Date: Friday, March 13, 2020
Time: 12:00 pm -1:00 pm
Room: WBY 002
Sowing Opportunity: Linking Development Incentives to a Better Built Environment
Abstract:
Practitioners have increasingly leveraged economic development incentives to pursue community-identified goals, most recently as part of local responses to federal Opportunity Zone designations. Incentives are costly and rarely produce jobs, making it essential communities include complementary benefits in deals. After providing an overview of incentive programs and their impacts on local communities, this talk explores emerging trends in Connecticut’s Opportunity Zones — in particular how municipalities are using designations to pursue goals of brownfield redevelopment, affordable housing, park restoration and active transportation.
About the Spearker:
Dr. Mary Donegan
Assistant-Professor-in-Residence
UConn Urban & Community Studies
Mary Donegan joined the Urban and Community Studies faculty in fall 2017. Mary’s work is driven by questions of how local governments and institutions can leverage scarce resources to foster just economic and community development. Current research focuses on: the transparency and efficacy of economic development incentives; state and city roles in Opportunity Zone projects; the complexity of entrepreneurial ecosystems, and; evolving relationships between research universities and regional development. Prior to Uconn Mary worked in the financial services industry, as a research associate evaluating housing policy at UNC’s Center for Urban and Regional Studies, and as a research assistant and visiting scholar at UNC’s Center for Community Capital. She holds BAs from Wellesley College in Economics and Russian Area Studies, and earned her MRP and PhD from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Department of City and Regional Planning.
For more information, contact: PSLA at psla@uconn.edu