Experts say ‘future-smart’ planning vital in new economy
Dean Whittaker, an economic development expert from the Midwest, thinks businesses and local governments need to be more “future-smart” ”“ and that Westchester County is ahead of most communities across the country in thinking about what lies ahead in a society of fast-evolving technology and changing demographics.
“It”™s not adapt or die anymore,” Whitaker, the former managing director of industrial development for the state of Illinois, told an audience of about 250 Westchester County Association members and guests in his keynote address at the “Westchester: County of Tomorrow” conference presented by the WCA”™s Blueprint for Westchester committee. “It”™s anticipate or die.”
“How do you figure out where it”™s going and how do you get ahead of the game?”
That data-informed mental exercise is not much a part of current operations at businesses, said Whittaker, whose data analytics company in Holland, Mich., Whittaker Associates Inc., provides market research and trend analysis for economic development agencies and private companies in real estate and other industries. Only about 1 percent of a corporate manager”™s time is spent thinking about the long-term future beyond five years, he said.
“What happens is we”™re always trying to catch up to solve this year”™s problems,” he said. Westchester County “is maybe one of five or 10 in the country that are really thinking about the future.”
In Westchester, the future will be shaped in part by demographic change, as the population ages in a county where the birth rate has lowered in recent years.
The county”™s population of residents 10 years of age or younger dropped 3 percent from 2009 to 2014, Whittaker noted, while its 35-to-40 age bracket dropped 7 percent in the same period. The latter age group “is your future, number 1, and your prime income earners, number 2,” he said.
The affordability of housing for the county”™s younger adult population is a factor affecting its future. “Housing costs are one of your biggest hurdles to get over,” said Whittaker, who suggested that “millennial dormitories” on commuter rail lines could be one solution to the county”™s dearth of affordable housing.
Whittaker in his analysis of Westchester found a lack of community engagement by major corporations in the county such as IBM. “How do you re-engage the major players? I find a real disconnect between your major companies and the community,” he said.
Companies must re-engage in training the workforce for what Whittaker predicted will be the “gig economy” of the future, with workers moving “from job to job” on temporary projects. “I think there”™s going to be quite a shift in education,” he said. “You have quite a few silos here. Those silos have to figure out how to work together.”
“Continuous learning ”“ we”™ve got to get back to school and stay there.”
In planning for the future, “Who should be at the table? Everyone, and especially the people you don”™t agree with,” Whittaker said.
From Chattanooga, Tenn., Mayor Andy Berke brought to his Westchester audience an account of how a once-thriving industrial center of the South ”“ called “the dirtiest city in America” by Walter Cronkite in 1969 ”“ saw its economy collapse as jobs moved overseas and is now being reshaped as a tech economy supported by a downtown innovation district for entrepreneurs and a municipally owned fiber optic communications infrastructure that freely connects every home in the city with up to 10 gigabytes of data.
With new affordable housing, Chattanooga”™s downtown by 2017 will double its population compared with just two years ago, Berke said. And in an effort to “create a fairer city,” the mayor said, its growing innovation economy “includes people of color and women.”
“Part of getting the politics of all this right is getting the buy-in from the bottom up,” Berke said. “If you don”™t, it”™s all going to collapse around you.”
Seth Pinsky, a former New York City economic development chief and currently executive vice president at RXR Realty, a joint-venture partner in major downtown redevelopment projects in New Rochelle and Yonkers, described efforts by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg”™s administration to diversify the city”™s economy and wean it from its heavy reliance on Wall Street. But the measures taken in New York City or Chattanooga to boost economic development might not be solutions for Westchester, he cautioned.
“The truth is that what works in one place is unlikely to work in another place,” Pinsky said. “I think what is transferable is certain approaches to economic development.”