Welcome to the Building Communities Blog! Welcome to the official blog of Building Communities, where over the next five months, we’ll be sharing a series of 68 essays designed to explore and illuminate the strategies, insights, and methodologies that help communities envision and create their own economic futures. These essays are drawn from decades of hands-on experience in 82 communities across the United States, including Indigenous and tribal communities, and are organized into topics that cover every essential aspect of…

The Early Beginnings: How Economic Development Chose Me When I think back to how I got into the economic development profession, I realize that economic development chose me. Not the other way around. Perhaps it was a couple of weeks before high school “career day” when I was talking with my golfing buddy about who to go visit on this upcoming opportunity. Hey, my dad is the City Planner, why don’t you just go see him. So, I did. I…