Defining Economic Development. Arms-length organizations or government departments are working in support of economic development in nearly every community or region of any size throughout North America and in many locales around the world. The strategic approach to economic development varies significantly from place to place; while the objectives of the economic development function are similarly wide-ranging. Creating jobs, raising incomes and growing the local tax base are common objectives, but other goals like helping local industries, revitalizing specific geographic areas, developing local resources, increasing exports, encouraging new business start-ups, raising the level of innovation, increasing the financial return on public assets, increasing the number of visitors, preserving environmental values, improving local public and commercial services, and assisting disadvantaged social groups are just some of these alternative goals. While each of these objectives may be worthwhile at a particular time and place, they are really only a means to an end. Increasing exports, for example, may be a desirable goal but only because it is associated with job growth, greater innovation and higher incomes, not because having more exports is inherently better. Even the most basic objectives of well-paying jobs and a healthy local tax base are desired not as the end goal, but because they provide the means for individuals and communities to achieve a higher quality of life. Any myriad of potential economic development objectives can ultimately be boiled down to the essential goal of making people's lives better; however, that might be defined by each person. This is similar to the focus of the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which has three key dimensions - health (long and healthy lives), access to knowledge (schooling) and standard of living (incomes). Human development is defined very well by Xxxxxx xx Xxx (1934-1998), the founder of the Human Development Report (emphasis added): The basic purpose of development is to enlarge people's choices…. People often value achievements that do not show up at all, or not immediately, in income or growth figures: greater access to knowledge, better nutrition and health services, more secure livelihoods, security against crime and physical violence, satisfying leisure hours, political and cultural freedoms and sense of participation in community activities.
