Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development
The Virginia Initiative for Growth and Opportunity in Each Region (GO Virginia) promotes collaboration for regional efforts to diversify the regional economy, strengthen their workforce, and support collaborative programs between at least two or more localities that will create higher-paying jobs. The George Mason University Center for Regional Analysis supported this effort by assembling a baseline set of performance measures. These measures gave regional stakeholders a realistic and empirically derived understanding of their region and its economic potential. These baseline measures—provided for each GO Virginia region—partially informed each region’s respective Economic Growth and Diversification plan. The GO Virginia Board and staff will also use them to track each region’s progress, and determine the program’s effectiveness in stimulating growth and diversification of the regional economy.