Economic Recovery post-Covid

Betsy Cowan Neptune of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council visited unPlanned to talk about economic recovery in the Boston region as we slowly escape the grip of Covid. Betsy is a woman who knows so much about economic development, having worked at the city of Boston before joining MAPC and thinking regionally about the problem. She just shepherded the Comprehensive Economic Development Study (CEDS) through the process.

Perhaps the most interesting point (of the many interesting points she raises) is that the CEDS study was underway when Covid hit. If anything could overturn someone’s assumptions about what constitutes economic development, it is a global pandemic that basically shuts down all economic activity for a while. My contention about Covid is that it exposed all the systems we have created — both explicitly created and implicitly created — and laid bare what works and what doesn’t work in our system. Betsy and her team had to grapple with all of that, and more. Issues of generational wealth creation, and not just sustaining, issues of Main Street revitalization and the related issues of regulation. And of course the huge wealth gaps that exist by race and ethnicity.

Betsy’s interview has gotten plenty of response, which is an indication of just how many people are focused on these crucial questions.