ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses various development strategies and their potential for stimulating future ratal development. It focuses on new institutional arrangements that can be utilized to improve local development opportunities by increasing access to debt and equity capital, and fostering ownership structures to help maintain manufacturing facilities. The chapter argues that although there are a wide range of strategies to promote rural development, communities must create new institutional arrangements to provide the underpinnings for a strong economic development program. Both traditional and nontraditional strategies for local development need to consider the conceptual basis for rural development and the factors affecting the local economies in the rural South. The chapter also discusses the need for alternative methods of generating economic growth involving nontraditional institutional structures to provide the support to successfully pursue traditional economic development objectives. It presents general factors influencing growth: access to financial capital, and patterns of firm ownership and organizational structure.
