The collection of essays in this symposium focuses on a single key issue in the somewhat parochial history of modern thought on local economic development: its tendency to promote contrasting patterns of growth and decline. Many are convinced that these patterns are but the tip of an iceberg – that they are but reflections of deep-seat commitments that have variously surfaced in struggles over “blue-collar versus low-wage McJobs; job generation strategies versus real estate development; credit-starved neighborhoods versus the growth of the finance industry; targeted local hiring and purchasing versus advancement of a regional business climate; and opportunity for minority and female businesses versus sanctification of the market and economic efficiency” (Mier, 1993: ix).
The fair and equitable distribution of public resources has nonetheless been a pressing preoccupation, for those in quest of theoretical just as much as practical understanding, for several decades. It has prompted some of the most ambitious of modern attempts to craft the developmental enterprise, strategically, so as to serve the needs of distributive justice. Indeed, during the post-World War II era that gave birth to the modern practice, economic development was accompanied by bold expectations of both material and social progress. These expectations inspired ingenious ways of bringing such progress about. Only in recent years, it seems, has the idea of economic development acquired more sinister overtones. Amongst others, it has been associated with higher housing costs and problems of housing affordability, with increased congestion, greater demands for public services and, of course, with higher taxes.
But in fact, any semblance of novelty in this dismay is principally a product of selective inattention. Throughout serious modern reflection on economic development and its implications for the flourishing of local populations, there have always been pessimistic notations. From Adam Smiths apprehensions regarding businessmens narrow self interests and how these ran contrary to the much broader interests of the public, through Alexander Hamiltons state-crafted strategies for promoting a "commercial republic," to Robert Beauregards (1993) defiant effort to expose the constitutive rules that structure our understandings of what economic development is and is not there have always been thinkers for whom the idea of local economic development has been no occasion for callow optimism.
The contributors to this symposium primarily consider the distributive side of the development policy equation and raise a variety of issues in doing so. Some pinpoint the disfunctions of local politics. Others review costly oversights in the policy process. Still others attempt to clarify the actors and institutions that seem most important in altering the more embarrassing outcomes of development. For all their differences, their writings are yet alike in certain respects. One is in the idea that the mainstream of developmental thought and theory has ignored distributive issues for much too long; another is that, by ignoring such issues, the field has, perhaps inadvertently, but effectively, contributed to the sectoral imbalances with which this symposium is primarily concerned. After all, the consequences for the citizens of metropolitan America are clearly more grave and far transcend those of business, and quite certainly those of any particular business firm even though the returns to such firms have managed to capture popular attention. Indeed, even as we write, our metropolitan areas experience concentrations of poverty, painfully obvious hate crimes and segregation, long-term environmental abuse, seriously neglected infrastructures, declining older suburbs, costly urban sprawl, upper-middle-class flight and a host of other degenerative problems for which at least some remedies now exist. We are fortunate to have these and other such scholars who stand as firmly in their critiques of popular thought and theory as in their aspirations of what we might reasonably accomplish, so long as we consider development in a balanced way and in relation to what is possible.
The continuance of this article and the balance of the symposium it introduces was originally published as "Economic Development: Balancing Public and Private Interests," by Policy Studies Journal (1998).
Author: Steven A. Maclin, Ph. D.
About the Author: Dr. Maclin has been a university professor since 1994, but from 1998 - 2004, he lived and worked with American military troops in Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea. He has previously edited and published dozens of articles in professional administrative journals and recently, in his ‘spare time,’ he’s been building websites for distributing materials to his graduate students. Hes now stateside, teaching graduate students online, writing articles and developing a small online business (see
http://buyfromart.com); he can be reached at info@buyfromart.com.