four specific areas of inquiry
At CBZ we focus on economic strategy development for communities and implementation of revitalization plans. We typically analyze four specific areas of inquiry that highly correlate with revitalization success or failure: •
First, we seek to understand the market, not just in economic terms, but also as a community of individuals.
We seek to appreciate what attracted them to their community and create a story around how they behaved in the past, or may act into the future. Often income, education and experience are significant contributing factors to a community’s ability to adapt. Highly insular communities generally fail when adaptation is required. A population that has traveled and experienced various cultural norms is one of the best predictors of adaptive capacity. To understand Park City’s recovery, proximity to Salt Lake is a crucial part of the story. Likewise, for Leadville, its comparative isolation is critical. •
Second, we analyze the community’s capacity to act.
We measure both a market’s ability to pay and its
willingness to pay. We’re interested in understanding the combination of factors that lead a community to stay and reinvest, stay and complain, stay and withdraw, hold steady, or move. Interestingly, ability to pay is often not the limiting factor one might expect. Rather, a sense of confidence in decision-making ability combined with confidence in the aggregate direction a community points are paramount. Most soft markets we’ve consulted for suffer less from resource scarcity than from pervasive negativity that, in turn, metastasizes into anger at (usually) external forces like government authority or different races and classes of people. In Buffalo, the overwhelming majority of the population can afford far more in housing payments than they spend, but disposable income goes into cars and other highly depreciable “assets” at far greater rates than in Rochester, where, paradoxically, housing is proportionally more expensive. This is an important tell, often signaling a low level of adaptive capacity. •
Third,
we evaluate the physical condition. How much attention has the community given to on-going
maintenance of buildings and infrastructure? What is the history of capital reinvestment? What are the dig-out costs, and, more importantly, do changes in conditions suggest that the hole the community is in has stopped getting deeper? These are the outputs that result from a community’s capacity to reinvest in itself, and that relates to their inclination to be self-reflective.
Many “stuck” communities (Phoenix, Atlanta, Buffalo) demonstrate a striking reluctance to change
gears, whereas the willingness to experiment by others (Portland, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, Santa Fe, Denver) is remarkable. We look for changes in the physical condition of a place to tell us about capacity.
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Fourth, what is the resulting message, both to current inhabitants, and to the rest of the world?
Is it a
message of self-confidence or retrenchment? To what degree does the history of repeated reinvestments on one hand, or retrenchments on the other, communicate that it makes sense to act similarly? Is a city willing to make hard choices? Often the answer is no. But, in a few instances cities have demonstrated a resilience and desire to reflect. Such cities start by objectively imagining how they appear to the rest of the world. Image matters. It both defines and is defined by the market. Often we see in failed communities a bunker mentality: an inward drift that disengages from the market, a result of which is a normative isolation that cements counterproductive disinvestment behaviors.
whereas the willingness to experiment by others like Denver is remarkable” 63