Should Economic Development Efforts Be Place-Based or People-Based?

"Planning debates over the relative merits and consequences of place-based (e.g., policing, enterprise zones, business improvement districts, neighborhood investment strategies, infrastructure, the gamut of supply-side urban development strategies, downtown redevelopment) versus people-based (e.g., training/education, some housing assistance programs, welfare as we knew it, means-tested transfers generally) are omnipresent, yet so far as I can tell there is no recent account of the overall status of these analyses, or systematic comparative assessments, or what the associated research or policy agendas might be."

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"First, there are the efficiency and equity arguments. Economists (e.g., Ed Glaeser) have long and strongly preferred person-based programs due to the locational distortions (they can promote the clustering of the poor) and crude targeting (benefits disproportionately go to property owners) associated with place-specific conditions for participation. That is, person-based policies are a first-best strategy for policies aimed at specific persons. Yet circumstances, resources, and obstacles are often spatial in character -- they are here, or over there -- as are local governments, who then in practice appear to find it much easier to find support for place-based programs."