Plan Danville

Mass Economics was part of the consulting team, led by SmithGroup, that created Danville’s award-winning comprehensive plan for the next 20 years. Informed by intensive quantitative, qualitative, and spatial data analysis – including Mass Economics’ analytics of economic, entrepreneur, business, agricultural and food access, capital, demographic, workforce, housing, and cadastral data and trends – and extensive public engagement (~18 months) throughout the project, the project team identified eight “big ideas” capturing Danville’s goals for the future and addressing the plans three guiding values – equity, health, and climate resilience.

Mass Economics led the development of the Economy chapter, but collaborated with project team members on and contributed to the other seven chapters, organized by “big idea,” as well as the implementation chapter. The Economy chapter identified four policies – Economic Resilience, Economic Development, Small Business Support, and Talent Recruitment – which, in turn, contained 11 specific recommendations and 73 detailed action items to guide implementation. The implementation chapter details timelines, champions, and partners for each action item and also introduces potential metrics for tracking progress.

PLAN Danville received a National APA Excellence in Sustainability award, along with multiple APA VA awards (Plan of the Year, Breaking Barriers in Planning, Resilience Community of the Year). The plan is available here: https://plandanville.org/resources/.