Regional Economies
The City that NetWorks: Transforming Society and Economy through Digital Excellence (Summer 2007): This report, prepared for the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Bridging the Digital Divide, outlines a comprehensive plan for achieving universal digital excellence, as vital to the future of a global city.
Strengthening Communities for Regional Prosperity (Summer 2006): This article, published by Living Cities as part of the Living Cities Policy Series, addresses the importance of neighborhoods to their cities and regions. In particular, the piece seeks to provide a better understanding of how the economic destiny of a region is interconnected with the destiny of its neighborhoods, highlighting how successful economic development strategies need to integrate neighborhood and regional interventions.
Seeing the Forest and the Trees (Spring 2005): This presentation, prepared for CEOs for Cities’ annual meeting, explores some of the key findings that have emerged from the literature on the role of cities in the national economy and on the drivers of urban economic growth. Based on these findings, we extrapolate seven broad principles for urban policy and suggest several related strategies for city and regional economic development.
The Kansas City Region: Economic Opportunity in the Heartland (Spring 2005): The Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program hired RW Ventures and Alen Amirkhanien to complete a preliminary assessment of Kansas City’s economy in the context of the Heartland region. This study scans key aspects of Kansas City’s economy to identify growth opportunities worth examining further. The research focused in particular on four strategic areas that affect economic performance: industry composition, functional and occupational concentrations, knowledge and innovation, and regional connectivity.
Grads and Fads (Fall 2004): Building on The Changing Dynamics of Urban America, this study examines the relative importance of economic and quality of life factors in attracting and retaining college-educated workers. The project, conducted with Christopher Berry, revealed that the dichotomy of "amenities versus jobs" that seems to dominate the current debate on the issue is misleading: the importance of human capital in today's economy means that both workers and firms are attracted to metropolitan areas with high concentrations of human capital, deployed in networks of knowledge-intensive industries, functions, and occupations.
The Changing Dynamics of Urban America (Fall 2003): This major study, conducted with Christopher Berry for CEOs for Cities, examines the changing drivers of economic success in American cities and metropolitan areas, and how these affect decision-making for leaders across all sectors. The report illustrates our findings on what is happening in and to cities, what made some cities thrive in the 1990s, and what factors appear to make the critical difference for the future.
Cities and Economic Prosperity (Spring 2001): This study, completed for CEOs for Cities, features a data scan of economic indicators and activity in cities. The study finds that the assets of cities are enormous, varied, and concentrated in particularly critical sectors. It also finds that cities feature economies disproportionately concentrated in "new" activity, and that cities are both hubs and drivers of regional economies that transcend political boundaries.
© 2005 RW Ventures, LLC
