This section of our resource guide for preparing Local Economic Assessments (LEA) contains links to information about sustainable economic growth.
Sustainable economic growth doesn't just relate to the natural environment, but to the ability to sustain economic activity and growth in an area and meet the needs of current and future generations. The LEA can be a means of highlighting and considering areas such as:
- The relationship between the local and wider areas' economies and their natural and historic assets, as well as any likely changes in the quality and use of those assets.
- How well placed local businesses and communities are to respond to the challenges and opportunities of climate change.
- The extent to which local and surrounding infrastructure and services enable or constrain economic performance, and whether this is likely to change in light of expected future population, economic and environmental changes. These services and infrastructure include: land availability, transport infrastructure and public transport services, housing, energy, IT, water supplies, flood resilience, waste, community facilities, public services, and so on.
Much of the information on spatial infrastructure and services will be available from evidence collected for Local Development Frameworks, the sustainability appraisals required to evaluate these and associated monitoring reports.
Many of the data sources we've collated can be used to carry out detailed local and comparative analysis. There's also a wide range of analysis covering the West Midlands and local authorities/sub-regions. Some of this can be used as templates for other local research. We've also collated some guidance as well as many other resources showing a few examples of work done elsewhere.
Browse the resources using these links:
The Observatory has an ongoing work programme examining how we can move towards a low carbon economy. We've recently produced regional and local profiles identifying vulnerabilities, as well as the many oportunities for decarbonising and exploiting opportunities for growth into a low carbon economy.
The communities and connections chapter of the West Midlands Integrated Economic Assessment and the local profiles produced for this also provide a good starting point for exploring wider sustainability of local areas.
We hope you find this resource guide useful. You can be notified when new resources are added via this RSS feed or email alert.
If you have resources you think others would find useful, please submit them to our Resource Catalogue (requires login) or contact stephen.howarth@wmro.org.