Project

Edmonton Region Collaborative Economic Development – Financial, Policy, and Site Assessment Tools

EBP is working with the 13 municipalities of the Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) Metropolitan Region as they work to develop frameworks for shared benefit of shared investments in economic development and investment attraction. 

This Collaborative Economic Development (CED) initiative began from the recognition that the communities working in cooperation would provide a greater market impact than operating on their own.

To date, EBP has provided overarching strategic and capacity building assistance and has also developed three specific technical toolsets: 

  1. EBP leveraged experience from our TREDIS and economic impact modeling practices to develop a bespoke cloud-based Return on Investment model that will allow municipalities to estimate the positive revenue impacts on potential shared development, allowing for more informed cost-sharing agreements.
  2. EBP has also examined the global competitive landscape, the Alberta legal framework, and economic development best practices to develop a business attraction policy toolkit – including limited incentives. Each set of tools is specifically tailored to the common business needs of each target business sector.
  3. Finally, EBP is also working with the municipalities to develop a site identification and prioritization model to evaluate candidate sites based on their current suitability and match to the specific needs of the target sectors. This GIS-based tool will be available in each of the municipalities, will enable collaboration between the municipalities, and allow for ongoing updates as new data becomes available.