This piece of research from Tom Sanchez and Nader Afzalan is insightful for both what it includes and what is does not include. Tom and Nader examined the reported areas of expertise among hundreds of academic urban planners and graphed the resulting prevalence various areas of expertise, as well as the commonalities in areas of …
Author: dellarucker
I am an urban planner, economic development specialist and public participation facilitator. I specialize in economic development analysis and strategic planning for communities' long-term economic health. A lot of times, I refer to this as Sustainable Economic Development or a Wise Economy, because I am convinced that communities need to plan proactively for their long-term economic vitality, and I have spent most of my professional life trying to help communities make that happen.
I am available for speaking and consulting anywhere in the country. If you'd like to discuss opportunities, please call me at 513-288-6613 or email della.rucker@wiseeconomy.com
Gratzie!
From the Good Learnings File: the Power of Small Wins
This week, the nonprofit organization CEOs for Cities will be facilitating a national meeting of business and community leaders from across the country to explore cross-sector innovations and learning about how to significantly "move the needle" on urban issues. And it's not a small gathering -- 400 people from 75 cities is nothing to shake …
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Are You an Institutional Radical? (no, don’t duck…)
I spend a lot of time in blogs and publications that aren't exactly household names, and the brilliance of what you find there is often stunning. Cormac Russell is revered among a certain subset of the community development world for his work on articulating Asset-Based Community Development principles. As benign as that sounds, it's often …
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From the Now You Know file: This Is What Marketers Think of You and Your Neighbors (via Next City)
I've done a lot of market studies over the years -- usually for places where the "market" seemed to have run for the hills. In disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, Appalachian villages, and crumbled first-ring suburbs, I have a long history of being the person who gets brought in when people go, "We've got something...something...right??" The problem is …
From the Good Ideas File: 5 Pillars of a Citywide Revitalization Strategy
One of the challenges in the back of my head most of the time is the questions of needing to find a better, more integrated and more holistic way to plan for the future of cities. I don't have a full answer yet, but I know that a big piece of it has to be more …
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from the Good Ideas File: using what you got in Covington, Kentucky
My parents were Depression children who learned early on that things that other people abandon can have value. I wrote about my dad's penchant for curb-picking in one of the most personal essays in the book -- and I described his tendency to show me some piece of foundry casting or industrial leftover, describe a …
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from the Good Ideas File: job creation and young businesses
There's been some confusion and possibly conflicting information around small business job growth, new business job growth and start-up trends in general in the press lately. That is part of why this new report from the Kaufmann Foundation caught my attention. While the whote report is worth reading, this chart particularly caught my attention - …
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Time to piss off the bike riders: a lesson in unintended consequences.
I wrote this in response to a debate on Facebook a few days ago regarding whether or not urban bicycle riders should be required to wear helmets (a lot of people think that they shouldn't be required because the inconvenience may discourage people from biking for urban transportation. Kind of messes up the hair.) As …
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From the Good Ideas File: Knowing the cost in Reno
A lot of people have been weighing in on the debate over the Tesla incentives deal with Nevada, but I wanted to share this article as both a valuable insight into what exactly that deal included and as an exceptional example of how to make those costs transparent, tracing out the potential impacts clearly and …
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From the Good Thinking File: Are Deal Incentives Killing the Economic Development Profession?
Readers of the Wise Economy Workshop may recall some mutual interviews and content-sharing between me and Ed Burghard of the Strengthening Brand America platform. I've admired and appreciated Ed's marketing and communication mastery and his determination through his American Dream efforts to get economic development practitioners out of the dead end of thinking that recruiting …
The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived 