What is the relationship between information technology development and traditional community development efforts?
Information Age development is complementary to traditional community and economic development. Housing, schools, health care, recreational opportunities, main street businesses, utilities, and access to road and air transportation are still necessary. In fact, quality of life issues may be even more important to IT development than traditional economic development. In order to recruit and retain IT businesses and workers, communities need to offer a high quality of life. IT development is simply a retooling of community and economic development processes. Whereas traditional economic development efforts focused on recruiting manufacturing businesses, information technology development focuses on helping existing businesses utilize information technology to grow their businesses, developing a skilled workforce, creating new information technology businesses, and recruiting IT businesses and workers.
