CONTENTS – April 2024

Character towns, small and large, are economic systems with jobs and family incomes driven by economic development that retains and recruits jobs. The economic system also includes the public sector that not only employs residents but also supports development in order to generate taxes and fees that fund public goods and services in support of the private sector…a re-enforcing circular system.

THE “SMALL TOWN ECONOMY” EDITION

PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT IDEAS…

•  “Small City and Town Economic Policy, Prosperity Through Economic Development”…wck. 
• “The City’s Business Model, The Comprehensive Long-Range Finance Plan”…wck. 
• “Character Towns as Entrepreneurial Cities”…wck. 
• “Small Cities and Towns Can be Global Cities”…wck. 
• “The Economic Power of Exhibitions and Fairs”…wck. 
• “Main Street ‘Activity Zones’ ”…wck. 
• “High Performance Development Corridors”…wck. 
• “New Investment in Blighted Commercial Strips”…wck. 
• “ ‘Last-Mile’ Delivery Warehouses as Retail Tenants”…wck. 
• “A Co-Work Space Policy for Small Towns”…wck. 
• “Five Principles of Urban Economics”…from the Magazine, City Journal. 
• Video [2:57 + 25:01], “Capturing the Next Economy: Pittsburgh’s rise as a global innovation city” with Bruce Katz, Brookings Institution, 2017. 

FROM THE PLANNERS’ BOOKSHELF…

•  A Generosity of Spirit: The Early History of the Research Triangle Park, Albert N. Link, Research Triangle Foundation; First Edition, 1995. 
• Cities of Knowledge, Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley. Margaret Pugh O’Mara, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2005. 
• The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last, Tom Peters, Vintage Books, NY, 2018. 
• Regenerating Older Suburbs, Richard Peiser, Washington, D.C., ULI, 2007 and Ten Principles for Rebuilding Neighborhood Retail, Michael D. Beyard, Michael Pawlukiewicz, and Alex Bond, Washington, D.C., ULI, 2003.
• Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate, William Fulton, Island Press, 2022. 
• Reaching for the Future, Creative Finance for Smaller Communities, Tom Murphy, Maureen McAvey and Bridget Lane, Urban Land Institute, Washington D.C., 2016. 
• The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream, Steve Case, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2022. 
• Citistates, How Urban America Can Prosper in a Competitive World, Neal R. Peirce with Curtis W. Johnson and John Stuart Hall, Seven Locks Press, Washington, 1993.