Key to local or regional economic development is complementing immobile or less-mobile characteristics¹ of an area with mobile components such as technology and financial capital.  Therefore, current information about regional characteristics benefits those whose interests are the economic well-being of the region, as well as those whose interests may be served by investing in or purchasing from the region.
 

GEOGRAPHIC  INFORMATION  AND  MICRO-ECONOMIC  DECISIONS

Most of the economic uses of geographic information that make use of GIS are micro-economic:

• routing decisions
• decisions by individual firms regarding location of retail outlets
• marketing (product mix, promotion, pricing) decisions by retailers or service providers.

The Boyles book reports on a website that provides information to all regarding location of real-estate and location opportunities within a particular city.  The city's purpose is to reduce the cost to potential entrepreneurs, corporations, and investors who might benefit from such information and decide to locate economic activities within the city.
Take a look at this website:  what features does it have that support retail market analysis?  What types of retail market analysis are supported?  What ideas does the website give you regarding the use of geographic information and GIS for industrial location analysis?

The Boyles book reports on a website that provides information to all regarding employment and training opportunities, detailed workforce characteristics, and tips for seeking employment.  The city's purpose is to increase the likelihood that someone looking for (different) employment in the city can find it, and to reduce the cost to existing and potential employers of identifying workers.
 

GEOGRAPHIC  INFORMATION  AND  MACRO-ECONOMIC  ANALYSIS

The major instruments of macro-economic policy at the national scale are interest rates, counter-cyclical fiscal spending (e.g., unemployment benefits that sustain household demand in times of high unemployment), currency valuation, and trade policy.

Almost by definition, sub-national regions (states, provinces, metropolitan areas, municipalities) do not have most of these instruments.  (Even state unemployment programs cannot be truly counter-cyclical, to the extent that most states must balance their annual fiscal budgets).

So sub-national regions attempt to improve their immobile assets (labor forces, physical infrastructures, tax policies) so as to attract mobile assets (financial capital, highly skilled workers, households with external incomes (tourists, retirees)).³  How might a state government or local chamber of commerce know what mobile assets to attract, and how to improve immobile assets to be attractive?

1. Decide that any external investment is good, and try to keep wages and taxes low to attract any investment (also known as "smokestack chasing")
2. Target specific, mobile assets because they're highly valued by everyone (tourism, "high tech")
3. Assess current strengths relative to other regions, identify mobile assets that benefit from those strengths, reinforce those current strengths, and attract relevant mobile assets.

AGGLOMERATION:  a higher-than-average concentration of particular economic activities in some regions (compared to others).  (Also see Geog 207 notes).  Agglomerations could result from

• a given region having an unusually well-suited set of attributes for a particular industry or activity (input materials, deep-water ports, ore deposits, specifically trained workers), or
• a large and successful company leading to entrepreneurial spinoffs that desire to remain in the area, or
• benefits to similar activities that develop over time because of the success of an original activity -- because a specialized labor force develops, or specialized physical infrastructure is built, or the local/state tax structure is changed to benefit this large and powerful sector.

How does the ESRI article use the term "cluster"?  Compare this to the Colgan and Baker article.
Relate Porter's "diamond model" [Colgan and Baker, p. 353] to the idea of mobile and immobile assets.
Compare Porter's "diamond" to Colgan and Baker's "dimensions of clusters."
What clusters do Colgan and Baker identify in Maine?  What happened when they took this analysis through the political process?  What policy measures was the State of Maine considering to strengthen clusters?  What measures could other actors (municipalities, colleges, universities, chambers of commerce) take?
Given the other articles assigned for this unit, how might GIS be used to assist Colgan and Baker's analysis?
Take a look at this link.  How might this relate to one of Colgan and Baker's findings?
What clusters has Seattle's mayor focused on?  Look at this link and this link (in the latter, note the link to a study performed by Professor Bill Beyers).