ABSTRACT
Economic development professionals will tell anyone who is willing to listen that their business is one part reality and one part perception. e reality has already been covered here: To be successful, communities either must market to companies and industries for which they have the assets that those businesses require, or they must obtain the assets needed by the industries they wish to target. Pagano and Bowman write that “image creation is central to economic development strategies, especially for cities that aspire to a higher level.”1
