Steven Pedigo

What we talked about

Economic development with people at the center

Pedigo and longtime Austin civic leader Laura Huffman created CivicSol after seeing the same weakness across projects nationwide: residents often experienced economic development as something happening to them rather than with them.

The firm's approach puts people at the center of strategy. That means treating community members as participants in problem-solving, not an audience invited to approve a plan after the important choices have already been made.

A career between the classroom and the field

Pedigo studied at the University of Texas at Austin, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois. Work with Richard Florida introduced him to the role talent and quality of place play in city growth. Later, work connected to Michael Porter's Initiative for a Competitive Inner City focused his attention on urban communities that had been left outside conventional investment.

His career has moved between practice and academia: economic-development work in Washington and Portland, urban research and teaching at New York University, the LBJ Urban Lab at UT Austin and, now, Northeastern University. The classroom sharpens the fieldwork, and real projects keep the teaching accountable.

Start with data, then talk to people

When Pedigo enters a new community, the first task is lifting the hood. His team studies the economic portfolio, demographics, budgets, public spending, comparative performance, challenges and assets. Even economically distressed places have resources that can be uncovered and deployed more effectively.

Data alone is incomplete. Stakeholder interviews reveal what makes the city tick, how residents experience it and which problems do not appear in a spreadsheet. Strategy becomes credible when quantitative performance and lived experience point to the same picture—or explain why they do not.

Intentional engagement instead of a checkbox

Broad engagement is not automatically good engagement. The right participants depend on the question. Residents may be essential to a quality-of-place decision, while workers, employers, unions and training organizations are better positioned to design an industry workforce plan.

Pedigo's standard is intentionality: know why people are being asked, what knowledge they can contribute and how their input will affect the outcome. A town hall that consumes time but cannot shape the decision creates frustration instead of trust.

The Austin Infrastructure Academy

Austin plans roughly $25 billion in infrastructure investment across projects including the airport, convention center, highway work and transit. Pedigo's team helped translate that spending into a workforce question: how can the city turn construction demand into better jobs, career paths and small-business opportunities for residents?

The analysis identified demand for about 10,000 infrastructure workers a year while the region trained roughly 4,500. Closing that gap required workers, community organizations, unions and training providers to act as co-designers—not simply sources of comments on a finished program.

Engagement creates information and buy-in

Good engagement does two jobs. It supplies the details outsiders cannot know, and it allows people to recognize themselves in the solution. That recognition matters because communities are more likely to support a project they helped shape.

Pedigo describes engagement as a mechanism for solving problems and building ownership. The goal is not to manufacture agreement. It is to make the choices, trade-offs and participants visible enough that the project genuinely belongs to the community carrying it forward.

Why data centers became community kryptonite

Data centers sit at the center of competing pressures: national competition in AI, enormous private investment, power and water demand, limited direct employment and public anxiety that the technology they support may eliminate jobs.

Pedigo rejects the simplistic claim that every city must accept a data center or be left outside the AI economy. The infrastructure may be necessary at a national scale without being right for every site. Communities need enough information and leverage to evaluate the project rather than accept a take-no-prisoners pitch.

Trade-offs have to be local and visible

Residents are more attentive to local quality-of-place decisions than they once were, partly because local politics feels more tangible than state or federal debate. A proposal that changes power, water, land use or neighborhood expectations therefore arrives in an already engaged environment.

The answer is not to avoid difficult projects. It is to bring the relevant people into the process early, define the public benefit, explain resource demands and test whether the project aligns with local priorities. Economic development earns legitimacy when communities can see it happening with them.