This is all about identifying areas of growth to foster greater financial prosperity within the city, specifically by enticing companies to build or move offices there. Subsequently, those companies then hire local talent and drive commuter traffic to the new office. More workers dining at local restaurants for lunch, getting gas at nearby gas stations, and stopping by local grocery stores on the way home will boost visibility and spend in the area. 

Sometimes an economic development department lives outside the planning department of a municipality, so it is important to help that group navigate land use plans, master plans, and infrastructure plans to ensure that any development projects are workable, Of course it will be important to coordinate with environmental plans as well. 

There have been countless examples of new commercial zones developed right in the residential zones to be able to rise attraction and rise in the value of real estate, without any ideal or proper traffic planning. Planners of those economic development zones succeed in attracting new people paying much higher prices, but afterwards each and everyone complains about the traffic jam. In all of these cases it is not the urban planners cause all this mass in town but the authorities in the municipalities that give the licenses for their personal benefits… Ironically, urban economic development may surely be the personal economic development of many statesmen. 

To create an outstanding economic development, the cities need an extraordinary incident, an ´Obelisk´ milestone in the all times history of the city, such as hosting Olympic Games. Sochi (a Russian city on the Black Sea, founded in 1838) was selected as the host city of 2014 Winter Olympics in July 2007. Ironically, until that time Sochi had been known as a summer beach resort and `optimistically´ named 'Russian Riviera'… 

As of October 2013, the estimated combined cost of the 2014 Winter Olympics had reached to US$ 55 billion (this cost made the Sochi games the most expensive Olympics in history and it still is… To make a comparison,US$ 8 billion spent for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada.)  This was certainly not the cost only for Olympic games but more the cost of Sochi´s complete infrastructural projects (roads, railroads, power plants and even the port). This total is over four times the initial budget of $12 billion but Sochi turned into a completely new city with a new future. 

Since the 2014 Winter Olympics, Formula 1 races take place here every year; there is an amusement park and a beach promenade, which are very popular with travelers and when they visit the Olympic Park for free, they can enjoy the museums (such as the Auto Museum or Nikola Tesla Museum). After the stunning renovation and expansion of the Sochi port for the Olympic Games, today it welcomes many luxury yachts, cruise ships and cargo ships, mostly coming from Turkey.

This is called a major economic development for a city…

In respect to the urban planner and project developer background, MKB took a part in this gigantic transformation as an advisor for some of the projects, such as `Moremall´, the biggest and most preferred shopping center in Sochi …