Two Economies, One Ohio: Bridging the Gap Between Business Growth and Community Well-Being
At an America 250 gathering in Cincinnati, leaders from Common Good Alliance and JobsOhio explored a different measure of economic success: the people, businesses and relationships already rooted in Ohio's communities.
Ohio is America's top state for business. In July, CNBC ranked the state No. 1 nationally, citing its infrastructure, competitive business costs and economic development efforts. But within those same rankings was another number: Ohio placed 18th for quality of life.
Derek Peebles wanted the room to sit with a different question: Does being the best place for business mean a better life for the people who live here?
Peebles, of Common Good Alliance, raised the question at an America 250 gathering held with JobsOhio at the University of Cincinnati's Digital Futures building on Oct. 30. He placed two economic narratives side by side. One celebrates Ohio's success in attracting business investment. The other asks whether that success is reflected in the lives of the people who call Ohio home.
His argument was that Ohio is operating two economies, and only one consistently dominates the conversation.
The first is the economy of attraction, measured in corporate investments, site selections, jobs announced and ribbon cuttings. The second is the local economy, made up of the money residents already spend, the businesses rooted in their neighborhoods and the relationships that support them.
Lisa Duty, representing America 250, introduced Peebles at the gathering. Ryan Squire of JobsOhio also spoke, emphasizing the value of community gatherings and local storytelling as assets to community growth. Their participation brought economic-development and community-building perspectives into the same conversation, one that moved from statewide business rankings to the everyday purchasing decisions and relationships within Ohio neighborhoods.
Peebles asked participants to consider whether Ohio's success in attracting businesses had translated into prosperity in their own neighborhoods. While new investments and job announcements often dominate economic development headlines, the money residents already spend and the businesses operating within their communities tell another part of the story. How much of that money stays in the neighborhood? Where does it go? And who benefits?
Peebles came to these questions after leaving banking and spending several years working nationally with independent business alliances. The American Independent Business Alliance, founded in 2001, emerged as part of a national movement to support locally owned businesses, encourage local purchasing and address economic structures that disadvantage independent enterprises. Its network has included more than 60 local alliances, with historical accounts describing tens of thousands of businesses reached through those organizations.
Through his work with independent business networks, Peebles came to recognize locally owned businesses as more than commercial establishments. They help shape a neighborhood's identity, sustain relationships and create opportunities for wealth to circulate close to home. A 2012 study by Civic Economics examined independent retailers and restaurants in Salt Lake City, comparing their local economic impact with that of national chains. Researchers found that independent retailers recirculated approximately 52 percent of their revenue within the local economy, compared with 14 percent among chain retailers.
Peebles offered another way of looking at the economic resources already present in neighborhoods that are usually discussed through what they lack. Consider a community with 5,000 households earning $20,000 annually. Standard measurements might characterize the area through poverty rates, employment challenges, educational attainment and crime.
But those same households collectively represent $100 million in annual income.
That figure is not the same as $100 million in discretionary spending. Families still have rent, groceries, utilities, transportation and other expenses, and some of that money will inevitably leave the neighborhood. Peebles wanted the audience to consider what could happen if even a modest portion of the money residents already spend supported businesses owned by people in the community. What might change if more of that economic activity remained close to home?
From Economic Consumers to Community Owners
In some of Southwest Ohio's most economically challenged neighborhoods, Peebles hears from residents who care deeply about where they live but feel they have little power over what happens around them. Decisions are made, developments move forward and residents sometimes learn about projects only after construction begins.
By the time objections reach a neighborhood council meeting or the news, much of the decision-making has already happened.
Common Good Alliance has been working to change where those conversations begin. Rather than gathering residents exclusively around problems, the organization asks what people care about, what possibilities they see for their neighborhoods and what they might contribute to creating something different. Peebles said those conversations often reveal skills, relationships and resources that conventional assessments of a neighborhood may never capture.
In North College Hill, Common Good Alliance has spent roughly a year holding monthly conversations with residents. People are invited to discuss the future of their community without first having to identify something wrong with it. As neighbors begin to recognize one another's interests and abilities, Peebles believes those connections can become the groundwork for collective economic activity.
Economic development, he explained, generally involves two tracks: attracting businesses from elsewhere and retaining or expanding those already present. Peebles wasn't arguing against business recruitment. He argued that the existing economy, including locally owned businesses and the people who sustain them, deserves greater attention and investment.
He suggested that if residents redirected even 10 percent of their purchases toward local businesses, the shift could function like a recurring investment in their own neighborhood. Some communities, he said, are already exploring collective ownership, with residents pooling capital to buy land, purchase real estate and establish services such as childcare.
And Peebles doesn't believe an effort has to begin with an entire neighborhood. It could start with a single street, where a few neighbors decide to purchase a home together. As other residents see what is happening, they might begin asking how they can participate. That first project could lead to another, or to residents organizing around improvements such as sidewalks and other shared neighborhood needs.
Such efforts would still involve financing, coordination with local government and questions about how improvements affect existing residents. Peebles, however, wasn't measuring their potential success by whether they produced market-rate returns.
He was interested in what residents gained from having greater ownership of the place where they live.
What Happens to a Dollar Spent Locally?
Peebles had an example from his own morning. Running late on his way to pick up Peter Block, he opened the Starbucks app and ordered coffee. It was convenient, and he wasn't about to pretend he didn't enjoy Starbucks. He told the audience he still visits once or twice a week.
But he wanted people to consider where the money went after the transaction. Peebles cited estimates that approximately 15 cents of every dollar spent at Starbucks remained in the local economy, compared with roughly 45 cents at his neighborhood coffee shop. Those particular estimates have not been independently established for the businesses he described, although research has documented differences in local economic recirculation between some independent businesses and national chains.
His point wasn't that people should never buy coffee from Starbucks. It was that ordinary purchases, repeated across thousands of households, influence how money moves through a community. A locally owned coffee shop may employ a neighbor, purchase supplies from another nearby business or put earnings into the hands of an owner who lives in the area.
Peebles also pointed to the pandemic, when local businesses experienced prolonged closures while fast-food workers were among those classified as essential. He asked the audience to consider what those decisions revealed about the economic roles people and businesses were expected to fill.
For Peebles, the larger concern is how thoroughly residents have come to be regarded as consumers rather than citizens.
Common Good Alliance wants to move that relationship in another direction, helping people recognize their capacity to shape local economies instead of simply participating in them through purchases.
That doesn't eliminate the need for city government or traditional neighborhood council meetings. Peebles acknowledged that residents still need places to raise concerns about public services, repairs and decisions affecting their communities. But he asked how much more leaders such as Cincinnati Council member Mark Jeffreys might accomplish alongside residents who already knew one another, shared commitments and had begun organizing around their own priorities.
The questions brought Peebles to Peter Block, the author and community builder he described as his mentor of nearly two decades. Block wasn't interested in giving another presentation. He wanted to change what was happening in the room.
The Economy of Relationships
Block began by calling attention to the familiar arrangement of public meetings. People sit facing forward, someone stands at the front to speak, questions are taken and eventually everyone goes home. The format places a few people in charge of producing the experience while the rest become its audience, even when the meeting is supposedly about encouraging public participation.
He knew the arrangement well. Block recalled serving for six years as a neighborhood council trustee, where meetings followed a similar routine. At one trustee nomination gathering, he said, just 24 people attended from a neighborhood of approximately 8,500 residents. The people who showed up could speak, but the structure did little to help them build relationships with one another.
He had seen something similar in a university classroom. Invited to speak to students studying group dynamics, Block divided them into small groups and asked them to talk. Afterward, students told him that despite having attended 18 class sessions together, it was the first time some had actually gotten to know their classmates.
The chairs at Digital Futures had been arranged differently for a reason. Instead of rows facing the front, participants had been seated to make conversation easier.
Block explained that the speaker was there to provide a reason for people to gather. What happened among the people in the room was what interested him.
He asked everyone to form groups of three, preferably with two people they knew the least, and gave them a question: Why was it important for you to be here today?
The room broke into conversation. Participants spoke about their work, their interests in community development and the experiences that had brought them to the gathering. When Block called everyone back together, he didn't ask the groups to summarize their discussions. He asked what had struck them about the conversations they'd just had.
One participant spoke about discovering how much they had in common. Another described a shared devotion to the city. Block had given the room only a few minutes and a question, yet people were identifying connections with others they might otherwise have passed without a conversation.
His next question was more personal: What crossroads are you facing?
Block also gave the participants an instruction that challenged a familiar habit. He told them not to try to fix one another's problems. When people describe a challenge, listeners often respond with advice, sometimes before they have fully understood the experience being shared. Block asked them to practice curiosity instead, listening and asking questions without assuming they knew what the person speaking should do next.
The room returned to its small groups. Conversations moved into personal decisions, work, uncertainty and the tension between what people wanted to create and the circumstances in which they were trying to create it. In one discussion captured in the recording, a participant described the struggle to sustain a community-focused business that had attracted interest but was not yet generating enough income to make ends meet.
There was no immediate solution waiting at the end of that conversation, and Block wasn't asking anyone to produce one.
His method begins with the idea that people can recognize their own choices and possibilities through relationships with others, rather than waiting for an expert to prescribe the next step.
He also asked participants to consider what gifts they possessed that were not being fully brought into the world. It is a question Block uses to move conversations away from deficiencies and toward the abilities, experiences and contributions people already carry.
Peebles had spent the morning asking the room to recognize the economic resources already present within Ohio neighborhoods. Block was asking participants to recognize something less visible: the knowledge, relationships and willingness to contribute that were sitting across from them.
Measuring a Different Kind of Return
Common Good Alliance is exploring how those relationships might be measured alongside more conventional economic indicators. Its work includes collaboration with economist Mark Anielski, whose approach to measuring well-being considers factors beyond financial performance.
A proposed Vitality Index, being developed with Common Good Journalism and Common Good Alliance, aims to examine trust, belonging and residents' perceptions of their own quality of life. Over time, the research could help determine whether participation in neighborhood conversations and community storytelling corresponds with changes in well-being, local economic activity and opportunities for residents to shape their communities.
The work remains in development. Researchers will need to examine what changes, whether those changes persist and what role the community-building efforts themselves play in producing them.
For Peebles, the effort returns to the question he raised at the beginning of the gathering. Ohio has demonstrated its ability to attract business investment, and those achievements are measured through jobs announced, dollars committed and businesses recruited. He wants to know whether the same attention can be given to the economic resources and relationships already present within its neighborhoods.
The gathering brought that question into a room that included representatives of America 250 and JobsOhio. Squire's remarks about the value of local storytelling and community gatherings reflected an interest in the relationships that help communities grow, alongside the investments and businesses more traditionally associated with economic development.
By the end of Block's portion of the gathering, participants had spent much of their time talking to one another instead of listening to someone at the front. They had discussed their reasons for coming, the crossroads they faced and the possibilities they saw in their own lives. When Block brought the conversations back to the full room, people spoke about what they had discovered in one another.
Block told the room that gatherings should not end without asking people what gifts they had received from those around them. It was a different question from the one that opened the morning, when Peebles had asked whether Ohio's success in attracting business translated into a better quality of life for residents.
One question concerned the economic resources flowing into the state. The other concerned what people could find among the neighbors, colleagues and strangers already sharing a room.
Peebles's challenge was to consider how those two kinds of resources might work together, and what that could mean for the people who call Ohio home.
Editorial disclosure: The author is a co-founder of Common Good Journalism, which works alongside Common Good Alliance on neighborhood-based journalism and community development initiatives. The proposed Vitality Index remains under development.
