Planners and Economic Developers: Overcoming Conflict through Structural Change and Process Innovation

Summary

The Problem

Despite their many common interests, local public planners and economic developers often find themselves on opposite sides of development issues. Planners may perceive that economic developers try to ignore or circumvent the comprehensive plan when recruiting and sitting businesses. In some cases, planners may not even be advised that a deal that might violate existing plans or regulations is in the making, until it is presented as a "done deal," putting them in the awkward position of saying "no" to progress. Economic developers may perceive that the comprehensive plan is always out of date, but that planners nevertheless interpret it rigidly and thus, as one economic developer puts it, "just get in the way." These conflicts are exacerbated where additional environmental regulations are involved, as planners may be regarded as devoted to rigid enforcement of burdensome regulations that drive away business investment.

Underlying these conflicts are different job roles, performance incentives, and attitudes about the community. Economic developers are paid to make deals that promise to create jobs and bring in investment dollars through site-specific projects. Theirs is a short-range focus on wealth creation, often with little attention paid to the long-term costs of development projects. Planners are not paid to act quickly or to achieve short-term results. Theirs is a long-range focus on the overall coherence of the community, not the viability of specific projects. They have traditionally focused on equitable wealth distribution and environmental concerns as much or more as they have on wealth creation.

Recent change sin the local context for both planning and economic development have created the potential for more cooperation, as well as more confusion, between these two realms. Urban economic dislocation and suburban sprawl, as well as the retreat of the federal government from support for local development, have made planners more conscious of the need for a strong economic development function and, thus, more user-friendly and efficient development review.

At the same time, as the global economy evolves and industry location factors change, economic developers are slowly coming to appreciate the importance of activities other than recruiting new firms and developing new real estate, such as business retention and expansion and fostering an overall climate that is conducive to business and community development in general. This requires attention to many of the issues that have long concerned planners - rational and efficient land use and transportation systems, the jobs-housing balance, good schools, the contribution of strong neighborhoods to retail vitality, and the importance of a high quality of life overall.

This potential convergence of interests is all to the good, but if it is not strongly encouraged and well managed, it may result in role confusion and in more, rather than less, turf conflict. Localities can take a variety of steps to promote synergy, or at least greater cooperation, between planners and economic developers. Such steps can be classified as either inter-departmental cooperation and process innovation, or, at a more ambitious level, structural change.

One Solution: Interdepartmental Cooperation and Process Innovation

1. Planners can involve economic developers and the business community early in all comprehensive plan updates and amendment processes. Likewise, economic development officials can involve planners and zoning administrators early in economic development strategy planning. Both planners and economic development officials should seek representation or observer status in key local business group organizations, such as the local chamber of commerce and industry groups.
2. Both Planners and economic developers can distribute copies of each other's plans and strategies.
3. Local governments can also establish development planning and review processes that involve planning, economic development, and other agencies. The City of Petersburg, Virginia provides an excellent example of this approach. Petersburg, with a 1990 population of about 38,000, has experienced economic dislocation and population outmigration because of the loss of large industrial and retail employers. In part because of the heightened importance of economic development to the city, Petersburg has moved to the team approach to development strategy formation and project analysis. In 1995, the City constituted a development team comprised of the City Manager and the heads of the Economic Development, Planning, Public Works, and Finance departments. This team addresses all development issues and business prospects jointly, so that events never move far without all relevant parties becoming involved. The process is working well, but some agency heads have found it difficult to become used to the new, collective decision making style

Another Solution: Structural Change

Some communities have gone beyond cooperation and process change efforts to establish new structures. Organizational structure issues are not new in local economic development, but up to now, the primary concern has been where to place the economic development function, within local government as a line agency, or partly outside government as a quasi-public development corporation. The new thing under the sun is the reconceptualization of the planning and economic development functions themselves, albeit within city government.

A widely used structural innovation is the one-stop business information and permit/development review center. Gathering the information to create such centers requires substantial cooperation between planning and economic development strategy. Current planning has been merged with all permitting functions under the City's new Process 2000 permit processing program.

Community planning and general planning have been brought together with other neighborhood and citywide functions - economic development, redevelopment, community services, code enforcement, and arts and culture - to form a Community Economic Services Department. This has resulted in the integration of the following efforts:

• Livable Neighborhoods - a multi-disciplinary approach to neighborhood revitalization.
• Citywide Strategy - an effort to combine updates of the general plan with other critical elements, such as economic development, as well as art and culture and social services.
• Industrial Land Supply - combines economic development objectives of providing adequate industrial acreage for the expansion of key industry clusters with the long-range planning objective of pro-actively planning for the future development of the city.
• Multiple Species Conservation Program - a 900-square mile effort designed to provide for habitat conservation, but in the process making development outside the area more timely and certain, meeting both conservation and economic development objectives.

Conflict with economic developers is one of the most vexing problems that traditional planners face, and vice versa. Experiments such as Petersburg's and San Diego's deserve close scrutiny and, perhaps, replication in other settings.

The Economic Development Division:

1. increasing the understanding of economic development as a key element of public policy formulation at all levels of government;
2. promoting economic development as a critical element of neighborhood, community, regional, and national planning processes;
3. disseminating materials and information about current economic development practice and theory to members of the Division;
4. assisting APA in influencing economic development policy;
5. facilitating a liaison with other divisions, chapters, and institutes within APA and with other professional associations contributing to the economic development processes; and
6. promoting professional communication among members of the Division through a variety of member services, including newsletters, conference sessions, workshops and other publications. We are pursuing these objectives through a variety of activities:

News and Views, our quarterly 16-page member newsletter, discusses current approaches to economic development in a variety of urban, rural, and suburban settings, and provides updates on key legislation and other items of interest to economic development planners. The theme of the April 1997 issue is "home-based business." To receive a complimentary copy, call the editor, Carl Morgan, at the University of Maryland, (30) 405-6626.

New Briefs, our occasional, 4-page flyer, keeps members informed of important Economic Development Division activities and deadlines. Electronic Communication: Division Vice Chair Becky Winders has established a listserv discussion vehicle for members with e-mail access. Through our ongoing survey of our members, we are collecting e-mail addresses. In addition to freeflowing discussion of items of mutual interest to economic developers, we will soon be sending News & Views and New Briefs to members via the listerv. If you would like to be on our listerv, contact Becky Winders at the University of Georgia, at voice (706) 542-6789, e-mail rwinders@uga.cc.uga.edu

Last, but not least, we are proud to announce the first annual Graduate Economic Development Planning Student Scholarship Award, developed by Karen Becker and Joel Fontane, Jr., our Division's Secretary/Treasure. Questions about the award can be directed to Joel Fontane at (215) 732-2200, or to the World Wide Web at http://www.vcu.edu/hasweb/usp/edd.htm

Economic Development Division officers for the 1996-98 term are
John Accordino Chair
Becky Winders, Vice Chair
Joel S. Fontane, Jr., Secretary/Treasurer
Questions about the Economic Development Division should be directed to John Accordino, Chair, at (804) 828-2489 (phone), (804) 828-6681 (FAX), or jaccordi@saturn.vcu.edu (email).