The Manitoba Research Alliance on Community Economic Development in the New Economy is a three-year research project to examine how communities might overcome obstacles and share in the benefits created by the New Economy.

The Alliance has five research goals:

• To document and assess the practical impacts of the New Economy on disadvantaged rural, urban and northern communities in Manitoba;
• To document current CED practices and to evaluate the potential of CED as a response to the dislocations and opportunities presented by the emergence of the New Economy;
• To evaluate existing state initiatives related to the New Economy and CED that are directed towards excluded communities;
•  To formalize the economic and socio-political theory underlying successful CED and to assess its compatibility with that underlying the New Economy; and
• To investigate the policy implications of the research for sustainable community development in the New Economy.

To accomplish these research goals, the Research Alliance brings together academic researchers from the Universities of Manitoba, Winnipeg and Brandon, senior governments policy makers and practitioners active in Manitoba's dynamic CED community and elsewhere, under the administrative leadership of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a community-based research institute uniquely positioned to make such community-university connections.