Report
The Active Economy report is published in full and by section, alongside the companion technical analysis prepared by UCSUR. Read the whole argument top to bottom, or open the single part you came for.
Available to read
The complete report in four parts: the case outlined, the evidence presented, the sources traced, and the implications weighed. Includes all figures, the twenty-one projects, the full methodology, and the notes behind every claim.
The technical foundation beneath every figure in the Active Economy Report. Prepared by the University Center for Social and Urban Research (UCSUR) at the University of Pittsburgh, this document sets out the full methodology for both analytical frameworks and reports each of the twenty-one projects individually — the data gathered from project leaders, the assumptions applied, the sources behind every financial proxy, and the reasoning behind each judgment.
What the research found and why it matters. The headline figures, the three insights behind them, and what this report asks of those who set priorities and direct resources across Southwestern Pennsylvania.
The essentials of the argument. What the Active Economy is, what the portfolio produces, and how it compares to large-scale corporate development on cost, jobs, return, and risk.
The framework beneath the evidence — five propositions RiverWise and New Sun Rising have tested across thirty years of practice, and the paradox that chasing outside investment signals need, while building your own economy is what attracts it.
What the term means and where it comes from. Why a region still recovering from the collapse of steel has been slow to recognize the development already underway in its own communities, and a snapshot of the thirty-eight census tracts the portfolio serves.
Each of the report's three central insights, examined against the evidence that produced it. Community projects generate local economic value on par with large-scale corporate projects, yet do so with considerably less public subsidy and risk. Developing diversified community project clusters reduces dependence on any single industry and is less susceptible to boom and bust cycles. Community projects generate substantial social value, producing local benefits that extend far beyond their economic impact.
The twenty-one projects by sector, and the social value each cluster produces — including how researchers arrived at the financial proxies used to monetize outcomes that markets do not price.
The methodology in plain terms. How economic impact is traced, why this report leads with Gross Regional Product rather than Output, and how social value is monetized — followed step by step through a single project, the Beaver County Food Hub.
An essay by Chris Briem, principal researcher on this study and a regional economist at the University Center for Social and Urban Research (UCSUR) at the University of Pittsburgh, arguing that social value is not a secondary outcome of economic development but a precondition for it.
Every claim in the report traced to its source. Thirty-three notes documenting how each headline figure was calculated, where each financial proxy comes from, and what the research literature says about megaproject performance, subsidy concentration, and the outcomes this analysis monetizes — followed by the full bibliography.