IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirc/v27y2009i4p593-611.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A New Era of Federal Involvement in Regional Economic Development? The Case of the Wired Initiative

Author

Listed:
  • Henry Renski

    (Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 111 Infirmary Way, Hills North Building, Amherst, MA 01003, USA)

Abstract

In November 2005 the US Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration announced a bold new initiative—Workforce Innovations in Regional Economic Development (known as WIRED). In its first iteration the WIRED initiative awarded thirteen three-year regional planning and development grants to assist regions in integrating their workforce and economic development systems to better serve emerging technologies and high employment growth sectors. In this paper I discuss the WIRED initiative as a model for federal involvement in regional economic development. Despite a sound basis in regional development theory, the implementation of WIRED fell short of its original goals that, in many cases, stymied regional attempts at innovation. The difficulties experienced by first-generation WIRED recipients led to a stark revision of the federal WIRED concept and a reversion to more traditional workforce development approaches. To be truly effective, future federal endeavors in regional economic development must overcome the persistent institutional divisions, legal impediments, and political pressures that work contrary to the desired goal of a flexible and competitive regional development strategy.

Suggested Citation

  • Henry Renski, 2009. "A New Era of Federal Involvement in Regional Economic Development? The Case of the Wired Initiative," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 27(4), pages 593-611, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:27:y:2009:i:4:p:593-611
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://epc.sagepub.com/content/27/4/593.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:27:y:2009:i:4:p:593-611. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.