resilience<\/a>.\u00a0 And our historical embrace of this theory is one reason COVID-19 has been so devastating.\u00a0 Following the recommendations of Ricardo, our community economies became too narrow, too dependent on outside forces, too vulnerable to complete shut down by an unforeseen crisis.<\/p>\nWe need a different way forward, what we might call the Theory of Comparative Resilience.\u00a0 My basic proposition is simple:\u00a0 Those communities that are best able to withstand future crises\u2014whether pandemics, climate disruptions, or financial meltdowns\u2014will be the ones that thrive economically.\u00a0 They will be the best places for investors to park their money.\u00a0 They will attract the best and the brightest people. \u00a0They will be the places where residents feel secure enough to innovate.<\/p>\n
As your community begins the long road of rebuilding, here are eight criteria by which you might measure your community\u2019s comparative resilience:<\/p>\n
(1) Local Ownership<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 What percentage of jobs are in businesses owned by people living in your community?\u00a0 A high percentage means your community is relatively independent and will enjoy the high multiplier benefits of local businesses buying from one another.\u00a0 Local businesses have always been the building blocks of a successful economy, but now we can\u2019t afford to get distracted by global businesses.\u00a0 Putting a penny into attracting an Amazon HQ\u2014let alone a few billion dollars\u2014rather than expanding locally owned businesses is the most counterproductive approach to economic development imaginable.<\/p>\n(2) Local Investment\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 To what extent are your residents investing in local businesses, projects, and people?\u00a0 Localizing purchasing patterns boosts prosperity but it\u2019s not enough.\u00a0 Why invest in global companies, about which you know little and which leave you vulnerable to the whims of public markets, when you can make a higher return, with less risk, by investing in the merchants you love, or your city\u2019s stormwater management system, or getting your son out of student loan debt?<\/p>\n(3) Economic Diversity\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 Is your economy diverse enough to meet the basic needs of residents?\u00a0 Put another way, how self-reliant is your economy?\u00a0 The more self-reliant you are \u2013 on local food, energy, water, and finance \u2013 the less global disruptions will matter.\u00a0 Diversity also boosts your local economic multipliers, which increases income, wealth, and jobs.<\/p>\n(4) Regeneration \u2013\u00a0<\/em>Is your economy living within its natural means?\u00a0 We are already spending 70-80% of our family budgets on services, which is great news for sustainability, because most service businesses have light environmental footprints.\u00a0 But even for goods like food, water, wood, and paper, we will need to bring inputs of our diverse industries in line with what our local ecosystems can renewably provide.<\/p>\n(5) Innovation<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 To what extent are you fostering local innovation?\u00a0 The key to economic dynamism is entrepreneurship.\u00a0 Is every person in your community with a great business idea, especially young people, able to find the capital, people, space, and partnerships needed to succeed?\u00a0 The proliferation of incubators, maker spaces, and shared workspaces are among the many tools communities can deploy realize this objective.<\/p>\n(6) Social Equity<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Is your community economy leaving no one behind, irrespective of race, gender, ethnicity, and so forth? Look out for blind spots in your economic-development strategy.\u00a0 One reason to embrace locally owned businesses is that we know, thanks to studies by the Federal Reserve, that communities with high densities of local business have higher per capita incomes and less inequality.\u00a0 Entrepreneurship and workforce development programs should focus on those who most need inclusion.\u00a0 This means embracing social inventions like worker cooperatives, community land trusts, and Time Dollar systems.<\/p>\n(7) Connectivity<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 To what extent is your community cosmopolitan and connected with the rest of the world? Are your businesses learning from their peers elsewhere? Are your policymakers?\u00a0 Those connections\u2014especially with people, culture, and knowledge\u2014will allow you to take advantage of the best of what the world offers, without becoming dangerously dependent on it.\u00a0 When other communities get in trouble, your connections will enable you to offer help.\u00a0 When you get in trouble, they can help you.<\/p>\n(8) Social Performance of Business<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Are all your businesses embracing the principles above?\u00a0 How many, for example, are measuring their performance through tools like the B-Corp assessment?\u00a0 Those businesses that are monitoring their social performance with regard to their workers and other stakeholders and that are steadily trying to improve it should be recognized and rewarded, and their practices shared and spread with other local businesses.<\/p>\n\u2014\u2013<\/p>\n
These principles of comparative resilience will play out differently in Oregon versus Alabama.\u00a0\u00a0Vive le difference!<\/em>\u00a0 Every community has a different history, culture, place, demography, marketplace, and political philosophy, and should adopt these eight principles in its own creative way.<\/p>\nHow will your community rise to this moment?\u00a0 Are you ready to get started?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We need a different way forward, what we might call the Theory of Comparative Resilience.\u00a0 My basic proposition is simple:\u00a0 Those communities that are best able to withstand future crises\u2014whether pandemics, climate disruptions, or financial meltdowns\u2014will be the ones that thrive economically.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3480801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79717,213528],"tags":[213755,134360,239511],"class_list":["post-3480791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-economy-featured","tag-building-resilient-communities","tag-buildingresilienteconomies","tag-coronavirus-strategies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3480791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3480801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3480791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3480791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3480791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}