ECG’s Technical Solutions team provides a wide variety of economic and community development support services to our member communities. The tools our team provides that enhance research include but are not limited to Target Industry Studies, Housing Studies, Downtown Market Assessments, Retail Support, and Mapping products.

Customized research involves utilizing the latest technology available and or developing our own tools to assist our member communities. One such strategy is the use of Peer analysis. Peer analysis denotes the comparison of similar communities and how they achieve the following:

• How communities have addressed challenges and leveraged strengths
• How particular communities stack up
• Provide context to community trends 

The Peer Communities Tool developed by our research team members, is effective in helping communities find solutions to challenges they may be facing and learn how other communities have dealt with the same issues.

For instance, if your community is concerned about a shrinking population, is this due to people moving away or people passing away or fewer children being born? Is there a peer community in Georgia or another state experiencing the same trend or is this unique to your community? Finding and analyzing this data can help determine reasons behind your community’s shrinking population problem and work towards finding solutions that will benefit your cities and towns.

Our Senior Research Analyst, Monica Scott gave a comprehensive presentation on this Peer Communities Tool, critical in assisting communities with economic planning, at the recently concluded annual C2ER (Council for Community and Economic Research) 2020 Virtual Conference.

C2ER is a membership organization that promotes excellence in community and economic research with a network of 680+ actively engaged members in the industry of economic research and public policy.

Be sure to check out these peer county groupings interactive dashboards covering the different dimensions of Demographics, Housing, Economy and Health.