Planning Local Economic Development: Theory and Practice

Dr. Edward J. Blakely is Professor of Urban Policy in the United States Study Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia. He has held academic positions in teaching, research, academic administration, and economic development policy for more than 30 years, including Dean of the Robert J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy and Dean of the University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning, and Development. He is a leading scholar and practitioner in the fields of planning and local economic development. Dr. Blakely served as a policy adviser to the mayor of Oakland and adviser to the Los Angeles Public School District. He was appointed by President Clinton as Vice Chair of the Presidio Trust, where he played a key role in the development of the former army base into a profitable civic facility. He has served on the Board of Directors of the American Planning Association, the Nature Conservancy, and Fulbright Association. In January 2007, Dr. Blakely was appointed by the Mayor of New Orleans to head the recovery effort following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Nancey Green Leigh is a Professor and PhD Program Director in the School of City and Regional Planning Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is a Fellow of the American lnstitute of Certified Planners and Co-Editor of the Journal of Planning Education and Research. Leigh teaches, conducts research, and publishes in the areas of local economic development planning, urban and regional development, brownfield redevelopment, and sustainable urban industrial systems.She is the author of Stemming Middle Class Decline: The Challenge to Economic Development Planning, and coauthor (with Joan Fitzgerald) of Economic Revitalization: Cases and Strategies for City and Suburb. Some of the journals she has published in are Economic Development Quarterly, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Industrial Ecology, International Regional Science Review, Journal of Resource Conservation and Recycling, Growth and Change, Journal of Urban Technology, IEDC Economic Development Journal, and the Journal of Planning Literature. She obtained her B.A. in urban studies and a master′s in regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a master′s in economics and a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley. She is a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Regents Fellow of the University of California at Berkeley and past Vice President of the Association of The Collegiate Schools of Planning.