Chris Gibbons: This Is How You Grow a Local Economy

<p>Almost exactly <a href='https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/4/15/how-does-your-economic-garden-grow'>one year ago</a>, we chose Chuck Marohn’s 2013 interview with Chris Gibbons as one of the Strong Towns podcast’s eleven “greatest hits.” Why this episode from among several hundred choices? Not only because it’s a compelling listen, but because Gibbons’s approach to economic development — <a href='https://economicgardening.org/'>Economic Gardening</a> — has become such a core concept for us. It’s like we said last year:</p> <p>[Economic Gardening is] an approach to growing a city’s job base and economic prosperity that doesn’t involve a dollar of subsidy to a large, outside corporation—and produces better results than those subsidy programs, too.</p> <p>Economic Gardening predates the Strong Towns movement by 20 years, but you can think of it as the economic-development analogue to our<a href='https://www.strongtowns.org/neighborhoods-first-talk/'> Neighborhoods First</a> approach to public infrastructure: a program that seeks to make small, high-returning investments instead of big silver-bullet gambles, by capitalizing on a community’s existing assets and latent potential.</p> <p>Or like Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn said in this new interview with Gibbons: “I tell everyone I can, if you’re not pursuing an Economic Gardening strategy, you’re missing out.”</p> <p>The approach too many communities take to economic development is what <a href='https://economicgardening.org/about-economic-gardening/'>Phil Burgess refers</a> to as economic hunting — or recruiting companies from other towns. As we’ve <a href='https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/7/11/convention-centers-its-a-race-to-the-bottom.html'>written</a> <a href='https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/24/a-tax-incentive-race-to-the-bottom-wont-make-texas-strong'>about</a> <a href='https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/11/8/were-overbuilt-on-the-public-side-and-underbuilt-on-the-private-side'>extensively</a>, this often involves