This is the first in a series of reviews of resources about the local economy. It reviews the ebook, “The Local Economy Revolution” by Della Rucker. If you’re interested and in the UK, click on the image to go to the UK Amazon site. In the US, you can get access to it through The Local Economy Revolution website. Anywhere else and you’ll need to work it out for yourself!
The website is mainly a blog and it provides case studies supporting the book, allowing the ebook to be kept up-to-date without constant updates. The blog is up-to-date and new posts appear a few times a month.
I’ve started with this book and website because Della Rucker is one of the few people I’ve found who is taking on the local economy. Someone has suggested the term “local economy” is vague and so it is good to find an activist in a different context, using it. Further, Rucker has masses of experience and so the book substantially grounds the topic.
Three Undercurrents
Rucker begins by identifying three undercurrents (actually there are four but I’m ignoring the fourth for now) by which she means issues commonly ignored by practitioners in urban regeneration. So, I’m going to apply them to my experience with Burngreave New Deal for Communities in Sheffield, UK. If you follow that link you’ll find a summary of my posts on the topic.
Economic Systems and Natural Ecosystems
I was really pleased to see Rucker compare economic systems to natural ecosystems. This is something I’ve thought for a long time but never written about. We underestimate natural systems’ complexity at our peril; it is ecosystems that evolve, not individual species. Evolution is not possible for individual species because it needs the challenge of interaction between species. Remove one seemingly unassuming species and the system might collapse.
Rucker argues economic systems are similar. We tend to think of local economies as shops and, if we think a little more deeply, other businesses with maybe a few hidden self-employed. However, I have argued local markets are more than economic transactions. The local park, for example, may draw people into a neighbourhood. So, we need to understand how everything in a neighbourhood or city interacts to support or impede the economy.
Burngreave New Deal recognised this to some extent, involving a range of partners although, like most community projects in the UK, it marginalised the private sector. To arbitrarily select a neighbourhood of a few thousand houses as an economic unit, perhaps failed to take seriously Sheffield’s complexity. To spend £50 million pounds in that area did not recognise Burngreave’s connections to the rest of the city.
Economic Systems are Unpredictable
Which brings me to Rucker’s second undercurrent. Economic systems behave in unpredictable ways. We fool ourselves if we believe any intervention will have predictable results. Things are perverse. They do not behave the way experts say they should.
This explains how Burngreave New Deal could at the same time be the third best New Deal in the country and a total failure. I’ll look at its successes under ‘3’ but it feels like a failure today because when you compare Burngreave with other similar Sheffield neighbourhoods, it is the only one with no forum, no trust, no physical assets and no partnership. New Deal tore out the infrastructure that made Burngreave a community.
This was not an intended result, its byline was “Legacy not History” – so what went wrong? Perhaps conflict between the forum and New Deal, the recession, a change in council leadership to a party with its power based in affluent parts of the city, poor decisions about community assets all contributed. Who would predict that it might be an advantage to live in a neighbourhood that has not had £50 million invested over 10 years?
Talent
Burngreave New Deal did indeed invest in people and its educational results for example were impressive. What we can’t know is the long-term impact of those results because there is to be no long-term evaluation. The people who benefited may go on to brilliant careers and make a stupendous contribute for the good of humanity. But how many will live in Burngreave? In Sheffield? And what of those who have not made it? What has happened to them?
Rucker’s third undercurrent is talent and she makes the point that although many recognise why talent is important, for example, when you set up a businesses, there will always be people in a neighbourhood who do not contribute talent. One of our greatest challenges is to support the disadvantaged whilst at the same time encouraging those who can contribute talent to step forward.
To a significant degree New Deal recognised this challenge, focusing resources on education and support for young people. We’ll never know whether that investment was worth it or indeed whether its legacy is better services supporting children and young people today.
Implications and Secret Weapons
All three undercurrents are powerful ideas and certainly the New Deal programme recognised the first and third. Some of us were aware of the second and watched as our worst fears materialised. Rucker goes on to name four implications and three secret weapons for the local economy activist. I’ll review these next time as this post is getting to be rather long.
Do you recognise these undercurrents in your own community? Are there others you would add?
