Abstract:

The impact of the recession that began in 2008 is still being felt in many cities across the United States. The path to recovery has been slow with many cities still facing depressed housing values, vacancy and abandonment, revenue loss, and public sector layoff. Stronger economic development planning at the local level that leverages assets and builds on core strengths is a possible, long term remedy. The crisis has pushed the federal government to directly invest in distressed local economies and develop innovative approaches to federal-local collaboration. These US federal actions can be considered soft interventions in comparison to the current federal structure for economic development planning in Russia.

The main purpose of my research is to examine the American experience of economic development planning at various levels of government and consider what policies and approaches may be applicable for Russia which has a vastly different federal framework.

This paper examines two primary questions: (1) What is the framework for the federal role in U.S. economic development planning and its influence on planning at other levels of government? (2) Do regional and local levels of government embed economic development policy into traditional land use planning to have a more integrated approach to urban regeneration? These two questions explore different levels of policy alignment in the US context as compared to Russia. The first question explores the level of vertical alignment or integration of federal-state-local economic development policy. The second question explores the degree of horizontal alignment or integration of economic development strategy into transition land use or spatial planning.