Marketing for economic development is often routinely treated as a series of special cases addressing specific market segments (tourism, specific industry, etc.) or community attributes in general. City and regional marketing plans/packages are therefore often thematically disjointed. Most prospects, however, are going to view a locality holistically, rather than a set of (hopefully advantageous) conditions associated with a single economic sector. This is especially true for the types of high-tech industries most places want to attract.

In late July 2010, the U.S. Senate released its version of the new energy legislation. This version, compared to its House of Representatives counterpart, is far less comprehensive and significantly smaller in scale. The Senate energy bill is lacking a majority of the foundational components found in the House version that passed, narrowly, nearly one year ago.

When dealing with large-scale public programs, perfection, in management, implementation and oversight, is often not a realistic outcome. For these types of projects a certain level of inefficiency is expected. A recent example of a large-scale public program would be the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) that was passed in 2009.

In July, Dustin Woodward, a Research Associate for McClure Consulting, LLC, attended the World Future 2010: Sustainable Futures, Strategies and Technologies Conference hosted by the World Future Society (WFS) in Boston. For those of you not familiar with the WFS, it is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization that examines the influence of economic, social and technological developments and evaluates how they are shaping our future.