From Transactional to Transformational: Emerging Approaches to Drive Inclusive Economic Prosperity
The United States is in the midst of a major industrial transition, driven by macro forces and federal investments that are simultaneously pushing for reshoring, re-militarization, and de-carbonization. In this era of unprecedented federal investment and rapid technological change, cities across America are rethinking their approach to economic development with a greater focus on ensuring that the benefits of growth lead to shared prosperity for all residents.
Measuring success by the immediate outcomes of a single transaction, such as winning a grant award or landing a new employer, is no longer sufficient. Today's local leaders are embracing a more holistic, long-term vision that aims to transform entire communities and ecosystems, while also capitalizing on opportunities presented by the national industrial transition.
This evolving approach was on full display during Accelerator for America’s Economic and Community Development Practitioners' Network (ECDPN) virtual meeting in June, where leaders from Orlando and Cleveland shared their emerging strategies for fostering inclusive prosperity, with practitioners from Detroit and North Carolina contributing additional examples from their communities. The discussion, hosted by AFA’s Anne Bovaird Nevins and moderated by Bruce Katz, Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University, highlighted how cities are adapting their economic strategies to harness the potential of this industrial shift while also ensuring equitable growth for their communities.
As moderator Bruce Katz previously outlined, macro dynamics and unprecedented federal investments are driving a new wave of reshoring of advanced manufacturing. This encompasses everything from semiconductor facilities and related supply chains to military R&D and production to clean energy generation and storage. Cities and regions that are able to capitalize on these opportunities through strategic investments in people and place will reap the benefits of this large-scale industrial transition.
From Magic to Microchips: Orlando's Intentional Transformation into an Inclusive Tech Hub
The Orlando region, long known for its theme parks and tourism, is making a bold play for a high-tech future that creates new career pathways for local residents. Destin Wells, VP of Economic Development at the Orlando Economic Partnership (OEP), describes their approach as "transformational" rather than transactional. OEP is responsible for driving economic development across Central Florida’s seven counties, as well as the City of Orlando.
"We're not just counting jobs and investment," Wells explains. "We're building the conditions for sustained growth and innovation."
Central to this strategy is a massive and long-term investment in semiconductor research and manufacturing. In Osceola County, which borders Orange County to the south of Orlando and is part of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area, a 500-acre industrial semiconductor science park known as NeoCity was initially established nearly a decade ago, long before the Chips and Science Act of 2022. This development marked a significant shift for the county, which had historically been known for cattle ranching and tourism jobs.
OEP played a significant role in the development of the International Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research (ICAMR), now known as BRIDG (Bridging the Innovation Development Gap), which was established at NeoCity in 2014 as a key early investment. OEP was instrumental in attracting and securing the necessary public and private investments that helped establish ICAMR as a leading hub for advanced manufacturing research and development in Central Florida. OEP worked with local and state government officials to advocate for funding and support for the ICAMR initiative. This included helping to secure state grants and other financial incentives crucial to the project's launch. OEP also leveraged its network to attract private sector partners and advanced manufacturing companies to collaborate with ICAMR. These partnerships were essential in building the consortium's credibility and capabilities. Overall, OEP provided strategic input and guidance during the planning and development phases of ICAMR, ensuring that the project aligned with the broader economic goals of the region, particularly in terms of innovation, technology, and job creation. OEP helped raise awareness about ICAMR within the local business community and beyond, promoting the benefits of the consortium for the region's economy and its potential to position Central Florida as a leader in advanced manufacturing.
This early, strategic investment allowed the region to be well positioned to take advantage of the latest wave of federal investment across multiple agencies to support the reshoring of chip production in the U.S. The region has already attracted over half a billion dollars in state and federal funding over the last 18 months, including grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Economic Development Administration.
Critically, this investment in the strategic growth of a high-tech industry cluster is not limited to winning grants or attracting large employers. OEP and local leaders across the Orlando region are finding additional ways to invest in local talent to increase educational attainment and create career pathways to high-quality jobs in the sector for residents. Over the past three years, Osceola County has invested nearly $30 million in Osceola Prosper, which covers tuition and fees for any high school graduate in the county to attend Valencia College or Osceola Technical College through graduation or program completion. To date, the initiative has provided college scholarships for approximately 5,000 high school graduates.
Since the creation of Osceola Prosper, Valencia College’s enrollment has increased nearly 20%, and the program has enabled students who experience financial hardship to continue their education and career journey. Valencia, located less than five minutes from the NeoCity semiconductor hub, plays a crucial role in addressing the skills gap for manufacturing occupations through their Advanced Manufacturing Training Center. The Center is part of Valencia’s broader Accelerated Skills Training program, which reports a 91% completion rate and 81% job placement rate. While these statistics represent the performance of the overall training program, they underscore the potential impact that specialized initiatives like the Advanced Manufacturing Center can have on workforce development in the region.
The impact of simultaneously investing in targeted sector growth alongside local education and workforce development creates true transformation. In 2010, Osceola County ranked near last (61 out of 67 counties) in the state of Florida for high school graduates moving on to postsecondary education. In 2022, 63% of Osceola’s high school graduates were enrolled in college or post-secondary education, a huge jump from 48% enrollment for the 2021 graduates.
The UpSkill Osceola initiative, a regional, skill-based talent strategy, is another way in which regional employers and educators are partnering to get more local residents into careers in the semiconductor industry. Led by OEP, Upskill is helping develop a talent pipeline by working with local employers and educators to create skills-based career pathways designed to support the semiconductor industry. This collaborative approach not only bridges the skills gap between available jobs and workers' abilities, but also fosters local economic mobility by keeping talent within the region. By providing accessible paths to well-paying careers in a thriving sector, UpSkill Osceola has the potential to reduce income inequality and enhance the region's overall economic resilience and competitiveness.
Orlando's vision for driving transformational growth goes beyond just attracting big players and large-scale federal and private investment. They've partnered with Plug and Play, a global venture capital firm, to establish a new office in Orlando dedicated to advancing smart cities, in collaboration with the University of Central Florida (UCF) and UCF’s existing Future City initiative. This initiative focuses on utilizing technology to enhance urban infrastructure, such as public safety, transportation, and energy, and to improve the quality of life for residents. While this initiative only created four direct jobs, its ultimate impact on the local community and startup ecosystem could be profound.
"It's changed the environment, the landscape, and the ecosystem that our companies are working in," Wells says. This focus on smart cities and a dedicated innovation hub can also stimulate innovation in related fields, leading to the creation of new businesses and job opportunities in adjacent sectors. By creating a more dynamic, innovation-friendly environment, these transformative initiatives make Orlando more competitive in attracting and retaining both companies and talent, catalyzing long-term job growth and upward economic mobility in the region.
Cleveland's Urban Alchemy: Turning Vacant Land into 25,000 Quality Jobs
Meanwhile, in Cleveland, city leaders are tackling a different set of challenges. Decades of deindustrialization have left the city dotted with vacant industrial sites and disinvested neighborhoods. Cleveland’s population peaked in the mid-20th century at nearly 1 million, and the city now has just 370,000 residents. Over that same timeframe, Cleveland lost more than 300,000 jobs and over 20% of the land within the city’s borders is vacant. But with a creative use of federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, Cleveland is turning this liability into an opportunity.
As manufacturing employment has declined in many metropolitan areas over the last forty years, the state of Ohio and Greater Cleveland region has remained a hub for manufacturing employment. The manufacturing sector is responsible for nearly 18% of Ohio’s private industries’ GDP, and as of late 2023, about 17% of total manufacturing jobs in the state of Ohio are located in the Cleveland metropolitan area.
Ahmed Abonamah, who served as Cleveland's Chief Finance Officer from 2022 to 2024, described a $50 million Site Readiness Fund for Good Jobs aimed at reactivating at least 1,000 acres of former industrial land in ways that create 25,000 quality jobs for Cleveland residents. The fund has already begun to purchase sites for remediation such as a 10-acre property on Cleveland’s East Side that housed a 183,000 square foot facility for unloading and processing iron ore. The Site Readiness Fund is a collaborative effort between the City and the Cuyahoga (County) Land Bank, alongside economic and workforce development, philanthropic, and community based organizations. Fund leadership is engaging with neighborhood residents to understand and prioritize the community’s needs and goals, as well as private developers and funders to ensure market feasibility so that projects actually move forward to completion.
The goal isn't just economic – it's about healing the psychological scars of disinvestment. "You can imagine what that [level of vacancy] does to a community," Abonamah reflected. That is why the Site Readiness Fund is prioritizing bringing good jobs to neighborhoods, reducing blight, promoting environmental sustainability, and structuring its financial model to ensure that a share of the wealth generated by the fund stays in those neighborhoods. In the case of redevelopment of the former iron ore facility in East Cleveland, a neighborhood-based non-profit will take a direct ownership stake in the project.
But Cleveland isn't stopping at land remediation. They're exploring innovative approaches to affordable housing, including partnerships with modular housing manufacturers. By aggregating demand from various housing agencies and leveraging city-owned vacant land, they hope to achieve the scale necessary to make affordable housing economically viable.
Complementing these redevelopment and affordable housing initiatives is Cleveland's laser focus on its long-neglected Southeast side. From 2010-2020, the population of the Southeast side declined by over 13%, more than double the rate in the city of Cleveland as a whole. Today, this area has approximately 55,000 residents, with over 90% identifying as Black. The Southeast side community has experienced generations of disinvestment, which has resulted in high levels of poverty and unemployment and limited economic and social mobility for residents.
Marvin Owens, specially appointed as the Southeast Side Senior Strategist for the Mayor’s office, is overseeing a $15 million investment in everything from catalytic redevelopment to home repairs, known as the Southeast Side Promise. "Having a point of accountability... provides both the residents as well as the city with an opportunity to understand measurable results," Owens explains. The initial investments of the Southeast Side Promise will be targeted to home repairs and rehabilitation, commercial corridor revitalization, and large-scale site development. This multi-faceted approach aims to stabilize and rejuvenate neighborhoods and key corridors, while providing residents with a safe, equitable, and vibrant community.
Detroit's Catalyst: How Invest Detroit Bridges Gaps to Fuel Neighborhood Revival
Invest Detroit's hyperlocal approach, backed by mayoral authority and dedicated funding, serves as a model for targeted urban revitalization efforts nationwide. Mike Smith of Invest Detroit joined the conversation to highlight the unique position his organization occupies in collaborating with the City of Detroit on highly targeted neighborhood investments. He emphasized two key advantages. First, as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), Invest Detroit can not only partner on strategy and implementation but also provide lending to make projects happen. Second, he noted the importance of having a stable organization that spans across city administrations that can act as a connector, bringing together different partners to understand how various pieces fit together in the broader context of urban development. He suggested that while the funding aspect is beneficial, the ability to serve as a central node in a network of community partners is crucial for transformational efforts in urban revitalization.
For example, in the East Warren/Cadieux neighborhood, Invest Detroit has provided engagement grants directly to the community through its local community development organization (CDO), grants to the local developers to authentically engage residents as part of shaping the scope and tenanting of redevelopment projects, and directed philanthropic dollars to invest in the local park in partnership with the City of Detroit. These actions extend beyond its traditional scope of lending to include both serviceable debt and an equity-style product in a community that lacks traditional bank financing opportunities. Invest Detroit additionally coordinates and collaborates weekly across departments at the City of Detroit, including the Planning & Development Department, Housing & Revitalization Department, Neighborhood Economic Development Department, General Services Department, and Department of Public Works, among others, to deploy resources and troubleshoot obstacles as they arise before they become increasingly intractable.
The New Playbook: Collaboration, Patience, and Systems Thinking
While each community's specific challenges, opportunities, and strategies differ, they share common threads that define this new era of transformational, versus transactional, economic development:
Long-term vision: These cities are thinking in decades, not in financial quarters or four-year political cycles. And, critically, the vision for the future is happening at the local level so that it can withstand changes in priorities at the state or federal level.
Equity focus: Ensuring that the benefits of growth meaningfully reach historically disadvantaged communities is a core goal, not an afterthought.
Ecosystem approach: The focus is on building supportive environments for growth and mobility of people and places, not just individual deals. This requires addressing multiple dimensions simultaneously, including industry, workforce, housing, and infrastructure.
Cross-sector collaboration: Success requires breaking down silos between government departments and fostering genuine partnerships with private and non-profit sectors. The role of organizations that can act as connectors and implementers (like public-private partnerships and CDFIs) is crucial for transformational efforts.
Creative funding: Cities must leverage federal funding opportunities strategically to support local vision and priorities, rather than simply going after individual grant opportunities as they arise. They must also look at how to braid together federal, state, and local resources in novel ways, and avoid overreliance on any one single source of funds in a shifting environment.
New metrics: Cities need to adopt new metrics and ways of measuring success that go beyond traditional job creation and investment numbers to capture broader community impacts.
Regarding new approaches to metrics, during the ECDPN session, Kevin Dick from the Carolina Small Business Development Fund argued for the importance of measuring and valuing the economic impact of small businesses and neighborhood-level development alongside larger industrial recruitment efforts. This sparked a conversation about the need for new, more comprehensive metrics that can capture the full impact of transformational economic development efforts. Orlando’s Prosperity Scorecard is one example of this emerging approach. OEP is currently tracking a broad range of metrics to assess the transformational impact of a project like NeoCity and related educational and workforce development initiatives:
Track the increase in total jobs created within NeoCity and the surrounding area, segmented by industry (e.g., advanced manufacturing, technology, research and development).
Monitor the number and percentage of new jobs in high-wage sectors, particularly in technology and manufacturing, to assess the quality of job growth.
Measure the number of new businesses or startups established in NeoCity, focusing on high-tech and advanced manufacturing sectors.
Measure the labor force participation rate in Osceola County, especially among populations historically underrepresented in high-tech industries.
Track the number of individuals enrolled in upskilling or reskilling programs related to high-tech and advanced manufacturing industries, both through formal education institutions and workforce development initiatives.
Measure the number of certifications and degrees awarded in relevant fields (e.g., engineering, technology, manufacturing) by local educational institutions, including partnerships with NeoCity.
Track the number of companies within NeoCity offering on-the-job training, apprenticeships, or upskilling programs, and the number of employees participating in these programs.
Monitor the job placement rates of graduates from local educational programs in fields relevant to NeoCity’s industries, to assess the effectiveness of training and educational alignment with industry needs.
Measuring the impact of these complex, long-term strategies isn't easy, but the traditional metrics of economic development centered on numbers of projects, jobs, and investment dollars won’t capture the full picture. And, breaking down organizational (or intra-departmental) silos and aligning various stakeholders around a shared vision requires constant effort.
While there will always be headlines about the latest “mega-deal” or large funding announcement, communities are increasingly focused on longer-term initiatives that drive sustainable growth and inclusive prosperity. As Bruce Katz has noted, “The winning metros understand that economic development is not built on a singular transaction, but rather an integrated amalgam of investments.”
As federal dollars flow and the pace of economic change accelerates, cities and regions that master this new playbook will find themselves and their residents well-positioned for the industries and opportunities of tomorrow. From Orlando's tech aspirations to Cleveland's and Detroit’s neighborhood regeneration, a new urban economic paradigm is emerging – one that promises not just growth, but genuine transformation resulting in more inclusive and resilient local economies.