MISCELLANEOUS

Despite their dependence on X-Com to protect them from the alien threat, the civilians are not totally useless.
Several civilian 'tech' buildings exist which can aid you in your fight by providing additional resources and equipment:
Elerium Stash
Working with local authorities, X-Com Engineers have built storage silos for Elerium-115 harvested from UFO crash sites. These silos will not only give you a large boost to your current resources but will also provided a steady trickle of Elerium over time. The silos can also be sold to recover the resources that went into their construction but bear in mind that you will lose the steady income.
Machine Shop
X-Com research has been made available to private companies in the hopes that new technologies can be researched more quickly. Despite these companies' aversion to sharing their achievements, the Machine Shop can give us access to new weapons that would otherwise require us to steal from our X-Com allies. The Machine Shop's assets can be sold to generate resources but we will lose the ability to construct the new technology provided by it.
Crashsite
After being shot down by our elite Interceptor pilots, some alien vessels have crashed on Earth without being destroyed or recovered by their leaders. Such crashes often leave their technology intact to be recovered by our Engineers. Further more, alien vessels are often armed with powerful weapons which we can now turn against them.