes and projects draws upon a long series of examples which stretch back to regional policy. The problem with the current 'state of the art' is that it concentrates upon cost per job, albeit with more sophisticated discrimination of the effects. This paper suggests the benefits of placing evaluation in a broader context of performance measures which (a) reflects more fully the objectives of the policy and (b) allows greater insights into comparative effectiveness and thus influences the reallocation of resources.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Cities: Unlocking Future Local Economic Growth and Fiscal Capacity

Local economic development policy and practice has evolved significantly in the post-apartheid era in South Africa. This article reviews recent local economic development policy and legal developments, particularly with respect to the enhanced development requirements and expectations being placed on local governments in that country. The factors encouraging this focus on 'development local government' are analysed, key policies and laws outlined, associated funding and planning strategies such as that of Integrated Development Planning are discussed and the overall process is critiqued. Quite clearly, significant and timely changes have been embarked on, but greater levels of support will clearly be needed by the smaller local authorities before widespread application of the new laws and policies can be anticipated.

Research will be more relevant to state and local economic development policy if this research focuses on research gaps. One gap is better estimates of how local labor demand policies affect local jobs. A second gap is better understanding of how labor supply policies affect overall local labor market outcomes, adjusting for spillovers and displacement. A third gap is better understanding of how effects of local employment shocks vary with local labor market conditions.

The Rise of the Entrepreneurial State: State and Local Economic Development Policies in the United States. By Peter K. Eisinger. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. 336p. 12.95 paper. - Volume 85 Issue 2

This is a study to explore the perception of local individuals on the impact of tourism development on Bai culture in Dali Old Town that is situated in the Dali Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China. The objectives of the research are to 1) analyze government tourism promotion and examine main tourism attractions in Dali, Yunnan, China, 2) discuss the major 'traditional' Bai culture in Dali Old Town, and analyze the impact from recent development of tourism, and 3) investigate attitudes/perceptions of local individuals in the Dali Old Town, towards the above-mentioned impact. The study was conducted by interviewing local people in Dali Old Town in June 2005. 40 persons were interviewed in Dali Old Town in June 2005, half of them of Bai ethnicity, and the other half of Han background (the majority Chinese), with different professions such as manager, government staff, nurse, lawyer, public prosecutor, self-employed, farmer, student, housewife, businessman, worker, teacher etc. Dali is the only Bai autonomous prefecture in China and has over one million Bai inhabitants. Following the national and provincial trend of promoting tourism for economic development, since 1982, tourism in Dali has been emphasized as a dominant economic 'generator' by the government. Apart from its natural and historical attractions, good location and pleasant weather, social heritages and a unique Bai culture, and their customs, knowledge, art, habits, and many other aspects of a life style have also been utilized to promote tourism development. Due to its relatively early development in Dali, tourism has had great positive influence such as a better known image of the Dali region, Bai people and the culture, and economic growth at the macro level. Bai cultural revival and promotion has been encouraged. At the same time negative impacts, such as uneven development and the reconstruction of Bai culture partly in unauthentic ways, also appear alongside the positive. Academic arguments on the influence and impact of tourism development are ambivalent, especially when such discussion is focused on a location with an ethnic minority population. According to much research, tourism usually has positive influence on local economic development but largely negative impacts on ethnic culture and their social identities. Interviews with local people, including some Bai ethnicity, indicate that these have quite positive attitudes regarding tourism development in Dali, and are specifically indifferent to the possible loss of indigenous culture. Such indifference, argued in the thesis, is largely attributed to the individual's inclination towards economic gains. This research suggests that academic research and government policy should adopt a more balanced approach to address gaps between academic and grass roots perceptions.