REGIONAL PLAN
ENVISION EAST CENTRAL IOWA – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This Executive Summary provided the high-level overview of the outcomes, priorities, and the planning process. This eight-page summary provides and easy to read snapshot of what we learned and the key priority actions we identified.
Take a quick look at the process and outcomes in this easy-to-read Executive Summary
2022-2026 COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY
ENVISION EAST CENTRAL IOWA
2022-2026 COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY
The FINAL REPORT has now been released. Learn about our ambitious and exciting plans for the future.
The final report presents the outcomes of the East Central Iowa comprehensive economic development strategy (CEDS) planning project. This project was termed ‘Envision East Central Iowa’ and the outcome is a new economic development strategy that will guide regional decision-making over the next five to ten years.
SNAPSHOT – REPORT HIGHLIGHTS
This report lays out the agreed future vision, value proposition, and strategic positioning for the East Central Iowa region. It identifies the key strategic actions and priorities needed to achieve the preferred future.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS AND OUTCOMES OF THE EVISION EAST CENTRAL IOWA PROCESS
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SIGNIFICANT APPETITE TO THINK BIG AND TAKE ACTION – Throughout the planning process, regional stakeholders have worked together to identify an ambitious future regional vision, which represents significant change from the current trajectory. There was recognition that the region has the potential to become a nationally and globally significant region. The institutional partners in the project have shown a keen willingness to step forward and be part of the implementation process and demonstrated a collective desire to move forward together.
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STRONG DESIRE TO BUILD AN INNOVATION FOCUS – A key strategic lever for the region’s future is building a strong innovation focus. This plays to existing regional strengths and leverages the current capacity for human knowledge creation and educational technology. The optimal future pathway was identified as applying this innovation focus to existing industry clusters to build industrial diversification, and simultaneously applying it to spur new entrepreneurial activity and business creation in promising emerging sectors.
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WILLINGNESS TO BE A LABORATORY OF LEARNING – Workforce capacity is a critical issue for all regions. East Central Iowa has identified a unique desire to ‘lean into’ the workforce and social evolution dimension and tackle the grand challenges of today’s society. There is willingness and desire to see the regional community evolve to intentionally foster new ideas, cultures, and experiences. The desired outcome is to build a thriving diverse regional workforce, that can actively lead in workplace and workforce transformation.
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FOCUS ON CREATING SHARED PROSPERITY AS A FOUNDATIONAL STEP – The planning process has identified creating and expanding pathways for shared prosperity as the highest short-term priority. There is a desire to address disparities and remove barriers to individual and family prosperity and success. The regional stakeholders have embraced a future value proposition of being a community that welcomes, absorbs, and nurtures people. This represents a broad new approach to attracting people, by creating an inclusive regional community that values equity and diversity.
BENCHMARK REPORT
As part of the planning work, a benchmark analysis was conducted to understand how the region is evolving and changing.
This benchmarking analysis is part of the Envision East Central Iowa comprehensive economic development strategy (CEDS) planning project.
This report is the companion report to the Envision East Central Iowa Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) Report. It explores the past and current state of demographic and socio-economic indicators and industry sectors in the six counties of East Central Iowa and compares innovation indicators with the peer cities highlighted in the region’s 2019 Annual Scorecard. Most data in this report are sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s StatsAmerica Innovation Intelligence website at (https://www.statsamerica.org).
REPORT HIGHLIGHTS
This report helps provide a contextual foundation for the Envision East Central Iowa planning work. The planning process identified a desire for an ambitious future, driven by an innovation focus and building human capacity in the region. This benchmark report explores metrics around socio-economic indicators, innovation capacity, and core industry sectors and clusters.
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THE REGIONAL POPULATION IS GROWING AND CHANGING – The East Central Iowa region has reached a critical population mass of nearly half a million people. The forecasts are that the regional population will continue to grow at a steady pace. While the region is still predominately white (84%), there is a relatively rapid expansion in the diversity of the population. Over the last 20 years, the region has changed from being about 70% urbanized to 80% urbanized.
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SOCIO-ECONOMIC INDICATORS SHOW POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES – The East Central Iowa region performs comparably in the terms of socio-economic indicators, relative to Iowa and US. However, there are some indications that disparity gaps are growing, and household prosperity may be challenged. The region’s higher education facilities are an outstanding strength that provide residents with access to world class education. Economic concentration is occurring in the two urbanized counties (Johnson and Linn), and their relative share of the GDP is increasing significantly.
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STRONG RELATIVE PERFORMANCE ON ‘INNOVATION INTELLIGENCE INDEX’ – The Envision East Central Iowa planning process has placed a high priority of on creating an innovation focus to address future approaches to development, and to tackle workforce and social evolution. Overall, East Central Iowa measures comparably well in innovation capacity relative to other economic development districts. This region ranks 56 out of 393 Economic Development Districts (within the US) on the overall Innovation Intelligence Index.
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THE REGIONAL ECONOMY GROWING AND CHANGING – The region has outperformed the US and Iowa in relative GDP growth between 2000 and 2020. However, the full impacts of the pandemic and the medium-term rate of recovery are still to play out. There is a transition occurring in the regional economy, as the pivot occurs to technology driven clusters and industries. The relative employment is declining in the Food / Bioprocessing, manufacturing and logistics and transportation clusters, and there are strong relative employment increases in Engineering and automation, and Education and technology services clusters.
The five-hour Envision East Central Iowa scenario-based Think-Tank was conducted virtually on September 29, 2021.
Approximately 122 people attended this workshop that included ECICOG staff, regional community members, industry, and agency representatives. The Think-Tank was intended to build coherency around a vision for regional future planning for East Central Iowa that will guide stakeholders over the next five years.
The scenario planning process provides a method to explore plausible futures and consider the implications of various future scenarios. The Think-Tank workshop aimed to:
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Deepen the understanding and examination of how external events and local conditions could shape decision-making
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Identify and understand the key influences, trends, and dynamics that will shape the solid waste management and recycling looking out to 2030
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Create and describe four plausible long-term scenarios for the East Central Iowa
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Explore alignment around a shared future vision
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Examine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to East Central Iowa as perceived by community stakeholders