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Planning Training for Revitalization Policies in the 1990s: some issues from Metropolitan Bilbao by Arantza Rodriguez

1. Shifting emphasis on local economic policy

Processes of economic restructuring and the effects of structural adjustment differ widely among places. These differences render traditional top-down and generalistic approaches quite ineffective in achieving local and economic recovery targets. It is now widely recognised that decentralised, bottom-up strategies, that take into account local and regional specificity's, have a much greater chance of being successful. On the basis of this consideration, the crisis of traditional regional policy (Granados and Segui, 1990) has been followed, through the 1980s, by the proliferation of local and regional development policies based on stimulating indigenous potentials and local resources. Generally, these policies have combined a strong focus on human resources, acute awareness of local labour markets operation, and the promotion of new small and medium sized firms.

While the success of local economic development strategies depends on a wide range of factors and resources, in recent years, the role of the so-called invisible or intangible factors has been increasingly called up. Along these factors are included: the strategic assessment of local strengths and weaknesses, knowledge of the local labour market, the effective construction of consensus, broad participation of the community, local leadership, etc.. Moreover, it is argued that the success or failure of local development is closely related to the capacity of local actors to mobilise the invisible factors for a more effective use of available resources (OECD, 1993). The challenge for local and regional institutions becomes, then, how to build up these capacities, to animate and manage successful economic development.

2. Mobilising local indigenous potentials

Generally, local and regional development initiatives have followed a very ad hoc approach, making use of a wide array of instruments: infrastructure and public facilities developments, creation of new industrial land sites, extensive vocational training programs, provision of financial resources and technical advisory services for new start-up firms, etc.. Despite claims to the contrary, local and regional authorities have, to a large extent, applied these measures with little regard for local specificities; they have striven to make their areas attractive to foreign investments or to strengthen their local economic base but without any clear guidelines for the short, medium and long-term. Furthermore, in an attempt to attract increasingly mobile capital, localities and regions have ended up adopting similar types of initiatives and developments (waterfront redevelopment's, cultural centres...) which, on the one hand, tend to subsume their differences under a homogeneous ready-made image of places and, on the other, makes any competitive advantage gained by these means ephemeral, as imitators quickly follow up (Albrechts, 1992).

Yet, the appraisal of the extensive experience accumulated on local economic development initiatives has shown the need for a more systematic approach and has led to the adoption of strategic planning as a major tool for rationalising local economic policy and placing it in an integrated framework. The production of strategic plans has become a common practice now; the objective of these plans is to stimulate a process of consensus building on the basis of in depth analysis that identifies local / regional strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and delimits areas of intervention; this effort leads to the formulation of a comprehensive (but flexible) plan for action, which results from the discussions among all social actors involved in this process.

In this context, reinforcing so-called indigenous potentials and local factors implies paying close attention to local, regional characteristics; it means to focus on specific fields of intervention and define the strategies necessary to achieve pre-determined goals. But, drafting the plan is only a first step in the new mode of local development; the question remains as to how to implement or rather, how to build the capacities on the part of institutions to carry out effectively the new strategy.

3. Building up local human capacities: Training for economic development

Training has been one of the key fields of intervention in local economic development policy. Indeed, improving human resources is considered crucial for a locality's economic recovery. Generally, training programs are oriented towards providing 'long term employment', particularly youth, women, minorities and displaced workers from industrial decline, training in fields where there are detected shortages. Now, one of the fields where such skill shortages have been most clearly perceived, in recent years, is precisely in economic development planning. Significant changes in the orientation of local / regional planning has brought about an important deficit of professionals in this area. The move away, first, from a strong physical bias in planning towards a more socio-economic oriented planning and, second, from strengthening the regional export base and inward investment attractiveness towards a focus on local factors of competivity, has created the need for a new breed of urban / local / regional planners. Albrechts and Swyngedouw (1989) suggest that the new profile of the planner could be refashioned around new and changing roles, requiring a variety of skills, such as an understanding of structural (macro) processes, the technical expertise to make feasible proposals operational, and the managerial capacity to take an active part in decision and implementation processes.

However, educational institutions are often very slow in adapting their planning curriculum to meet the new needs of the changing field, making it necessary to devise alternative means to generate the necessary skills.

4. Training for economic development in metropolitan Bilbao

Devising a new profile for local economic development agents (LEDA)

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