Rebooting Local Economies

Robert Pittman is an award-winning consultant, teacher and author in the field of community and economic development. His clients have included diverse communities, regions and states and leading companies in the US and abroad. Rhonda Phillips is a community well-being, development and planning specialist with experience in the private and public sectors. She is a three-time Fulbright award recipient and member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Rebooting Local Economies: How to Build Prosperous Communities provides real life stories that can put you on a path to building a more prosperous community. If you're an elected official, board member, community volunteer or citizen who aspires to live in a prosperous community, This is a must read.--Glenn McCullough, Jr., Former Mayor, Tupelo, Mississippi, Chairman--Tennessee Valley Authority, Executive Director Mississippi Development Authority Using real-world examples blended with just the right amount of academic research, Rebooting Local Economies is the equivalent of a master class in how to build a prosperous community. If you are an economic developer of an American community in need of a turnaround at any level, Robert Pittman, Rhonda Phillips and Amanda Sutt have done the homework for you and produced a blueprint for success. They have distilled the work of community development and improvement to its essence, and they have documented the results that inevitably follow when this recipe is followed. I encourage every elected community official, city manager and economic developer in the U.S. to read this manual. It's the best book on this topic I have read in a very long time.--Ron Starner, Executive Vice President, Site Selection Magazine and Conway, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia You have done almost an impossible task of creating a really concise guide for community development. The case studies are particularly interesting--and compelling. Strategic planning has long been associated with successful organizations; much time and energy have been devoted to creating plans that, for one reason or another, fail to be implemented. ??????In How to Build Prosperous Communities, community leaders are offered a roadmap to community prosperity that can be achieved by breaking the process into manageable components. The incorporation of important topics for consideration, including impacts from the global health pandemic, as well as contemporary case studies of communities with diverse populations, will provide individuals a masterful approach to changing the culture of their communities in dramatic fashion.--James F. Mellichamp, President, Piedmont University, Demorest, Georgia