local economic development
Defined as: “Preserving and raising the community’s standard of living through a process of human and physical infrastructure development based on the principles of equity and sustainability” (Fitzgerald and Leigh, 2002). We hold that good local economic development practice should specifically take into account the distributional consequences of resulting growth and change. Guided by this perspective, we focus on six common economic development strategies that most local economic development planners and practitioners will be charged with implementing over the next decades: industrial retention, brownfield redevelopment, sectoral (or targeted industry) strategies, commercial revitalization, industrial and office property reuse, and workforce development (Fitzgerald and Leigh, 2002).