Economic Development Practices for Building Resilience and Sustainability: A Canadian-wide Perspective

In the wake of economic shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing heat waves, forest fires, and flooding events, economic resilience and sustainability have become a vital focus of economic development practices, economic geography, and regional studies. We will present the preliminary results of a nationwide set of interviews with economic development practitioners on this matter. Specifically, our interviews explored what economic resilience and sustainability mean and what practitioners are doing to incorporate these concepts into both their immediate responses and their long-term strategies. This research is part of a larger project with two main objectives. First, to understand the relationship between practitioner and academic understandings of these issues with an eye towards keeping academic research relevant to the field, and second, to better understand how academic research can be presented in a relevant and accessible manner for practitioners.