Economic Gardening is the opposite of Economic Hunting. Economic gardening is an entrepreneurial based approach to economic development that seeks to grow the local economy from within. Its premise is that local entrepreneurs create the companies that bring new wealth and economic growth to a region in the form of jobs, increased revenues, and a vibrant local business sector.
Economic Gardening is an inside-out strategy while Economic Hunting or as recently in Lower Macungie chasing strip malls with tax gimmicks is very much an outside-in strategy.
Oftentimes politicians prefer the hunting approach. With the hunt/poach approach comes large projects, ribbon cuttings, inflated job forcasts. (oftentimes with quantity, quality suffers) etc. Nice things you can put on campaign lit. But oftentimes these projects over the long term are contingent upon subsidies, abatement programs, special treatment, long term obligations and major government intervention akin to an escalating arms race.
The issue is the downsides to the hunt are substantial vs. the rewards.
Economic gardening is a much more resilient approach where benefits play out over the long term. For better or worse the Lehigh Valley and Lower Macungie have been very good recently at the hunting game. The long term liabilities of this approach unfortunately only will become clearer over time. Check out this article: Economic gardening is growing but what is it?
I believe it’s time to put equal emphasis on a gardening approach. One strategy is taking a good hard look at our sprawl zoning code which as currently written actually presents barriers to local entrepreneurs. That is step #1. That’s an action item that we’ll hopefully tackle of the next 3 years. But other strategies are more long term. Tending an economic garden doesn’t provide an immediate feather in any one politicians cap. It’s hard work.
Another step I want to concentrate on is just asking the right questions. For example:
If you’re a local entrepreneur in Lower Macungie or a small business with less than 100 employees what can we as a community do to help you grow and expand your existing small business keeping it in Lower Mac? ‘
Recently, we’ve invested significant money in low value hunting schemes. My question is moving forward what can we do for everyone else?
Economic Gardening in Emmaus