The 2010 California Regional Progress Report: One State, Many Regions, Our Future was publicly released for the first time at the December 3 Strategic Growth Council meeting. The report presents twenty integrated, place-based quality-of-life indicators that benchmark and measure the progress of the regions in moving toward sustainability. It was developed with the collaboration of more than 40 state, regional, non-profit and academic organizations.
The Strategic Growth Council will be using the report to convene policy discussions on the findings and implications, as well as coordinate data and indicator work around sustainability. Further, the Council will be developing a recommended set of sustainability indicators. The State report catalogs the Schwarzenegger administration sustainability achievements, and recommends unifying California’s sustainability approach.
2010 California Regional Progress Report
Report sponsors include the California Department of Transportation and the California Strategic Growth Council, in partnership with the University of California at Davis, governance reform group California Forward, regional government association CALCOG, the non-profit WELL Network, and regional Councils of Government and transportation agencies from Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Shasta, and Calaveras.
Report Highlights
- Resource for understanding the critical challenges and opportunities facing California related to sustainability
- Provides an integrated approach to defining sustainability for California
- Shows the progress across regions and for the state as a whole on a wide range of issues related to economic vitality, environmental quality, and high quality of life. (or economic, social, human, and environmental well-being indicators)
- Calls attention to regional-scale issues such as air quality, housing affordability, vehicle miles traveled and electricity use
- Finds gaping data needs for important regional indicators such as new development, combined housing and transportation costs, and equity – issues that currently can’t be measured
- Identifies regional disparities in making progress, with challenges in the San Joaquin valley and rural regions in particular
- Shows positive trends in almost half of the issues measured, including green business, vehicle miles traveled, air quality, water use, and transit ridership
- Calls for dialogue between state, regional, and local governments to share successful strategies, address regional disparities, define sustainability, and improve sustainability measurement
- Was developed with the collaboration of more than 40 state, regional, non-profit and academic organizations