The Great Reset: What Will It Mean for Jacksonville?

Identifying and Creating Our Future Economic Base  

As noted earlier, perhaps the most difficult challenge that Jacksonville faces is rebuilding a “real,” sustainable economy to replace the “development for development’s sake” bubble economy of the recent past.  As the author indicates in his chapter on the emerging characteristics of the post-reset economy, “We are living through an even more powerful and fundamental economic shift, from an industrial system to an economy that is increasingly powered by knowledge, creativity, and ideas.” (p. 111)

While we have the advantage of an established and growing international port and at least the nucleus of several more traditional industries, what kinds of things – in the author’s words – will Jacksonville be doing in the future to provide needed goods and services to the rest of the world?  Similarly, can Jacksonville successfully transition from its traditional low wage, low skill “plantation model” to deliberately creating the kind of creative, flexible “economic ecology” that has powered economic sustainability in other areas?  And what, exactly, will it take to do this?