ABSTRACT
Numerous other chapters in this volume note that communities are facing increasing pressure to be proactive in the promotion of economic growth and development. As community leaders and concerned citizens attempt to accomplish this, they face difficult questions about how to proceed. In addition, the range of sophistication across communities varies greatly, with some having a professional staff of economic development practitioners while others rely on citizen ad hoc committees made up of well-meaning, but inexperienced volunteers. Johnson (Chapter 13) and Cox et al. (Chapter 14) note that often local preferences are not considered and policies reflect the desires of a small set of people within the community. Finally, the increasingly wide use of the Porter approach to think about and identify clusters at the state level has spurred significant interest at the local level for comparable analysis.
