Does the economic DNA of the city exist?

Local economic development (LED) is a place-based planning approach. Global best practices and research focus on different contemporary marketing strategies to harness local resources for economic growth. The theoretical evolution of LED can be divided into two categories: the era before and the era after the emergence of sustainable and smart development. Many theories developed during these eras had themes/components focused on advancing LED, with each theory contributing a new idea to understanding the existing local economic structure.

This research focuses on the contributions of, and connections between, different economic theories with the ambition of creating a comprehensive understanding of local economic structure. This paper advances ‘Economic DNA’ as one way to conceptualize and understand LED. The research amalgamates fourteen theories related to LED to present a theoretical foundation for “economic DNA theory”. The overarching question that this research tries to answer is do cities have a unique economic DNA that significantly impacts the city's direction of growth. If yes, what constitutes its economic DNA, and how robust is the DNA to change/mutation over time?