Structural Change and Economic Policy in a Declining Metropolitan Region: Implications of the Pittsburgh Experience

Public-private partnerships can play a valuable role in regional economic policy, but the nature and effectiveness of such alliances depends on the type of problems faced by a region. In the context of decline, partnerships may be oriented to economic renewal and the regeneration of lost economic rents. These objectives may be served while the opportunity costs of policy actions are ignored, and when growth prospects are poor, the risk is ever present that unintended and costly changes in the spatial distribution of activity within a region may occur as a result of government policy actions. Regional policy in the context of decline must focus also on the problems associated with economic adjustment, and partnerships seem ill suited to give full consideration to such objectives.