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Regional Competitiveness at the Rural Policy Research Institute through 2010. (The report can be found by searching online for "Past Silos and Smokestacks.")
• While rural areas could boast lower labor costs that urban America, this strategy worked--but several negative side effects came to light later. First, towns competed fiercely with one another for the factory up for grabs, making collaboration (and all the efficiencies that come with it) rare. Second, the majority of economic development funding went toward industrial recruitment, so much less money was available for new or small businesses. When even cheaper labor was found overseas, the "chasing smokestacks" strategy no longer worked very well, and worse, it had not created partnerships or built up entrepreneurs that would have helped future development, Drabenstott wrote.
• When the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development brought together leaders in economic development from 25 countries in 2009, they agreed that a regional approach to economic development was much more likely to help rural areas compete globally.
• "Put another away, the era of single community/county development is over," Drabenstott wrote about their findings. "Achieving a level of 'agglomeration' is critical to success."
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• Better together
• Certain "powerful synergies" happen at the regional level that don't happen in smaller groups: A greater variety of skills is available in the labor force, and more capital is on hand for new businesses, for example.
• Another way that a regional focus can help is that several communities working together can afford an economic development director, which often wouldn't be pos (Continued on page 5)
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