Financing Economic Development
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this graduate-level urban planning course on how practitioners fund business and economic development projects in the United States. It covers private capital markets and the imperfections that limit access to capital, plus business accounting and financial statement analysis for evaluating deals. Students work through policy tools and program models including revolving loan funds, loan guarantee programs, venture capital funds, bank holding companies, community development loan funds and credit unions, micro-enterprise funds, and the Community Reinvestment Act. Federal economic development programs and public finance mechanisms round out the toolkit. Materials include the syllabus, readings, and assignments as posted on MIT OpenCourseWare, free to access with no certificate offered. The course aims to build practical skills for careers in development finance or for planners who need to apply these financial tools within broader community development work.