The Dialogical Community and Economic Development

Abstract

Localities in the United States are struggling to adjust to the transformation of the national economy in the post-industrial era. For better or for worse, the central government has left local governments to make this transition on their own. Renewed concern for the local economy has manifested itself in the creation of local economic development offices and reinvigorated chambers of commerce which aggressively seek to attract new businesses, retain existing ones and expand the local economy (see Blakely, 1989).¹ The catchword for the eighties was ‘public-private partnerships’ (see Fosler and Berger, 1982), often taking the form of strategic planning, heralded as a process that would lead to revitalised cities (see Sorkin, Ferris and Hudak, 1984).