Charles Marohn, the Founder and President of Strong Towns, shares five low cost initiatives that every city across the country should prioritize.

4. Economic Gardening

What do you do when you realize your city is never going to be able to subsidize enough businesses to create the jobs you need? That is what happened to Chris Gibbons and the economic development staff in Littleton, Colorado, when missile manufacturer Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) cut its workforce in half, costing the city 7,500 lost jobs and leaving 1 million square feet of vacant real estate.

There was no way to fill this hole with traditional economic development techniques. They were forced to innovate. The result: economic gardening, an approach that focuses on growing jobs in existing businesses rather than paying a business to relocate to the community. It’s gardening, not hunting.

The great insight of Economic Gardening is that most job creation comes from Second Stage businesses, those that are beyond the startup phase but not yet at the size of a Stage 3 corporation. Stage 2 businesses are lead by entrepreneurs, crazy people living on the edge of chaos who don’t really appreciate that they can actually fail. These special people would maybe like a handout, but they don’t need it. What they desperately need – because they are so focused on their niche expertise and are not, at heart, business people – is basic assistance growing their operation.

Who are my competitors? What do they charge? What markets can I expand to? An Economic Gardening approach is able to answer these kind of questions, and more, for rapidly growing businesses at a fraction of the cost of traditional business handouts. The result: faster job growth, higher paying jobs, greater resiliency during economic downturns and far less risk of failure. Growing Stage 2 businesses creates market demand for more Stage 1 enterprises and, over time, develops a workforce that attracts Stage 3 employers. It’s the economic development zen spot.

Every city in America should throw out the traditional chase and subsidize approach and switch to Economic Gardening.

Resources:

• Economic Gardening at the Edward Lowe Foundation • Economic Gardening is Growing, But What Is It? • Interview with Chris Gibbons