The Local Economy Solution

Author : Michael Shuman
Publisher : Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1603585753
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Local Economy Solution written by Michael Shuman and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reinventing economic development as if small business mattered In cities and towns across the nation, economic development is at a crossroads. A growing body of evidence has proven that its current cornerstone--incentives to attract and retain large, globally mobile businesses--is a dead end. Even those programs that focus on local business, through buy-local initiatives, for example, depend on ongoing support from government or philanthropy. The entire practice of economic development has become ineffective and unaffordable and is in need of a makeover. The Local Economy Solution suggests an alternative approach in which states and cities nurture a new generation of special kinds of businesses that help local businesses grow. These cutting-edge companies, which Shuman calls "pollinator businesses," are creating jobs and the conditions for future economic growth, and doing so in self-financing ways. Pollinator businesses are especially important to communities that are struggling to lift themselves up in a period of economic austerity, when municipal budgets are being slashed. They also promote locally owned businesses that increase local self-reliance and evince high labor and environmental standards. The book includes nearly two dozen case studies of successful pollinator businesses that are creatively facilitating business and neighborhood improvements, entrepreneurship, local purchasing, local investing, and profitable business partnerships. Examples include Main Street Genome (which provides invaluable data to improve local business performance), Supportland (which is developing a powerful loyalty card for local businesses), and Fledge (a business accelerator that finances itself through royalty payments). It also shows how the right kinds of public policy can encourage the spread of pollinator businesses at virtually no cost.

Author : Michael Shuman
Publisher : Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1603585761
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Local Economy Solution written by Michael Shuman and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reinventing economic development as if small business mattered In cities and towns across the nation, economic development is at a crossroads. A growing body of evidence has proven that its current cornerstone—incentives to attract and retain large, globally mobile businesses—is a dead end. Even those programs that focus on local business, through buy-local initiatives, for example, depend on ongoing support from government or philanthropy. The entire practice of economic development has become ineffective and unaffordable and is in need of a makeover. The Local Economy Solution suggests an alternative approach in which states and cities nurture a new generation of special kinds of businesses that help local businesses grow. These cutting-edge companies, which Shuman calls “pollinator businesses,” are creating jobs and the conditions for future economic growth, and doing so in self-financing ways. Pollinator businesses are especially important to communities that are struggling to lift themselves up in a period of economic austerity, when municipal budgets are being slashed. They also promote locally owned businesses that increase local self-reliance and evince high labor and environmental standards. The book includes nearly two dozen case studies of successful pollinator businesses that are creatively facilitating business and neighborhood improvements, entrepreneurship, local purchasing, local investing, and profitable business partnerships. Examples include Main Street Genome (which provides invaluable data to improve local business performance), Supportland (which is developing a powerful loyalty card for local businesses), and Fledge (a business accelerator that finances itself through royalty payments). It also shows how the right kinds of public policy can encourage the spread of pollinator businesses at virtually no cost.

Author : Lyle Estill
Publisher : New Society Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1550923579
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Small is Possible written by Lyle Estill and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era when incomprehensibly complex issues like Peak Oil and Climate Change dominate headlines, practical solutions at a local level can seem somehow inadequate. In response, Lyle Estill's Small is Possible introduces us to "hometown security," with this chronicle of a community-powered response to resource depletion in a fickle global economy. True stories, springing from the soils of Chatham County, North Carolina, offer a positive counter balance to the bleakness of our age. This is the story of how one small southern US town found actual solutions to actual problems. Unwilling to rely on government and wary of large corporations, these residents discovered it is possible for a community to feed itself, fuel itself, heal itself and govern itself. This book is filled with newspaper columns, blog entries, letters and essays that have appeared on the margins of small town economies. Tough subjects are handled with humor and finesse. Compelling stories of successful small businesses from the grocery co-op to the biodiesel co-op describe a town and its people on a genuine quest for sustainability. Everyone interested in sustainability, local economy, small business, and whole foods will be inspired by the success stories in this book.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Controversies in Local Economic Development written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Cheryl A. Farr
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Shaping the Local Economy written by Cheryl A. Farr and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Van Jones
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 006198194X
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Green Collar Economy written by Van Jones and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Steadily—by redefining green—Jones is making sure that our planet and our people will not just survive but also thrive in a clean-energy economy.” —Leonardo DiCaprio A New York Times bestseller, The Green Collar Economy by award-winning human rights activist and environmental leader Van Jones delivers a much-needed economic and environmental solution to today’s two most critical problems. With a revised introduction and new afterword by the author—a man who counsels President Barack Obama on environmental policy—The Green Collar Economy and Jones have been highly praised by a multitude of leaders and legislators, including Al Gore, Senator Tom Daschle, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Van Jones was named one of “The World’s 100 Most Influential People of 2009”by Time magazine, and with The Green Collar Economy he offers a wise, necessary, and eminently achievable plan for saving the earth and rescuing working class Americans.

Author : Emil Malizia
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000193993
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Understanding Local Economic Development written by Emil Malizia and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-05 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers insights into the process and the practice of local economic development. Bridging the gap between theory and practice it demonstrates the relevance of theory to inform local strategic planning in the context of widespread disparities in regional economic performance. The book summarizes the core theories of economic development, applies each of these to professional practice, and provides detailed commentary on them. This updated second edition includes more recent contributions - regional innovation, agglomeration and dynamic theories – and presents the major ideas that inform economic development strategic planning, particularly in the United States and Canada. The text offers theoretical insights that help explain why some regions thrive while others languish and why metropolitan economies often rise and fall over time. Without theory, economic developers can only do what is politically feasible. This text, however, provides them with a logical tool for thinking about development and establishing an independent basis from which to build the local consensus needed for evidence-based action undertaken in the public interest. Offering valuable perspectives on both the process and the practice of local and regional economic development, this book will be useful for both current and future economic developers to think more profoundly and confidently about their local economy.

Author : C. Russell Beaton
Publisher : Luminare Press
ISBN 13 : 9781643881584
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Economics of Hope: Creating a Just and Sustainable Local Economy in the Shadow of a Globalized World written by C. Russell Beaton and published by Luminare Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Economics of Hope argues that America now faces two all-consuming crises: one in economics and one with the environment. The manifestation of the environmental crisis is clearly the climate change issue. Less obvious to some is the economic challenge, which the book argues takes the form of the widely recognized rampant inequality at all levels of world society. These two spheres have long been quietly at odds, but pushed by increasingly dominant corporatist institutions and globalized structures, the deepening crises have become life-threatening for both the globe and its inhabitants. The Economics of Hope describes these looming dangers, tracing them not only to the dominant economic and political institutions responsible, but to the general attitudes and mindsets it calls corporatism. It is now clear that the integration of economics and environment demand common, coordinated solutions. To avoid catastrophe in the next few decades, America and the world will either solve both problems... or solve neither. Clearly, a serious climate and inequality crisis reckoning is inevitable. Left unattended, the current system will crash. The book concludes with an optimistic solution path resting on the notion of Localism. A mindful return to less energy intensive lifestyles and economic structures offers the surest path to a sustainable and healthy environment with fulfilling social/political arrangements. Communities can be re-emphasized in a planned and humanistic manner that bypasses the perils posed by current corporatist economics and exploitative ecological practices. A resultant soft landing in the sustainable state will be far superior to anything the globalized corporate world, which caused the problems in the first place, can possibly achieve.

Author : Judy Wicks
Publisher : Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1603584994
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Good Morning, Beautiful Business written by Judy Wicks and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's not often that someone stumbles into entrepreneurship and ends up reviving a community and starting a national economic-reform movement. But that's what happened when, in 1983, Judy Wicks founded the White Dog Café on the first floor of her house on a row of Victorian brownstones in West Philadelphia. After helping to save her block from demolition, Judy grew what began as a tiny muffin shop into a 200-seat restaurant-one of the first to feature local, organic, and humane food. The restaurant blossomed into a regional hub for community, and a national powerhouse for modeling socially responsible business. Good Morning, Beautiful Business is a memoir about the evolution of an entrepreneur who would not only change her neighborhood, but would also change her world-helping communities far and wide create local living economies that value people and place as much as commerce and that make communities not just interesting and diverse and prosperous, but also resilient. Wicks recounts a girlhood coming of age in the sixties, a stint working in an Alaska Eskimo village in the seventies, her experience cofounding the first Free People store, her accidental entry into the world of restauranteering, the emergence of the celebrated White Dog Café, and her eventual role as an international leader and speaker in the local-living-economies movement. Her memoir traces the roots of her career - exploring what it takes to marry social change and commerce, and do business differently. Passionate, fun, and inspirational, Good Morning, Beautiful Business explores the way women, and men, can follow both mind and heart, do what's right, and do well by doing good.

Author : Ken Meter
Publisher : Island Press
ISBN 13 : 1642831476
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Building Community Food Webs written by Ken Meter and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our current food system has decimated rural communities and confined the choices of urban consumers. Even while America continues to ramp up farm production to astounding levels, net farm income is now lower than at the onset of the Great Depression, and one out of every eight Americans faces hunger. But a healthier and more equitable food system is possible. In Building Community Food Webs, Ken Meter shows how grassroots food and farming leaders across the U.S. are tackling these challenges by constructing civic networks. Overturning extractive economic structures, these inspired leaders are engaging low-income residents, farmers, and local organizations in their quest to build stronger communities. Community food webs strive to build health, wealth, capacity, and connection. Their essential element is building greater respect and mutual trust, so community members can more effectively empower themselves and address local challenges. Farmers and researchers may convene to improve farming practices collaboratively. Health clinics help clients grow food for themselves and attain better health. Food banks engage their customers to challenge the root causes of poverty. Municipalities invest large sums to protect farmland from development. Developers forge links among local businesses to strengthen economic trade. Leaders in communities marginalized by our current food system are charting a new path forward. Building Community Food Webs captures the essence of these efforts, underway in diverse places including Montana, Hawai‘i, Vermont, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, and Minnesota. Addressing challenges as well as opportunities, Meter offers pragmatic insights for community food leaders and other grassroots activists alike.