Promoting local economic development through strategic planning : volume 3 : toolkit
The Local Economic Development Series.
Strategic planning for local economic development is important. It is a cornerstone of sustainable development. It involves wise resource use, integrating values and thinking ahead. These are demanding tasks that can be intimidating, and at times, overwhelming. They need not be. In our work around the world, we have seen local economic development (LED) planning processes unnecessarily get stuck, lose momentum or, worse yet, not get started in the first place. In other cases, we have seen LED processes craving fresh insight, innovative ideas or a new sense of direction. We believe that confronting these basic challenges and taking advantage of these opportunities are well within our reach. It is this belief that inspired the development of this training series on LED. As part of the development of this LED training series, we convened a Global Round Table of LED professionals. From Africa to Asia, Slovakia to Canada, Washington, DC to Quito, we received a myriad of perspectives on the core issues of LED. What we found was encouraging the opportunities are great, the success stories extensive and the lessons learned helpful. Our Round Table participants pinpointed key issues in LED, such as leadership; enabling environments; children, youth and gender; job quality; society and environment; governance and democracy; culture; capacity; poverty reduction and globalization to name but a few. Our Round Table participants agreed that for LED to succeed, local leaders and economic development practitioners need to have access to a range of tools, ideas and experiences to help them strategically address their own complex issues at the local level. Local challenges require local solutions.
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