Planning for Industrial Decline: Lessons from Steel Communities

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Abstract
Economic development planning has weaker tools than does land use planning and is hampered by a great deal of analytical and normative conflict. This paper reviews the causes and remedies of industrial decline in the steel industry. At least eight different causal explanations of steel job loss have been offered, and diverse normative objectives have been invoked. This research exam ines the intergovernmental issues and the politics involved in a num ber of innovative steel strategies. The paper concludes that this type of controversy is bound to escalate in the coming decades. Therefore, economic development planners will need a broad education in both po litical economy and institutional and intergovernmental settings, as well as improved skills in conceptualizing and testing causal models of indus try evolution.