What’s the key to growing Charlotte’s economy so everyone wins?

But somehow at the same time, by just about every economic measure, the Charlotte region’s economy is doing pretty well. Wages in industries that call Charlotte home are well above national averages, unemployment is down, forecasts for growth are almost unnervingly positive. People are moving here in droves.

So what gives? Where is the disconnect? How can these two things coexist in the same region? Isn’t a rising economic tide supposed to lift all the boats?

Historically yes, but the “new economy” we’re blessed with does not value manual labor the way it did back in, say the 1970s, and that means quite simply that the old ways of doing things need to be altered to match a new reality. But where exactly should the leaders of our city focus to enable this change?

Fortunately for everyone, the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program just took a look at this very issue in its report, called “Remaking Economic Development: The Markets and Civics of Continuous Growth and Prosperity.”

The report examines how to “put a regional economy on a trajectory of higher growth” in a way that “raises standards of living for all, thus achieving deep prosperity—growth that is robust, shared, and enduring.”

Sounds pretty great right? I want that jam in my town.

I highly recommend you read the entire report. It’s written as a one-size-fits-all report about any metro area, and a substantial portion of the examples and ideas could apply directly to Charlotte. This line in particular jumped out at me as it describes what I understand to be Charlotte’s historical approach to job growth:

“A regional economy can expand simply by attracting more firms and more people into the market. But accumulating more people and a higher job count does not always mean that workers and firms are better off or that regional assets are improving.”

So in other words, it’s great that Chiquita is coming, but how does that really affect Charlotte over the long term?

The report isn’t just a list of reasons why the old way of doing this is wrong. It also lists five “action principles” that the report recommends to “achieve the fuller promise of economic development to generate growth, prosperity, and inclusion.” Let’s dive a little deeper into these and think about what they might look like if applied to Charlotte:

(1) Set the right goals

“Leaders at the forefront of remaking economic development ‘begin with the end in mind,’ as Steven Covey famously advised. They set long-term goals that go beyond traditional headline economic indicators to achieve more robust measures of regional growth, productivity, and inclusion while also setting shorter-term metrics to monitor progress.”

I think Charlotte is on the right track here. Charlotte’s poor showing in the Equality of Opportunity Project study seems to have been a wake-up call, and the Opportunity CharMeck Task Force was created with the specific goal of “build[ing] economic mobility and access to opportunity in our community.”

That’s a much different goal than “expand the economy in the greater Charlotte region” or “grow the number of jobs in Charlotte,” which are just the type of goals that city leaders have focused on for the past few decades. It’s not that these are misguided goals. Quite the opposite. But it’s important to set goals and incentives that align to the outcomes you want, and recognizing the need for the Task Force is a big step in the right direction.

(2) Grow from within

“Leaders in new approaches to economic development focus on strengthening assets that enable their distinctive industries to flourish and grow from within, rather than rely primarily on marketing to recruit individual firms from elsewhere.”

This is basically saying cities shouldn’t try to recruit companies to move jobs to the city based on incentives, but rather invest in what makes an area unique and great and let it speak for itself. That makes a ton of sense to me. Now might be a good time to enact some sort of policy around this, while the Chiquita breakup is still fresh in everyone’s minds.

Rather than give Chiquita $1 million in incentives, why not invest that in strengthening Charlotte’s FinTech startup scene? Or clean energy startups? Both Financial Services and Energy are “distinctive industries” with massive corporate headquarter presence in the city. Why wouldn’t you want to place a bet on what makes your city great?

(3) Boost trade

“Contemporary economic development leaders actively support and promote export growth and trade with other markets in the United States and around the world to deepen their industry clusters and bring new resources and income into the region.”

Charlotte has one of the busiest airports in the country and generally pretty good infrastructure. We should view that as a major asset to the region and ensure that local companies realize all of their opportunities to leverage that infrastructure to reach markets outside of Charlotte. That’s much easier said than done, but the fact is we have a pipe that’s plenty big, we just need more stuff to shove through it.

(4) Invest in people and skills

“The skills of workers and level of human capital in a region are critical factors in determining the competitive position of firms and the path to growth, prosperity, and inclusion.”

What makes Charlotte’s labor force unique? From top to bottom, across all skill levels and industries, what is truly unique about the people of Charlotte? Is it “Southern hospitality?” Is it “they’re always on time?” Is it “they are great mechanics?” Is it “always have their shirts tucked in?”

What it is matters considerably less than that it is something that can be identified and marketed. Done correctly, identifying this characteristic of Charlotte’s labor force can become sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, something that everyone who works here takes pride in.

I’d really love to see Charlotte get creative and throw some resources around this. I am wildly unqualified to propose any real solutions, but wouldn’t it be cool to have some major campaign around developing “the Charlotte Worker Advantage?” From CEOs to mail room employees, what if everyone in Charlotte took pride in a certain aspect of doing their job? You would notice, and other companies would too. And they’d want to be a part of that.

(5) Connect place

“The most forward-leaning leaders are harnessing regional markets and connecting local communities to them. Markets—industrial, labor, and housing—are regional, but the people and assets that matter to markets are local.”

Whew. This one is a doozy. It touches pretty much every hot-button issue in Charlotte and tells us to figure them out since our collective economic future depends on it. This sentence sums it up: “strategically connect cities, suburbs, neighborhoods, and underserved populations to the broader regional economy.”

Alrighty then. So figure out transportation, access to affordable housing, and address rising inequality both within the Charlotte Mecklenburg region and in outlying counties. Got it. I’ll have my plan on your desk by the end of the week.

While that’s a tough pill to swallow and makes it hard to figure out where to even start, recognizing that those issues are more than just isolated concerns is extremely important in forging a path forward. If we can all agree that a strong transportation network has benefits beyond just convenience for the people directly affected by it, then it’s easier to swallow an ambitious transportation plan that may not benefit us personally.

Perhaps, to choose a completely hypothetical situation, you don’t personally have an occasion to ride a slow-moving streetcar from Trade and Tryon to West Charlotte. But if that streetcar provides access to jobs or education opportunities for workers who would otherwise not have those opportunities, that will have a multiplier effect on the local economy, the effects of which could conceivably benefit you, a seemingly unaffected resident of Ballantyne. Again, totally hypothetical situation we’re talking about here.

This action principle encourages us to think of our region in terms of a complex regional ecosystem, not to simply follow the more linear “new store means new jobs” way of thinking that perhaps we have in the past.

As I said above, I highly encourage you to read the full report and think about how we as a community can apply these principles to drive our city forward. Charlotte is at an advantage that it doesn’t have a lot of the historical and political roadblocks that many other large cities are faced with overcoming before enacting policy changes such as these.

Let’s put some pressure on our leaders to remake Charlotte’s economic development in a way that boldly lifts all the boats afloat on the tide of our landlocked community.