ABSTRACT
Local Economic Development (LED) is a discipline still coming into its own, with competing strands of argumentation still generating conflict. At the root of the conflict is debate over whether traditional types of local strategies (a) are working, and (b) are generating “pro-poor” economic development, or simply more “uneven development.” The latter term refers to a structured, systematic mode of capital accumulation at one pole, and the “development of underdevelopment” at another. Although it was once associated with “dependency theory,” it is a far more subtle conceptual approach to understanding ingrained poverty and inequality (Bond, 1998, 1999, 2000a, 2000b). The past two decades have, after all, witnessed extraordinary pressure on local authorities, especially formal municipalities, to become more entrepreneurial. These pressures have accompanied the overall slow-down in growth in the international economy that began during the late 1970s, and reflect shifting power relations. In short, urban entrepreneurialism became a feature of virtually all LED strategies as competition for investment intensified. The term “smokestack chasing” emerged to characterize the most ambitious attempts to “place-market” a given municipality.
