Location Quotients: Vincent Zhang’s Explainer Video

Student

Vincent Zhang (B.Arch. '26)

Class

CRP 3850/5850 Special Topics in Planning: Economic Development: Goals, Strategies, and Tools

Instructors

Thomas Knipe

Each fall semester, Visiting Lecturer Thomas Knipe teaches a course in economic development panning. Knipe is an alumnus of the Cornell Masters in Regional Planning Program, from which he graduated in 2011. Knipe currently serves as the Director of Economic Development for the City of Ithaca, New York.

This semester, each of the students enrolled in the economic development planning course produced an “explainer” video on a specific economic development tool. In this explainer video, Vincent Zhang (B.Arch. ’26) explains one of the vital concepts of economic development planning in this video on location quotients. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, location quotients are a measure of the weight of individual occupations or industries and their concentration in the United States, in an individual geographic area. Location quotients are a measure of local employment in an “occupation or industry to national employment in that occupation or industry.”