Assorted Links Friday

The Milken Institute’s Best-Performing Cities index is out.

A profile of a successful completely virtual site selection process.

The Wavteq IncentivesFlow Annual Briefing is now available.

Doing the math on current reshoring efforts:

Since 2010, the rate of offshoring slowed from approximately 200,000 jobs each year to about 100,000 each year. Over the same period, the rate of reshoring increased from approximately 6,000 jobs each year to about 150,000 each year, resulting in a net gain of approximately 50,000 jobs each year.  While this is a promising start, at this rate it would take close to 100 years to close the current 5 million-job deficits.

Worksheet: How to determine if a community should go ahead with an economic development project: Do the math.  If that doesn't work, mimic successful patterns.

Why downtowns matters:

Downtown matters because it represents your town as a whole. One mayor said downtown is like the core of an apple. No one wants a mushy core.

Watch: As the COVID pandemic changes how -- and where -- professionals work, some smaller cities and regions are offering hefty relocation incentives to attract remote workers to help jumpstart their local economies.