Understanding Your Local Economy: A resource guide for cities
This Resource Guide presents practical approaches to conducting a citywide economic competitiveness assessment. This is relevant for assessing cities and wider city-regions. The Guide includes guidance on how to choose local economic development (LED) indicators and tools that can be used to collect and analyse data and assess the overall competitiveness of the local economy.
The Guide is intended for the people and organisations involved in the local economy assessment and strategy development processes, including mayors and municipal managers, strategy process leaders,and LED practitioners. Given the diverse interests of this target group,users are encouraged to make selective and creative use of the guide based on the interests, context, and capacities of their local communities.
To make the Guide accessible to different audience needs, it is split into two sections: the first provides an overview of key issues and tools; the second provides detailed practical guidance useful for conducting the local economy assessment.