Winning the Decade: A Conversation with Jason Hall, CEO Greater St. Louis, Inc.

A consistent focus of this newsletter has been the pandemic and other disruptive forces that have followed in its wake that have the potential to reshuffle the order of successful cities. As I’ve written before: “For cities that are organized, deliberate and purposeful, there is the tantalizing prospect of using this period to leapfrog, diversifying and greening their economies to become more economically resilient, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable.”

St. Louis may be one of those metropolitan areas.

One of the distinguishing factors of economic development in U.S. cities and metros is the powerful leadership exercised by the private and civic sectors. As Jeremy Nowak and I observed in The New Localism, “The rise of CEO-led general-purpose and special-purpose corporations represents a structural shift in the role of business and civic leaders in U.S. cities.” That has come to the fore during this period of transformative economic restructuring, as the metros that are able to capitalize on this moment, such as Columbus, Syracuse, and St. Louis, have strong, well-resourced, business/civic leadership groups.

Read the full article on The New Localism below.