Storm Cunningham Reveals
A Trillion Dollar-Plus Secret" Industry
The greatest business frontier of the 21st century
The Restoration Economy is upon us. Restoring ecosystems, watersheds, fisheries and farms, brownfields, infrastructure, heritage and disaster/war effects is lucratively replacing most new development creating a trillion dollar plus industry.
PRESS RELEASE
Date: November, 2002
Contact: Laine Latimer
503-859-2299
laine@latimergroup.com
Storm Cunningham Reveals
A Trillion Dollar-Plus Secret" Industry
The greatest business frontier of the 21st century
ALEXANDRIA, VA...From now on, most economic development will be based on redeveloping where weve already built, restoring what we should never have destroyed, revitalizing what weve exhausted, and cleaning what weve contaminated. This isnt a prediction: This has been the most powerful trend in development since the early 1990s. Restorative development already accounts for over a trillion dollars annually, yet its flying 'under the radar; effectively invisible to our standard methods of reporting development activity," says restorative development analyst Storm Cunningham, author of The Restoration Economy (Berrett-Koehler, November 2002).
Restorative development is highly lucrative because most of the work is both urgent and important. Importance gets a project funded, and urgency increases the profit margins.
A tiny sampling of the hundreds of thousands of current restoration and urban revitalization projects:
• $21 billion to rehabilitate the London Underground
• $1.5 billion to restore damage from 2001 Seattle-Tacoma earthquake
• $72 million to restore the historic Atlantic City Convention Hall
• The 2002 Farm Security Act earmarked $19 billion for restoring Chesapeake Bay
• $500 million to restore Istanbuls Golden Horn waterfront
• $100 million restoration of the U.S. National Archives
• $100 million first-phase funding for restoration of Black Sea
• Kobe, Japan is still rebuilding from its $100 billion 1995 earthquake.
• $700 million rebuilding of a single highway interchange (Springfield, VA)
• $3.5 billion first phase budget for Danube River basin restoration
• $7.8 billion restoration of the Florida Everglades
• The Estuary Restoration Act of 2000 (S. 835) allocated $275 million over 5 years to supplement state, local, and private budgets for restoring U.S. estuaries.
The Restoration Economy outlines many immediate and emerging business and investment opportunities within these eight industries. But the most effective economic growth strategies are shown to be those that integrated 3 or more of these eight industries into synergistic mega-projects. Many new investment vehicles are emerging as well.
Moral and spiritual evolution aside, indefinite perpetuation of our civilizations will come from recognizing and embracing restorative development", concludes Cunningham, who lectures and performs workshops on restorative development. He also edits a new quarterly journal, Restoration Economy Leader, launching in January of 2003.
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