Economic Development: Books

Since the appearance of the first edition in 1990, Planning Local Economic Development has become the foundation for an entire generation of planners and academics teaching planning. Building on the success of its predecessors, the Fourth Edition continues to explore the theories of local economic development and address the dilemmas communities face. The authors investigate planning processes, analytical techniques, business and human resource development, as well as high-technology economic development strategies. Written by authors with many years of academic, regional, and city planning experience, this book will prove invaluable to professors of economic development, urban studies, and public administration. Economic development specialists in local and municipal government, as well as nonprofit organizations, will also find this an essential reference. New to the Fourth Edition: - Completely revised and updated with current research - Provides more guidance oriented to third world readers - Includes more on issues of urban sustainability such as energy and brown field development - Contains added material on the redesign of neighborhoods for sustainable purposes to include new firms and recycling techniques and technologies as new economic engines

In Economic Revitalization: Cases and Strategies for City and Suburb Fitzgerald and Leigh answer the need for a text that incorporates social justice and sustainability into how we think about and practice economic development. It is one of the first to talk about how revitalization strategies are implemented in both cities and suburbs, particularly inner-ring suburbs that are experiencing decline previously associated only with inner-city neighborhoods. After setting the context with a brief history of economic development practice and its shortcomings, Fitzgerald and Leigh focus on six economic development strategies: sectoral strategies, Brownfield redevelopment, industrial retention, commercial revitalization, industrial and office property reuse, and workforce development.

The study of economic development is one of the newest, most exciting, and most challenging branches of the broader discipline of economics and political economy. Although one could claim that Adam Smith was the first "development economist", the systematic study of the problems and processes of economic development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has emerged only over the past five decades. This biography of the subject of economic development will focus on the essential ideas in the evolution of development thought and policy over the subject's half-century of life. In concise form and avoiding undue technicality, it highlights the influence of development theory on policymaking and on the mixed record of successes and failures in promoting development efforts. The interpretation of theory, policy, and the lessons of experience are covered in three periods: early development economics of the 1950s-60s; orthodox reaction of the 1970s-80s; and the new development economics of the 1980s-90s. Gerald Meier-one of the world's most prominent leading thinkers in the economics of development - interprets the past treatment of development problems with the present and future in mind. He re-interprets the past two generations of development economists in a contemporary voice. And in a forward-looking fashion, the book's perspectives should make the next generation of development problems-and development economists-more intelligible. The reader is invited to consider whether development economists really know how to put matters right.

Provides a visionary blueprint for a marketplace where businesses and environmentalists work together, showing companies how to redesign and manufacture products in innovative ways, reeducate customers, and work closely with government toward a profitable, productive, and ecologically sound future.