Regional Objectives

Southern Growth Policies Board provides policy guidance to member states by identifying goals and objectives that will create a higher quality of life in the region. These goals and objectives are collectively adopted by Southern Growth’s trustees and are published as their strategic plan for the region. The plan is refreshed annually through deliberation among members of Southern Growth’s four advisory councils, and Southern Growth tracks indicators that measure individual state progress in achieving the objectives. A brief of the plan appears below. Click here for the complete document.

Vision: All citizens of the South will experience an exemplary quality of life made possible by a dynamic, diversified, growing, sustainable, and competitive Southern economy (Adopted June 25, 2000).

Goal 1: Create a culture of learning throughout the South, in which the acquisition, creation, and application of knowledge is viewed as central to our health, happiness and prosperity (Adopted June 24, 2001).

Goal 2: Encourage and support innovation and entrepreneurship (Adopted June 24, 2001).

Goal 3: Create and sustain a quality of life that is attractive to globally competitive businesses and employees (Adopted June 24, 2001).

Goal 4: Create the talent pool needed to meet the ongoing market needs and opportunities of the emerging, knowledge-based economy (Adopted June 9, 2002).

Goal 5: Build the civic capacity of Southern communities to respond to emerging opportunities and challenges with new models of leadership, engagement and social capital (Adopted June 1, 2003).

Goal 6: Southern businesses, institutions and residents will pursue global opportunities and relationships with an entrepreneurial spirit (Adopted June 13, 2004).

Goal 7: Encourage and support the practice of economic development activities that are strategic, innovative, comprehensive, responsive to citizens and organized regionally (Adopted June 12, 2005).

Goal 8: Because an innovation-driven economy requires a singular commitment to building and maximizing the flow of knowledge to and among the citizens, businesses and institutions of the South, states and regions should organize to achieve the following objectives (Adopted June 4, 2006).

Goal 9: Increase the amount of knowledge that is created, accumulated or applied in an economy that increasingly values knowledge (Adopted June 3, 2007).

Goal 10: To ensure the participation of future generations of Southerners in promoting the long-term vitality of the region, communities and states should work to achieve the following objectives (Adopted June 1, 2008).