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Data Doesn't Make Communities Work, People Do
By Teasha Cable
Communities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on land use plans, transportation plans, and strategic plans. Then the binders go on a shelf and nothing changes, meaning towns keep paying for it again and again.
Your town has probably paid for the same data three times...
Communities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on land use plans, transportation plans, and strategic plans. Then the binders go on a shelf and nothing changes.
Kathleen Rose, of Rose & Associates Southeast has watched that happen for 30 years. She also noticed that about 25% of every plan starts with the same research...and towns just keep paying for it over and over again.
So she built a scorecard to collect it once: 90 data points, one score out of 100, and no place to hide. One town that considered itself very safe came up short on a basic public safety measure.
Kathleen didn't tell them what to fix. She showed them the gap and let them choose, and the answer might be as simple as a neighborhood watch.
We also talked about why housing is now considered an integral part of economic development, what she learned from taking on a downtown project by herself, and why the same woman behind a 90-point scorecard scored lowest as a Data Driver.
Go figure.
Stop Paying for the Same 25% Over and Over
Kathleen's firm, a women-owned real estate and economic development advisory in Davidson, North Carolina, often teams with planning and transportation firms.
That means she has seen plenty of plans from the inside. When her team compared them side by side, the overlap was hard to miss. The economics, the demographics, and the baseline were all the same work, brought forth repeatedly with every new plan.
Her fix is the Prosperity Builder Scorecard. It tracks around 90 data points across 12 categories, grounded in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It starts with the basics, like housing, food access, health care, and public safety, and climbs toward transportation, education, arts, and culture.
It blends public data like Census figures with proprietary real estate data and on-the-ground work: interviews, site tours, and questionnaires completed by city managers and planners. Scores are benchmarked against national averages rather than neighboring cities or state figures, which she says would skew the picture.
Nobody gets a perfect score, and that isn't the point. The point is knowing where you're strong, where you're weak, and deciding what to do about it. In the very-safe town, the gap was officers per thousand residents. More staff was one answer. A neighborhood watch was another. Kathleen's job was to make the gap visible. The community's job was to choose.
The best eyes on the street are often the grandmas on the porch.
From Job Attraction to Talent Attraction
Traditional economic development was jobs, jobs, jobs: build a 300-acre industrial park and fill it. Kathleen says that model has shifted. Amazon's HQ2 RFP was an early signal, listing quality of life and cultural community fit among its requirements. Remote work did the rest.
People now choose where they want to live first, and the job comes second.
That changes the math for communities. Some can land the companies, but the companies can't fill roles because workers can't afford to move there. Housing is no longer a separate issue. It is economic development strategy.
Success brings its own problems, too.
Kathleen calls them the unintended consequences of success, and in Davidson they showed up as parking, traffic, and housing affordability. Without guardrails around affordability, the very qualities that make a place desirable start pushing people out.
Land costs drive most of it, and developers can't solve it alone. It takes land use policy, municipal policy, and partnership. That's why expertise matters in these spaces. You need it to understand the depths of decision making.
Why Practitioners Make Better Advisors
Kathleen was managing partner on South Main Square, a mixed-use revitalization project in downtown Davidson that helped spark the town's arts district. She calls it her lab.
Her team wrote the checks, secured the financing, and turned away tenants who didn't fit the community's culture. A small business incubator they started there was later acquired by a nonprofit that is now part of Davidson College's Hurt Hub for entrepreneurship.
That experience lets her see both the public and private sides of a deal. It also shaped a firm rule: if a client wants a prescribed answer, they shouldn't hire her. When I put her through my rapid-fire scenarios, she chose honest analysis over optimizing for the client without hesitation. To me, that comes from a mix of vision and values.
Then came my decision persona assessment. Kathleen landed at 30% Feeler, 30% Planner, 25% Counter, and 15% Data Driver. For someone who built a 90-point scorecard, that low data score says something.
The data sets the table. The decision still happens between people. There's always middle ground, and that's what decision making is: a little art and science coming together.
Data doesn't make communities work, people do.
The Human Part
Kathleen's advice for city leaders is practical: start with the annual municipal strategic plan. Take an honest, comprehensive look there, and every specific plan after it, whether land use or economic development, builds on a shared foundation instead of starting over.
She also offered a caution about AI. It's easy to gather information now, but AI should be a tool, not a crutch.
Creative problem solving is what makes communities work.
I couldn't agree more. At the end of the day, while we have tools and all this stuff, I profess that it's very human to decide.
If your community has a stack of plans and not enough progress, listen to the full episode of the Dynamic Decisions Podcast. Then ask a hard question: which of those plans are you actually acting on?
Listen to our conversation!