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The most consequential question in any investment attraction strategy is also the simplest: are you building it from where the economy has been, or from where it is heading?
For most communities, the answer is the former. The starting point is a cluster analysis of the existing economic base. The deliverable is a ranked list of sectors the community is already strong in. The recruitment plan that follows aims to deepen what is already there. This work is not wrong. Understanding your assets matters. But on its own, it produces strategies that are conservative, backward-looking, and often indistinguishable from the strategy the community next door just adopted.
We have been working on this question with cities and regions across the country: Vermont communities deciding what kind of growth to invite, Texas cities choosing where to compete next, Virginia districts positioning for the next wave of federal and innovation investment, and Arizona communities matching infrastructure to industrial ambition. The starting point is always the same: cluster analysis tells you who you are. The more important question is what you could become. The five-year economic development plan we just completed for the City of Shafter, California, going to City Council for approval in May, shows what that question produces, and it changes the strategy in three specific ways.
It Changes What the Data Reveals
Standard cluster analysis would have pointed Shafter toward deepening logistics and agriculture. We asked which emerging industries Shafter could actually own, and what the fiscal return would look like if the city bet on them. That changed what the data revealed. Three-quarters of Shafter's jobs sit in traded sectors generating over $1 billion in annual exports, but value per job lags regional and national benchmarks. The city's traded sectors import roughly $250 million annually in goods and services that could be sourced locally, a concrete supplier attraction pipeline rather than a generic recruitment list. A new intermodal rail terminal opening in 2026 will connect Central Valley producers directly to the San Pedro Bay ports, turning Shafter from a regional distribution hub into an inland trade gateway. None of those findings come from a backward-looking cluster scan. They come from asking what conditions are changing and what the city could capture.
It Changes What You Sell
Cities that pitch themselves by industry label lose. Sector labels are broad, every region claims them, and they rarely describe the actual work a firm is shopping for when it chooses a location. Firms ask sharper questions: Can this place process at scale? Move temperature-sensitive product? Run automated fulfillment? Clear permits and stay compliant? Those are functions, not industries, and they are what location decisions actually turn on. Shafter does not need to compete as an agriculture city or an energy city. It competes as one of the few places in California where complex industrial operations get simpler. That is a sharper, more durable identity, because functions outlast industry cycles.
It Changes How the Strategy Is Organized
Most economic development plans treat clusters as separate verticals to optimize independently. We treat them as a system. In Shafter, logistics serves agriculture, manufacturing, and energy. Energy infrastructure underlies every cluster. Agricultural production generates the inputs that processing and cold chain systems move to market. The same technical workforce serves all of them. The strategy is built around that integration, because the compounding advantage is what no single-cluster plan can match. A cold chain operator locating in Shafter sources from local processors, uses solar-powered refrigeration, hires from a shared technical workforce, and ships through shared intermodal infrastructure. Each cluster makes the others more viable.
Why This Produces Better Strategies
Investment attraction is not a backward-looking exercise. The communities that will win the next decade are building strategies on where the economy is going, not where it has been. The work is harder. It requires real-time labor market intelligence, capital flow analysis, and the willingness to tell a city its strongest sector might not be its best bet. It also produces strategies a city council can actually fund, staff can actually execute, and the market actually responds to.
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