18 Chapters from policy to delivery
A comprehensive handbook for professionals working with the place economy Buy the hardcover versionDownload a free sample chapter
The Practitioner's Guide for Everyone Whose Work Shapes Places and Economies
About This Book
There has never been a comprehensive practitioner handbook for UK local and regional economic development.
American textbooks are thorough — but they describe a different institutional system, different funding architecture, and different political context.
Academic journals are rigorous — but they rarely synthesise their findings into practical guidance that practitioners can use.
Government guidance documents describe what should happen — but stay largely silent on how to make it happen in conditions of political pressure, resource constraint, and institutional complexity.
The Local & Regional Economic Development Handbook was written to fill that gap.
It covers the full breadth of the field — from the economic theory underpinning place-based intervention to the practical realities of strategy, enterprise support, inward investment, skills, inclusion, place-making, climate transition, and evaluation.
Every chapter is grounded in UK and international practice, policy history, and the real experience of delivery — including the failures, the implementation patterns that repeat across programmes and decades, and an honest assessments of what works and what doesn’t.
It was written for professionals who deal with local, regional and urban economic affairs – and this includes planners, property professionals, university leaders, skills specialists, civil servants, and community leaders – as well as economic developers.
Who The Book is For
Economic Development Practitioners The comprehensive career reference for everyone in the profession — from new starters to directors, from specialists to generalists, from local authorities to national programmes. → Find your level
Town & City Planners Bridge the gap between spatial decisions and economic outcomes. Build the evidence literacy to interrogate the economic cases put in front of you. → For planners
Real Estate & Property Understand the economic forces — agglomeration, cluster dynamics, place trajectory — that determine long-run location value and where occupier demand will genuinely concentrate. → For property professionals
Universities & Higher Education Navigate the civic university agenda and local growth partnerships with a proper understanding of the economic development landscape you’re expected to help shape. → For HE professionals
Skills & Employment Connect provision design and employer engagement to the labour market intelligence and economic strategy that should be driving them — but often isn’t. → For skills professionals
Government & Civil Servants Design, fund, and evaluate economic development interventions with a clear understanding of the implementation failure patterns that have defined the UK’s regional policy record. → For civil servants
Community Leaders & Anchor Institutions Understand the economic development system well enough to engage with it on your own terms — not just as a consultee, but as a voice that shapes outcomes. → For community leaders
Teams & Organisations Build shared frameworks, common language, and collective capability across an economic development team, Combined Authority, LEP, or consultancy. → For organisations
The Practitioner's Guide for Everyone Whose Work Shapes Places and Economies
Chapter Guide
PART I: FOUNDATIONS
Chapter 1 – Rationale
Why places need economic development intervention. Markets fail, deindustrialisation scars regions for decades, and without deliberate action, disadvantaged places fall further behind. Makes the case for public investment in LRED.
Chapter 2 – Introducing LRED Functions
Maps the full range of economic development activities: job creation, skills, enterprise, inward investment, place-making, poverty reduction, and resilience — explaining what practitioners actually do day-to-day.
Chapter 3 – Megatrends
Examines the major global forces reshaping local economies: technological change, demographic shifts, globalisation, climate transition, and digitalisation, and what they mean for practitioners navigating an increasingly volatile world.
Chapter 4 – Essential Economics
Core economic concepts practitioners need: factors of production, GVA, labour markets, productivity, multipliers, and market failure. Illustrated through Cornwall’s tourism economy to show how economics explains real local challenges.
Chapter 5 – Policy
How economic policy is made, what shapes it, and how national frameworks create the context for local action. Helps practitioners understand policy levers, funding programmes, devolution, and how to work effectively within them.
Chapter 6 – Strategy
How to develop, structure, and deliver effective economic strategies. Covers the ten-stage process from scoping to delivery, evidence frameworks, stakeholder engagement, and the consultant-versus-in-house debate.
Chapter 7 – Informed Decision-Making
Using data, evidence, and intelligence to underpin decisions. Covers analytical tools, evaluation approaches, theory of change, and how to balance rigorous evidence with practical judgement under uncertainty.
Chapter 8 – Economic Development Theories
From classical economics to agglomeration, endogenous growth, new economic geography, and evolutionary theory — explaining why regions prosper or decline, and why theory matters for practitioners designing real interventions.
PART II: PRACTICE
Chapter 9 – Industrial Development and Clusters
Why industrial clusters like Motorsport Valley drive prosperity, how they form and self-reinforce, and how practitioners can identify, support, and grow them. Includes international case studies from Denmark and Research Triangle Park.
Chapter 10 – Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
Building entrepreneurial ecosystems, supporting start-ups and scale-ups, and overcoming cultural and structural barriers to enterprise. Covers business support, access to finance, and cultivating the conditions for growth.
Chapter 11 – FDI and Inward Investment
Attracting foreign direct investment: why it matters, how competitive the global market is, the tools and approaches for targeting investors, and how to maximise local economic impact rather than just landing the headline announcement.
Chapter 12 – Innovation
Innovation as an economic development imperative. Covers knowledge transfer, innovation districts, public procurement as demand stimulus, triple helix governance, and pragmatic ecosystem building from existing regional strengths.
Chapter 13 – Education and Skills
Skills as economic development’s foundation. Addresses skills gaps, sector-versus-occupation distinctions, megatrend impacts on labour markets, and how to design effective skills interventions that align supply with employer demand.
Chapter 14 – Economic Participation, Employability, and Unemployment
Supporting people into quality work: tackling unemployment, economic inactivity, underemployment, and the structural barriers preventing disadvantaged groups from accessing opportunities. Practical employability programme frameworks included.
Chapter 15 – Poverty and Inequality
How poverty undermines economic development through eroded human capital, reduced productivity, and intergenerational disadvantage. Makes the case that inclusive growth isn’t a side issue — it’s central to sustainable economic performance.
Chapter 16 – Place, Infrastructure, and Real Estate
The property-led regeneration model, its strengths and failures, and the shift towards more inclusive placemaking. Uses Docklands, Baltimore, and international cases to show what works and why gentrification remains a persistent paradox.
Chapter 17 – Low Carbon, Climate Change, and Sustainability
Climate transition as mainstream economic development territory. Port Talbot’s just transition challenge illustrates how decarbonisation creates both risk and opportunity, requiring active local intervention to prevent communities being left behind.
PART III: CONCLUSIONS
Chapter 18 – Applying This Handbook: Key Lessons for Practice
Ten distilled lessons: context matters, place is foundational, evidence informs but doesn’t replace judgement, implementation is everything, inclusion is non-negotiable, and climate is central. A practical call to action for economic development professionals.
How To Use This Handbook
This handbook is designed to be used in different ways by different readers. If you are new to economic development, reading it cover to cover will give you the most comprehensive grounding available in the UK field.
If you are an experienced practitioner, it is designed as a desk reference — return to chapters relevant to your current work, use the cross-references to explore connections across disciplinary boundaries, and draw on the evidence base to support your recommendations.
If you are working in an adjacent profession — planning, property, higher education, skills, government, community development — it is designed to be navigated by the chapters most relevant to your specific context. The guide for your profession on this website identifies which chapters are most directly useful to you.
For senior leaders and elected members,
Part Three is particularly valuable — it addresses the strategy, implementation, and political dimensions of economic development that determine whether technical work translates into real outcomes.