Cities Take Business Approach to Planning

Cities around the world are applying business-style techniques to planning and encouraging economic development.

1 minute read

December 29, 2010, 5:00 AM PST

By Nate Berg


Neal Peirce looks at the emerging trend and explores how cities are taking lessons from business -- and finding success.

"Seattle, the Twin Cities and the Cleveland area are even in the midst of what Brookings is heralding as a new era of applying modern business-style planning to the economic development potential of entire citistates.

Why this attention? 'Our world is marked by a network of metropolitan areas that work together and compete against each other,' some even spilling over state and national borders, said Wolfgang Nowak of the Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society. The metros are, he noted, 'the new regions of the 21st century, centers of innovation and economic growth,' but sharing 'the same problems: energy crisis, pollution, slum areas, crime, immigration' - all reasons for 'new forms of governance.'"

Sunday, December 26, 2010 in Citiwire

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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