Dispersal Approach to Local Economic Development
A worker from North East Brazil once told me that the most popular tourist trinkets sole in that desolate region of depleted natural resource were carvings of villagers in a long line leaving the area for the as-yet-not-depleted-rain-forest and cities carrying their possessions on their heads.
The approach of "diffusion" or "dispersal" can be initiated by local people in "ghetto" areas themselves, or by planners who wish to initiate local economic development. One of the problems with this approach, whichever way it is initiated is that it depletes the ghetto area of leadership. The process is a "brain drain". Places left in the ghetto areas are frequently replaced by others very quickly. Many attempts to develop human capital in order to improve a ghetto economy inadvertently end up as diffusion programs as people "graduate out" of the community.
Even if commuting is possible, ghetto residence often problematic owing to the problems of race and class discrimination on any job site.
Perhaps ghetto economic development needs to be incorporated into a larger regional economic initiative using the ghetto location as a "pass through point" like a booster station on a pipeline for concerted improvement to human capital for the entire region. Such an approach could then be incorporated into a larger funding structure, and be conducted in such a way that those who wanted to live in a particular area, be it in a core area, rural village, or bush location, would not thereby be selecting also inferior schools, substandard housing, and chronic unemployment. It would simply be a choice of locational preference.
Links to sites related to dispersion issues are listed below.
Links To Further Resources
navigation