Defining Local Economic Development

Abstract

The study deals with the definition of local economic development (LED). Local economic development is a fashionable term, but the meaning of LED depends on who uses it and where it is used. The purpose of this article is to present some LED definition from the international academic literature. This research pays specific attention to the four dimensions of LED definition (Wong 1996):

- Who are the driving forces of LED?

- What are the required resources?

- What are the objectives aimed for?

- What is the spatial dimension of LED activities?

The article concludes with our LED definition. In our interpretation local economic develop- ment means conscious intervention into the local economy. In the course of that process the actors may use internal and external resources too. The initiator of intervention may be external actors (e.g. government, European Union, foreign investment), but the key element of process is the involvement of local actors, who are the initiators of LED activities, or acceptors, or supporters, or manipulators of external development conception.

We use the local economic development term in a wider sense, so the intervention into the local economy includes infrastructure development, development of public utilities, human resources development, business development, creation of internal economies, and community development too.