Our Approach

What We Do

We use our experience in economic development to frame environmental, social, and cultural issues in a context that resonates with investors, community members, and public policy leaders. This is demonstrated through our award winning approach to helping communities leverage their quality of place assets to change their economic and demographic paths.

Economic Vision and Action Plans
CEDS and Economic Development Strategy
Outdoor and Cultural Economy Assessment and Planning
Feasibility and Economic Impact Analysis
Housing Analysis
Industry and Market Trend Forecasting
Jobs of the Future and Workforce Analysis
Equitable Development Planning
EV Readiness Assessment
Strategy, Program Design, and Evaluation
Strategic Planning
Asset Mapping
Design, Branding and Place-based Marketing
Economic and Environmental Resilience Planning
Community Health and Family Supports Assessments
Site Selection Analysis

How We Do It

Though we tailor our process to each client and scope of work, our process generally includes:

Establishing a Baseline

Fourth Economy combines qualitative research with quantitative assessments to provide a robust economic picture for each community where we work. We believe in the development of a thorough understanding of the economic structure, assets and challenges that provide the base to develop actionable strategies.

Facilitating Robust Engagement

We believe engagement to be the cornerstone of any planning effort. Our engagement process can help validate quantitative findings, provide valuable qualitative data, and can identify those individuals and organizations who may be catalysts for advancing strategies in the implementation phase.

Moving to Action

The Fourth Economy team believes that our engagement process combined with the rigor we provide during analysis supports success. Our engagement and analysis activities culminate in the development of implementable plans that help communities move from vision to action with metrics for measuring and communicating successes along the way.