Economic Development and Sustainability: A Case Study from Long Island, New York

Abstract

Economic development is often used to promote sustainability initiatives at the local, regional, or national scale. This chapter reviews how a statewide initiative in the State of New York to develop ten regional economic development councils was used to promote sustainability in one of the regions—Long Island. When the economic development program was initiated in 2011 at the end of the Great Recession, the Long Island region quickly decided to focus on enhancing natural assets as one of the key guiding tenets. Since its inception, the local council has funded dozens of projects to preserve land, reduce pollution, promote and protect tourism assets, and preserve agriculture and fisheries. Substantive sustainability planning that took place prior to the development of the council supported these projects. One of the challenges of inserting sustainability in an economic development context is that sustainability outcomes are not traditionally measured using economic development indicators making it difficult to assess success. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that infusing sustainability within an economic development process can improve a region and frame development in new ways.