Sunday, April 27, 2014

THIS is what Salem should model itself after, not carburbia

   http://read.feedly.com/html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.resilience.org%2Fstories%2F2014-04-25%2Fcreating-a-durable-local-economy-lessons-from-the-burlington-vt-model&theme=white&size=medium

Chris Martenson: Welcome to this Peak Prosperity podcast. I am your host Chris Martenson, and today we're going to continue our dialogue on how to take your money away from Wall Street and put it to work on Main Street. It is our mission to surface and promote the sorts of investments that make our world a better place. And, fortunately, there are more and more examples to choose from thanks to dedicated and hardworking people everywhere.

I was really intrigued by something by something that came up in a 

recent interview

 with Michael Shuman on local investment opportunities when he said this:

What I attribute Burlington's success to is that for the last twenty-five years, their economic development team, led in part by a fellow named Bruce Seifer, focused not on the attraction of global companies but focused instead on the nurturing of local business and local entrepreneurship. And they did it in a hundred different ways. They have done it through very careful downtown development of Burlington, they have done it through entrepreneurship programs and lending programs targeted to women, immigrants, minority groups. They have done it through interesting types of smart growth. They have done it through helping to organize small local business alliances as something different from the typical Chamber of Commerce, which usually gives bigger companies a louder voice. And I just feel like, you know, that is a testament—that is a design of economic development that more and more communities should be paying attention to.

(Much more at link ...)

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