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William Fulton

William Fulton

Contributor

William Fulton is a professor of practice at the University of California, San Diego, a senior adviser to PFM Consulting Group, and author of the Substack newsletter The Future Of Where. Previously he was mayor of Ventura, Calif., and director of planning and economic development for the city of San Diego, as well as director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. He is the author of eight books, including Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us To Connect And Innovate.

Building a local economy around retirees may seem like the perfect growth formula, but it has its flaws.
There's a calculus for figuring out what a state or locality can do to prime the development pump.
As an economic development strategy, agriculture usually looks like a loser.
Forget about the brightly lit movie complex and pedestrian shopping patterns. The New Economy isn't for everyone.
For states and cities, the trick is to capture the wealth when and where it's created and put it to long-term use locally.
To succeed, airports will have to provide travelers with many business services that are accessible without a car.
Commuters are infringing on resort communities, making it hard to keep cheap housing around for local workers.
The time to do strategic thinking is before you need to.
When the Pentagon targets a base near you, it could translate into serious economic opportunities.
Cities need to attract both the "creative class" and blue-collar manufacturing to survive in the 21st century.