regional market assessment

Cape Fear Council of Governments, Wilmington, NC

Renaissance led a series of technical assistance catalyst projects to apply the Lower Cape Fear Sustainable Communities Consortium’s (FOCUS) sustainability principles to local sites within the region. The purpose of this work was to demonstrate how sustainability principles could help local governments solve local problems. 

We first prepared a regional market assessment that helped frame important economic trends and issues for the region and provided market-driven guidance on long-term development potential in the region. We also evaluated the market positions of the four catalyst project sites as a demonstration of how future development potential could be realized in a variety of different contexts.

Renaissance prepared future growth scenarios and a preferred development scenario that leveraged the analytical powers of ArcGIS, CommunityViz and a custom land use allocation utility that supported the modeling of prospective futures under a range of variable assumptions about market preferences, infrastructure availability/expansion, planning policies and programs, land value dynamics and more.

The tools were deployed in combination to create a virtual model of present conditions and subsequently forecast alternative future patterns of where people will live and work at a fine grained scale (one acre cells in urban areas, seven acre cells in rural areas). The findings were presented at a workshop attended by regional leaders and other stakeholders. A summary of the report was integrated into the regional framework plan we helped prepare.

Renaissance also led technical assistance catalyst projects to apply the sustainability principles to local sites. This included hands-on workshops and stakeholder engagement. The technical assistance provided to each catalyst site included design and planning workshops, policy audits, concept plan development, and policy and ordinance recommendations.