موانع توسعه اقتصادی پایدار: تجربه دالاس، فورت ورث

This article examines the scope of existing economic development activity and the motivations and perceptions of practitioners to shed light on the barriers to sustainable practice. In contrast to related fields like urban planning, the economic development literature has minimally examined how practitioners think about sustainable development and the extent to which sustainable development principles are adopted in practice. This omission is significant because economic development policies can have a notable impact on the sustainable development goals of environmental protection and social equity alongside economic growth. To capture the extent to which economic developers engage in sustainable development and the barriers that practitioners face, we study fifteen cities in the Dallas–Fort Worth region. We find that six key barriers – a conventional economic development mindset, incentive-based practice, a lack of resources, ad hoc planning, inter-regional competition, and a lack of coordinated regional planning – impede sustainable economic development in the region.

Since the 1990s, state and local governments have taken significant steps to address land use, transportation, and environmental issues with an eye on more sustainable planning and development (Birch and Wachter, 2008 and Portney, 2003). In comparison, economic development has largely been overlooked as a component of sustainable planning efforts in the US. Sustainable economic development focuses not simply on increasing jobs and tax revenues, but on the creation and implementation of programs and strategies that attempt to balance concerns for social equity and environmental preservation alongside economic growth (Blakely and Green Leigh, 2010, Campbell, 1996 and Newby, 1999).

This article studied the motivations, perceptions, and practices of economic development officials in the Dallas–Fort Worth region in order to identify if and how they engage in sustainable development activity and the barriers they face in adopting more sustainable economic development policies. In terms of sustainable economic development, our research shows that while economic developers are concerned with negative environmental impacts in relation to their work, they perceive environmental issues as beyond their influence and not directly related to economic development decisions. Further, equity concerns, particularly in relation to workforce development and place-based development, are a low priority and largely not viewed as related immediately to the core mission of attracting businesses and jobs to a locality. As such, similar to Zeemering’s (2008) study of the Bay Area, officials do not avidly pursue environmental initiatives, yet unlike many of the Bay Area cities, neither are they directly concerned with equity issues.