Key Takeaways
- Local leaders do not lack ideas; they lack the capacity to turn them into economic strategies.
- Local economic growth depends on how well cities support small businesses and simplify the government systems around them.
- While local leaders are preparing for economic shifts related to AI, demographic changes and equitable growth, they need practical usable data, peer insight and the right tools to guide decision making.
Cities are not short on ambition. What they are short on is time, capacity and a clear picture of whether the strategies they are investing in today will hold up against the challenges coming tomorrow.
That tension rose to the surface in Raleigh, N.C., in February 2026, when the National League of Cities convened more than 50 city leaders from across the country for the first Local Economic Futures Forum: a two-day working convening designed to examine the evolving realities facing local economies and to identify practical strategies for the years ahead.
The Road to Raleigh
The Local Economic Futures Forum did not emerge in a vacuum. It was the next chapter in a longer body of work.
Since 2021, NLC’s Entrepreneurship & Economic Development team has supported cities through the City Inclusive Entrepreneurship (CIE) program, a national initiative that helped city leaders reduce the barriers to entrepreneurship for those looking to start and scale small businesses in their communities. With support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, we paused implementation from 2024 to 2025 to conduct a deliberate learning year: going back to the cities, listening carefully and asking what had changed as a result from participation in CIE.
The learning year found CIE had successfully built connective capacity. Cities that were once isolated in their work found peers, shared language and mutual validation. But cities were also running into roadblocks in between program cycles. They were experimenting, often successfully, without clear pathways to turn pilots into permanent infrastructure. And they were asking for help making sense of what they had already tried.
Rather than rushing straight to solutions, we brought cities together to react to the findings, test assumptions and help shape what comes next.
Day One: The State of Local Economies
The Forum’s first day was focused on the present. What cities are navigating right now and where are they finding traction.
The morning began with a learning journey through Raleigh. Shaped by the city’s Office of Strategy and Innovation, this on-the-ground tour offered attendees a look at the city’s small businesses and development projects to ground the forum in real-world conditions. Attendees stopped at 321 Coffee, Dix Park, A Place at the Table and Videri Chocolate Factory to experience how local policy, capital and infrastructure decisions play out at the street level.
That afternoon’s opening keynote drew on lessons from North Carolina’s economic development practices and what happens when cities prioritize supporting homegrown businesses. The keynote was followed by a panel of national voices, which examined the fiscal, economic and structural pressures cities are facing today. The conversation created a baseline for understanding the risks, constraints and opportunities shaping local economies so that in the afternoon, city leaders had structured time to weigh in on what they were experiencing directly with the following six themes.
The keynote was followed by a panel of national voices. Chike Aguh of the Kapor Center, LaChaun Banks from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and Michael Parker of S&P Global Ratings examined the fiscal, economic and structural pressures cities are facing today. The conversation created a baseline for understanding the risks, constraints and opportunities shaping local economies so that in the afternoon, city leaders had structured time to weigh in on what they were experiencing directly with the following six themes.
- Small Business Ecosystems: For most cities, economic growth is not primarily about landing a single major investment. It is about whether the thousands of small businesses already operating in a community can start, stabilize and grow. Yet capital gaps, complex permitting and fragmented support systems remain stubborn barriers.
- Revitalizing Downtowns: The definition of downtown is moving away from office towers and nine-to-five-foot traffic and toward how boldly cities adapt to new economic realities. The cities finding momentum invest in mixed-use development, public space, transit, and housing together, not one at a time.
- Regulatory Barriers: Licensing, permitting, inspections and compliance requirements exist to protect the public. However, when they are unclear, slow or duplicative, they become barriers to the very entrepreneurship cities say they want to support. Simplification is not deregulation; rather, it is designing systems that work for the people trying to use them.
- Government Efficiency and Data-Informed Policy: Cities are being asked to solve increasingly complex challenges with limited staff and resources. Breaking down data silos, aligning cross-departmental priorities and building a culture of evidence-based decision-making are becoming less optional and more required for effective local government.
- Workforce, Technology and AI: Generative AI is reshaping cognitive and non-routine work across middle- and higher-wage professions. Cities are on the front lines of this shift: training workers, preparing employers and trying to equip residents with skills for jobs that don’t fully exist yet.
- Industry Clusters and Place-Based Incentives: Strategic tools from New Markets Tax Credits to Opportunity Zones can direct investment to communities that need it most. However, the design of incentives matters enormously for whether benefits are broadly shared or narrowly concentrated.
See more of what prompted Day 1’s small-group conversations (PDF).
Day Two: Cities as the Engine for Learning, Strategy and Action
Where Day 1 set a baseline for understanding the present, Day 2 was about preparing for the future. The morning opened with welcome remarks from Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell, followed by City Spotlights from leaders in Wilmington, Del., Omaha, Neb., Pleasant Hill, Calif. and Lauderhill, Fla., who shared how their communities are already responding to the forces reshaping local economies.
The plenary that followed brought together experts from NC IDEA, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Institute for Emerging Issues to explore what it means to build equitable local economies of the future. The conversation returned to a central theme: navigating the decades ahead will require not just better programs, but different systems.
Then came the session that generated the most energy in the room.
The Future-Forward Strategy Lab: What Will Our Cities Need by 2050?
Facilitated by the City of Raleigh’s Office of Strategy and Innovation, the three-hour Future-Forward Strategy Lab asked city leaders to look beyond the present and envision the long-term trajectories of their communities.
Working through three mega-trends, participants used a color-coded facilitation format to signify where they feel ready (green), where they feel exposed (yellow) and where they need help (blue) with regard to:
- Demographic Transitions: Aging populations, shifting workforce demographics and the challenge of retaining younger residents are reshaping who cities serve and how. Leaders expressed confidence in their capacity to support senior populations but named the convergence of declining employment, rising costs of living and outmigration of younger workers as among their most acute pressures.
- Technology and Automation: Cities are actively helping entrepreneurs and workers modernize with many crediting their local community colleges for partnership in this realm. At the same time, many are running internally on decade-old systems and lack a community-informed AI policy. Leaders are struggling to align education and training systems with quickly evolving job markets, especially in AI and biotech, while building stronger workforce pipelines and broadband access.
- Economic Growth in Urban Areas: Cities want growth, but they’re afraid of who gets left behind when it happens. Displacement, gentrification, property tax instability and the erosion of generational wealth dominated this conversation. So did the question of how cities build the public trust and cross-sector relationships needed to pursue equitable development when resources are limited.
The blue stickies — where cities named what they need from NLC — told their own story. Across all three mega-trends, leaders asked for access to what peer cities are doing, data to back up their positions, frameworks for navigating local politics and more convenings like this one.
What Comes Next
Lisette Johnson, a city leader from Richmond, Va., captured it well:
“The most meaningful insight I gained was how strongly economic development is tied to coordination, not just investment…the real impact happens when local government, support organizations and businesses are working from the same playbook rather than competing efforts.”
That spirit is exactly what NLC’s Entrepreneurship & Economic Development team is carrying forward. Throughout the year, we’re translating what we heard in Raleigh into tangible resources for cities and partners, starting with this blog series that commences during Economic Development Week 2026.
In future posts, we’ll go deeper on each of the three mega-trends from the Future-Forward Strategy Lab: what cities said they’re most and least prepared for, and what it will take to close the gap. We’ll also release a Local Economic Futures Brief that pulls the Forum’s collective intelligence into something cities can actually use.
There’s a lot more to come from Raleigh. Stay tuned.
The Local Economic Futures Forum was made possible with support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. We’re grateful to the more than 50 city leaders who traveled to Raleigh and showed up with openness, honesty, and genuine commitment to one another’s success and to the City of Raleigh for their hospitality and co-creation of this event. To learn more about NLC’s Entrepreneurship & Economic Development work, visit nlc.org.
Sponsorship Opportunity
Interested in sponsoring the next Local Economic Futures Forum? Reach out to the Entrepreneurship & Economic Development team.
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