Viewpoints

Total Development

From Weekly Insight

In the mid-1960s, North Carolina Governor Dan Moore introduced an idea he called “total development.” It was a grand, rhetorical frame that was at the same time omnibus and finite. He defined it as “improving, to the highest degree possible, every aspect of life in our state. It means providing better schools and colleges for our people to prepare them for jobs and careers; adequate, safer roads and highways to get them to school, to work, to church, or to leisure-time activities; better hospitals and other basic services to protect their physical and mental well-being; better opportunities for cultural advancement.”

Growth and Decline: Two Opposing Public Quandaries

From Weekly Insight

Two seemingly unrelated articles have led me to ponder North Carolina’s policy future. The first was an article on the website CityLab that reported on Maryland’s $9 billion project to widen three of the state’s highways. Written from a skeptic’s point of view, the article provided an overview of how these sorts of public private partnerships (P3s) work and why some P3s are dubious.

Visiting the Home of “Future Thinking”

From Weekly Insight

Despite facing some of the most pronounced economic challenges of anywhere in the Mid-Atlantic region, Danville, Virginia has a significant competitive advantage. The Danville Regional Foundation (“DRF”), set up in 2005 at the sale of the Danville Regional Medical Center, is a driving force in Danville and the surrounding region. The Foundation takes an active role in supporting economic development and using philanthropy to fill-in gaps left by the public and private sectors. DRF is distinctive in the way that its leadership uncovers the cutting edge around community and economic development, both through grants to the community and through thought leadership across the country.

Legacy Cities in North Carolina

From Weekly Insight

The Legacy Cities framework focuses on accepting modern reality, identifying specific strengths and using those to frame the future. It focuses on the opportunity to rebuild and not the decay. The researchers driving the initiative collected a wide range of information between communities in order find trends and build a comparative framework.