Regional Economic Development

To produce an environment that encourages the creation of jobs, promotes education, fosters community development (including placemaking, quality of life, and infrastructure), and advances business development to compete in a global environment.

The CEDS also lists four goals intended to address the Region’s economic development needs:

1. Encourage collaborative and economic partnerships to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.
2. Provide opportunities to support globally competitive business environment strategies.
3. Expand post-secondary educational and workforce development opportunities to retain and attract talent
4. Diversify the economy.

Strategies with corresponding Performance Measures were also identified to address each goal.

A goal (and associated strategies and actions) of the 2017-2021 edition of the Region 2 Planning Commission Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) is the identification and mapping of cultural and recreational resources.

A first step in identifying major community facilities (i.e., cultural and recreational resources) is to map existing land use patterns utilizing property assessment categories (i.e., existing land use). Many cultural and recreational resources have an exempt status, making them easier to identify. It was further noted that the property assessment data can also be utilized by counties and municipalities as they create economical and up-to-date existing land use maps for inclusion in master plans and other planning documents. This following reports provide more detailed information on existing land use patterns and cultural and recreational resources found in in the entire Region 2 Area as well as for each of the three counties:

A goal and associated strategy and action (i.e., Goal #2, Strategy C, Action #3) of the 2017-2021 edition of the Region 2 Planning Commission Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) is the identification and mapping of cultural and recreational resources, which includes agriculture. The American Farmland Trust (AFT) and Conservation Science Partners recently created various geodatabases regarding land use —with a special focus on agricultural land from 2001-2016— within the 48 conterminous U.S. as part of their Farms Under Threat project (2020). R2PC staff utilized TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) images of those geodatabases provided by the AFT to create the following maps depicting the Region 2 Area as well as each of its 3 counties.

The COVID-19 Pandemic reminds us that disasters of all types may have lasting impacts on the economy and society in general. Some people and households are more vulnerable to those impacts than others and need assistance in order to recover and become more resilient in the future. This vulnerability extends to the neighborhoods and municipalities in which they are grouped together. The CDC’s (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s) Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) defines social vulnerability as “a community’s capacity to prepare for and respond to the stress of hazardous events ranging from natural disasters, such as tornadoes or disease outbreaks, to human caused threats, such as toxic chemical spills.” Its Social Vulnerability Index “depicts the social vulnerability of communities, at census tract level”, by grouping “fifteen census-derived factors into four themes that summarize the extent to which an area is socially vulnerable to disaster” (i.e., “economic data as well as data regarding education, family characteristics, housing, language ability, ethnicity, and vehicle access”). The CDC’s “Overall Social Vulnerability combines all the variables to provide a comprehensive assessment.” Please refer to the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index webpage for more background information. The following reports provide information on the social vulnerability of the Region 2 Area in 2018 as well as for each of the three counties: