By Kim Siebert MacPhail
The founder of Northeastern’s Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy—Barry Bluestone—addressed the gathered members of the Middlesex 3 Coalition at their annual meeting on June 14 to emphasize the importance of self-assessment and adaptability for economic growth.
The Dukakis Center came into being in 1998, Bluestone said, to conduct “interdisciplinary research in collaboration with civic leaders and scholars—both within and beyond Northeastern University— and to identify and implement real solutions to the critical challenges.” In his talk, Bluestone identified the focal points of the Center’s work:
“What are the key challenges that face our cities, our towns, our regions, our Commonwealth?” Bluestone asked. “What kind of policy decisions can we make to improve the situation? How do we work with mayors and top executives, with the Governor and the Speaker of the House, the Senate President of the Legislature to make the kind of changes that we think will move the Commonwealth forward?
“[We at the Dukakis Center] began [by] doing a lot of work to develop a model to help cities and towns better understand what it takes to really be successful in economic development,” Bluestone said. The model, which became known as the “Economic Development Self-Assessment Tool” or EDSAT, has been used so far by 50 cities and towns in Massachusetts and by 90 communities nation-wide to assess community strengths and weaknesses when attracting business interests. Bluestone defines economic development as a “collaborative process that builds strong adaptive economies, but requires leadership.”
Companies move to municipalities—not states—and municipal officials play the critical role of “CEO for economic development.” In fact, said Bluestone, “everybody in the town is part of the team.”
The EDSAT tool is used to identify a particular town’s “deal makers” and “deal breakers” and to form the basis for a corrective plan of action that will result in more companies wanting to locate in that community.
“For a city like Cambridge, a deal breaker would be the high price of commercial property. For others, it might be high crime or difficulties in the permitting process. For companies ‘time to market’ is crucial,’” Bluestone explained, speaking of the need for business-friendly permitting processes.
Additionally, the corporate world may have an antiquated idea of what a given community is like; it is up to the community to change that idea. Firms— in the same way that colleges work through stacks of admissions applications— sort quickly through a list of locations available to them, Bluestone said.
“If you end up in the discard pile in the six minutes devoted to the first round [of college application reviews], no one ever sees you again. You don’t want to end up in that pile,” Bluestone cautioned. “If you have a reputation, [for example], of having a slow municipal process . . . game over.”
To access more information about the assessment tool, visit: https://www.northeastern.edu/dukakiscenter/resources/economic-development-self-assessment-tool/
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