A Citizen's Handbook for Evaluating Community Impacts: an Experiment in Community Education
Four nonmetropolitan communities were selected for an experimental community education program designed to train local citizens in the general procedures of economic impact research. It is argued that citizen participation is enhanced by a fuller understanding of the technical content of the planning problem at hand and that this understanding is best developed through involvement in a citizen research process prior to policy formulation. The experiment was only partially successful. A handbook was developed that is easily used by lay persons to make impact estimates, but a broad base of citizen involvement in research could not be developed. Community interest was strongest in places anticipating impacts in the near term. Retirees, citizens who could receive specific immediate benefits, and local planners and managers emerged as the best community analysts.
Economic base theory and applied geography
Economic base theory belongs to both economics and geography. The theory per se belongs to economics but it is geographers who have brought it to life by tieing it to real places and their economic landscapes. This paper identifies seven economic development problems commonly faced by development practitioners and illustrates how “best practice” solutions can be drawn from economic base studies. A number of studies are used to illustrate problems and approaches but two are featured; one is a regional economic base study that looks at both a large rural region and at five individual communities within the region. The other is a study of a single community that was initially completed in 1974 and replicated three times between 1974 and 1995.
Marketing the mpa degree: Access and program structure as determinants of successful enrollments
During the months of October through December of 1982, a national comparative evaluation of 186 MPA programs was undertaken to determine which variables are associated with enrollment strength across these programs. Two sets of variables, one corresponding to the structural characteristics of the program, the other corresponding to measures of access for these programs, were statistically analyzed. The findings are as follows: (1) the highest enrollments are determined by access to a market population and whether or not the program was located in a school of public administration; (2) there is a fundamental difference between programs oriented towards full-time students and those oriented towards part-time students; (3) full-time oriented program enrollments are dependent on structured characteristics of a program while part-time oriented programs are sensitive to access variables and not program characteristics and; (4) larger enrollments are associated with organizational autonomy with the lowest enroll...