Positive trends in growth at the national level do not guarantee that individual communities are or will be successful in developing their local economies. The needs of local communities have changed as the patterns of growth at the local level have changed. Thus the rules of local economic development as they relate to attracting newbusiness in order to promote economic growth also have changed. As communities compete with each other to attract new businesses and hence jobs to the local environment, they are discovering that the traditional methods of tax abatement and low-interest loans, coupled with job training, are not sufficient to guarantee a level of development that improves the economic base of the community. In fact, communities are looking for ways to ensure that they will get more from the investment than it will cost them in terms of tax abatements and infrastructure costs.

As firms increasingly engage in multilocation operations, communities are finding that, in addition to attracting newbusinesses, encouraging local firms to develop is a valuable economic development tool. The community's view of its resources has expanded beyond providing the traditional tax incentives to expand a community's economic resources to include factors such as a well-educated work force and adequate public services. Communities are nowmore likely to target the type of firm that is "right" for the community. The emphasis on locating manufacturing enterprises has diminished as communities look to "healthy" businesses that fit the changing needs of the work force and infrastructure. Explicit consideration of the impact of the newbusiness on economic equity in the community is also becoming more important, and growth and equity are increasingly recognized as complementary rather than opposing goals.

Many of these changes can be summarized in the phrase "sustainable development." The case of sustainable development is appearing more and more frequently in discussions of community economic development. What is "sustainable development"? Sustainable development is a process of development that "ensures the needs of the present are met, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. 9) The vision of sustainable development is one of developing within the capacity of our resources an ability to replenish themselves; by analogy to the financial sector, it means living off of the interest as opposed to the capital of our investment.

In the sustainable development context, economic development is managed and controlled in a way that recognizes the dynamic nature of social, political, technological, and economic factors in a local community. Ultimately, the process of economic development is changed from one of identifying incentives for business growth to one of comprehensive planning to address social, economic, and environmental concerns. The themes of economic development also change. Traditional local economic development policies pursue increases in economic activity and thus in the income levels of local residents. A larger tax base and lower levels of unemployment are equated with business expansion. Sustainable development means that growth occurs alongside community goals of increased self-sufficiency and improved environmental quality. In fact, different forms of growth are encouraged. The sustainable development initiative is not opposed to growth but rather focuses its efforts on answering the question, "How do we grow?"

Successful economic development has been achieved in many communities pursing a sustainable development approach. Among the success stories is Kansas City, Missouri. This city faced one of the most urgent economic development problems of urban areas—urban sprawl. From 1960 to 1990, the population in the metropolitan area grew by less than one-third while the land area developed more than doubled. The city's population was moving to the suburbs while the inner city was slowly being abandoned. As a result, the jobs moved with the population, and the communities in the outer ring of the city used traditional economic development tools, such as tax incentives, to attract new business. The central city attempted to compete by providing additional incentives. The burden, however, was clearly felt by taxpayers, as this increased over this period.

One community that has achieved long-term success is Portland, Oregon. Portland has channeled the economic growth in the city such that employment in the formerly dying downtown area grew from 50,000 jobs in 1975 to 105,000 jobs in 1998. This strategy has been successful because they focused the development of business in areas that are close to developed transit systems, limited commuter parking, and controlled the expansion of growth into the rural areas.

Kansas City and Portland are only two of many examples of successful sustainable development initiatives across the country. As a community's needs change and as development is more broadly defined to include social as well as economic indicators of progress, sustainable development and planned growth initiatives will continue to take hold. There are many opportunities ahead for local economies to grow and prosper in ways that recognize the importance of improving the quality of life as well as the economy's overall productivity and income levels.