Indigo Development is offering a service
to
municipal,
county, and regional leaders who are seeking
strategies
to jump start recovery from the still
unfolding impacts of the financial and economic crisis that began in
2008. We believe
that grassroots innovation is vitally important to amplify the impact
of Federal stimulus funds.
Bootstrapping
recovery in your region
will add to the national stimulus as well as provide relief for those
hardest hit locally.
It is
time to act locally and regionally to put the human, economic, and
natural resources you already
have to work.
The crisis is rapidly deepening. President Barack
Obama's team and Congress has approved the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and other national recovery programs. However,
leading economists across the liberal to conservative spectrum believe
this is not enough investment to create the thousands of new ventures
and millions of jobs required for full recovery. The growing depth and
expected duration
of the economic and financial crisis shows up in closing stores and
plants, layoffs, foreclosures, and governments at every level cutting
budgets and essential services.
Designing
regional and
local responses is
essential to minimizing severe hardship and renewing economic
development. This is a vital step toward restoring confidence and a
sense
of control in an economy in turmoil.
The recovery process is an opportunity to create a more sustainable and
competitive regional economy.
For instance, initiatives to increase the efficiency of resource use,
especially energy, are a means of cutting costs for all sectors.
Installation of renewable energy technologies and development of
ventures creates new jobs. Bioenergy from locally available biomass
makes your region more self-sufficient. See Indigo's pages on
Integrative
Regional Action Planning for guidelines on this
broader context.
Indigo Development is offering a service to support regional
organizations and their stakeholders in designing solutions for the
short to long term. We guide a process involving:
- A regional economic summit:
Participatory workshops and working conferences to bring regional
leaders and financial people together to design solutions, with support
from our experts;
- Expertise:
Authorities on conventional and proven alternative strategies for
financing regional sustainable development;
- Web-based interaction:
Use of online tools for collaborative innovation, knowledge management,
and access to regional and local solutions.
This process for regional
economic renewal emphasizes design and
innovation to respond to the unique crisis we are in. The response must
be based on the knowledge and experience of regional leaders, not
economic development theories developed for another time and place.
At
the same time, there are many proven programs and institutions that
your leaders can draw upon to build community and regional wealth.
These include innovations in such areas as eco-industrial development,
Smart Growth, community wealth building, and sustainable development
double-bottomline funds.
What sort of solutions might emerge from a regional economic and
financial summit and the associated innovation process over time?
- Development of a green ventures and jobs program to
increase regional self-sufficiency in energy and materials:
- A regional micro-lending program;
- Formation of a regional sustainable investment fund for
venture and real estate development;
- A community garden and greenhouse program to increase local
food production, with biomass-fed energy boilers heating the
greenhouses;
- A community currency system that enables trading of goods
and services;
- Redevelopment of closed big box stores and factories to
keep the properties active in the local economy or society;
- Programs for unemployed workers and their families to help
them stay in their homes and remain linked to job opportunities;
- A structure for sharing underutilized assets among
counties, cities and towns, such as cars, vans, and trucks from public
motor pools.
These are just a few options from a very large menu of solutions local
and regional leaders have created in the last decades. Your
stakeholders will design the right mix of their own innovations and
established ideas that work for your region at this point in time. The
desired outcome is a whole system solution that plans short-term
recovery in the context of a strategy for long-term sustainability.
Go to our
resources
page for some organizations, action ideas, and publications you can
use.
This regional recovery process will become a source of innovation for
the administration of President Barck Obama.
For more
information, contact Ernest Lowe at ernielowe at indigodev.com
or 707-542-4723. (insert @ as usual in the address)
