Ecn Development United States Department

ECN Development

United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD 2009) offers a series of programs intended to provide incentives to local government entities for promoting economic development. Those programs include the Renewal Community/Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community (RC/EZ/EC) Initiative; the Brownfields Economic Development Initiative (BEDI), and the Rural Housing and Economic Development (RHED) Initiative. These specific programs are offered in addition to standard community development loans and congressional grants. Workforce initiatives offer another type of motivation for local government entities and help to improve quality of life, citizen empowerment, and regional prosperity.

The RC/EZ/EC Initiatives are available to "distressed urban and rural communities" throughout the United States (HUD 2009). Practical incentives include "a combination of innovative tax incentives, federal grants, and partnerships with government, for-profit and non-profit agencies," (HUD 2009). The BEDI helps to create what are known as "Brownfields," thorough renovations and renewals of "environmentally contaminated industrial and commercial sites," (HUD 2009). The RHED focuses on funding for non-profit organizations, which in turn help organize building, housing, and other development in a community. Economic development programs can also be situation-specific as with finding offered to communities affected by natural disasters.

One of the key roles of urban planners is to encourage economic development. In addition to taking advantage of HUD incentives, urban planners can also solicit funding from public and private sources. Community Development Block Grants are one avenue of economic development funding. However, urban planners also need to perform measurements that will determine need, as many funding incentives are need-dependent. An analysis of economic structure may be performed as a preliminary technique, and "can be determined through variables such as: analysis of output, employment and investment data," (World Bank Group n.d.). Even SWOT analysis can help urban planners determine situational variables, approximate risk, and therefore maximize the efficiency of an economic development plan. Issues such as community competitiveness have a strong impact on outside investors, which is another reason why urban planners must take advantage of a wide range of techniques. Urban planners can encourage economic development via a multi-stage process: analysis of need, analysis of risk, and analysis of potential investors.