The twilight of the local redevelopment era: the past, present, and future of urban revitalization and urban economic development in Nevada and California

UnrestrictedRedevelopment has been the current dominant institutional form through which local municipal and county governments in Nevada and California have pursued the processes and goals of urban revitalization and urban economic development for the past half century. In both states, local redevelopment agencies have generated billions of dollars in new property tax revenues, sales tax revenues, transient occupancy and hotel tax revenues, and business license revenues. Local redevelopment agencies have also been responsible for creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in physically and economically blighted neighborhoods. Local communities in both Nevada and California have come to rely heavily upon redevelopment to generate billions of dollars in direct and indirect economic impact.; But over the next 15 to 20 years, the majority of existing local redevelopment project areas will begin to expire. Recent political, social, economic, and legal trends suggest that redevelopment has become an increasingly unpopular way for local governments to pursue the goals of urban revitalization and urban economic development. The courts and the state legislatures in Nevada and California have issued judgments and passed legislation over the past two decades that have continually sought to reduce the effectiveness of redevelopment in the urban environment. An opportunity exists today to consider alternative institutional arrangements that can address the criticisms of contemporary local redevelopment, including the criticisms that property-based economic development strategies are insufficient to meet the goals of urban revitalization and urban economic development, that local redevelopment agencies lack a regional economic development focus, that redevelopment is used to further fiscalize existing land uses, and that the use of eminent domain and possible principal-agent corruption of local redevelopment agencies renders local redevelopment agencies incapable of achieving true urban revitalization.; Future institutional arrangements of urban revitalization and urban economic development in Nevada and California must embrace non-property based economic development strategies and employ them using a regional focus. To do so, a new system of incentives, using a network-based model of government, must drive the future efforts of local governments to eliminate and mitigate physical and economic blight while encouraging true urban economic activity