Trying to Capture a Community’s CED: New Dashboard of Growth, Prosperity and Inclusion Data

<p>The new Metro Monitor 2018 reportby the Metropolitan Policy Programat the Brooking Institution includes an enticing tool for CED professionals: interactive graphs tracking the growth, prosperity, and inclusion of 100 different metro areas over the last 17 years.  For North Carolina, the areas include Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, Greensboro-High Point, Raleigh and Winston-Salem, which might seem of limited interest to CED professionals elsewhere in the state.  But don’t be fooled – the dashboards demonstrate a truly impressive way to spark conversations using data. The clear layout and intriguing results offers a rich opportunity for any CED professionals wanting to demonstrate the power of this kind of data, regardless of city or county.</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p>With the year 2000 as a starting point, the maps and trend lines create an honest view of progress or deterioration, and allow comparisons with national averages or other major metro areas. However, the usefulness of the data does not stop there; any CED professional could use their own regional data for the same calculations and comparisons.  To create the dashboard, the analysts used a number of sub-indicators to create broad categories that measure the areas’ progress. The prosperity of a metro area, for instance, is a rank comprised of the change in the average wage, productivity, and standard of living for that area. Growth and inclusion are made of similarly composited scores, giving each variable a clear single score that can be plugged into a national map.</p> <p>The options allowed by this program allow for some irresistible data combinations and comparisons, and raise some challenging questions about [...]</p>